ATI or NVidia?
 

What graphic card should I go for? I am on a resonable budget here so a GeForce 6800 Ultra while cool is way too much money :)

My "old" GeForce 5600 can't handle Doom 3 for example so I'm looking to upgrade. What does ppl suggest?

/Joonas

Well, I just bought an Ati Radeon 9800 Pro, which is very cheap and still pretty good. Don't know what kind of system you'd need with that card to run Doom 3 with reasonable framerates though.

I like my ATI as well.

I have an ATi Radeon 9200 Pro ... while it is only a hundred dollar card (now it's less than fifty) it is a really good card to play alot of games on. It can't play FarCry, but it can play Doom 3 and CS:S. I have always been an ATi Fan and they have some of the best cards. Also, you don't waste 2 slots for the vidcard ... as with nVidia, you do.

-Duane

Just what Duane said ...
If you need space, go for ATI, but I've always used nVidia and it never disapointed me ... so ...
If the price and space really matters, go for ATI, never a bad choice tough ..

i got an ati 9600XT fairly cheap. i'd reccomend it.

my gf 6800GT rocks at doom3. So hard. (and it works in my shuttle w00t!)

Although, if you want a good cheap card, try and find an ati 9600PRO on ebay or something.

i'll say the same thing i always say in this type of thread: If you do now (on a dual boot) or even plan to use linux, go with nvidia. You will save a LOT of headaches later on.

Good to know. Luckily, my Linux computer will have my old GeForce 3.

I've delt with nothing but shit with ATi cards...random artifacts, unreasonably low framerates...well at least with their Mobilility Radeon cards (my 64mb nVidia GEForce4 MX 4000 on my old pIII 700mhz even seems to outperform the Mobility 9700 on my p4 3.40ghz machine in some games...) So personally I'd go with nVidia.

hey captainnuss did you play doom 3 or new half-life with 9800pro?

Labtops run hot, plus kinda comparng apples and oranges here. GeForce 4? OMGWTF, my 5200FX pwnt that and same to the desktop 9700.

[Consider RMA, there's always that rotten apple. And never ever judge any hardware just becuase it fails you once.]

Maybe your labtop runs hot? Get newest drivers? Kinda comparing apples to oranges here. The GeForce 4 is pwnt by my 5200 which, in turn, is pwned by the 9700. Try RMA, there's always that rotten apple.

geforce 4 mx440 8x can beat a 5200 in quite a few cases (benchmarks i mean).

and if you mean geforce 4 ti that will pwn the 5200 and 5200 ultra....

anyway the 6800's kill Ati's offerings in doom 3 so I'd go with a 6800 Gt or ultra if you want doom3 fragging. Personally i think doom3 is mediocre anyway........

Of course if you want to go cheap i think someone else already recommended it, find a 9600XT or maybe even a 9800 of either variety off ebay......

Twice, actually. :blah: I had to return my HP notebook to the store (p4 3.2ghz 1gb ram) due to a fault in the mobility radeon 9600's mem core which caused games to run at unbelieveably low framerates. So I got a DELL inspirion XPS (p4 3.4ghz 1gb ram), and the 9700 built in it has problems with switching resolutions in games (ex: playing game in 1920x1200, but cinemas go to 800x600, which end up going into this half-fullscreen thing where the half the desktop shows when it shouldn't...) Updated drivers which just caused the games to crash when switching rez's....so I had to rollback the driver to the outdated one from 2003 and live with it...

So I guess you could say I do have a reason to have a bone to pick with ATi....

nVidia > Koala > * > ATI

ATI pwns.

The exact reason I prefer not to buy labtops. Anyway, God said so himself, "ATI pwns." - God

Mike: Are you sure the GeForce 4mx? It's worse than the GF3(thus the MX label). Which benchmarks were conducted? If opengl, then believable, if DX then I don't think so.

That would depend on the company that makes the PCB and or cooling solution for the Nvidia chipset.

If you don't want to rape your wallet I would suggest a Radeon 9800PRO. Fry's has it on sale for $179 right now. It's a sweet deal.

If you have $400 to spend, consider these:

- The 6800GT will outperform the X800PRO in most all of the games out there, especially in Doom.
- You can have dual DVI. Sweet.
- Pixel Shader 3.0. At least 13 new games will support PS3
- Better driver support. ATI decided to can the support for my Rage Fury Maxx. It was a damn sweet card with dual GPUs. Nvidia also has ultra extreme superior Linux driver support.
- Think of the future. Many developers have decided to use the Doom 3 engine for their upcoming games. Right now only Nvidia cards can be confugured to use 16x1 pipes and 32x0 pipes, as opposed to ATI's 12x1. Nvidia cards will be fantastic for any games using the Doom 3 engine.

Okay...so Nvidia it is. But a FX5800 is enough then for my limited wallet? :)

My FX5600 sucks but I guess that's just a bad card compared to the FX5800?

/Joonas

My "good, gaming" computer has an onboard 32mb. I'm glad this thread is here, I have pretty much decided to go ATI.

Bwaha, *my* system has a 4mb video card. I can hardly play "more than 5 days uptime", so we can forget about games :D

Most all? No. Doom 3? Yes, definately, and you are right that many new games will be based on the Doom 3 engine, and that it's possible that the benchmarks in Doom 3 will be indicative of the card's future performance with those games.

...

ATI still pwns, though I'd rather have a 6800 rather than a X800.

Kind of off topic: I wonder what the next round holds for the continual ATI vs. nVidia battle. It'd be kind of cool if Matrox stepped up and offered something competative with the big guys too.

No, not yet. I might go and install the demo as soon as I've installed my new computer.

Yes, and if ATI beats it it's only marginal.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=191536

I recomend an ATI 9800 pro or non pro instead of a FX5800.

And why is that? Seems like GeForce has an edge with Linux and otherwise is about the same?

*confused* :)

/Jonas

Who cares about Doom? The and coming HL2! And most likely Quake 4!

<3Quake

Yes...but will a GeForce 6800 or an ATI 9800 be better suited for Doom3 or HL2 (presumably..?) ?

/Jonas

They aren't comparable. Perhaps you mean a GeForce 6800 and a Radeon X800?

No...I guess I mean a FX5800 and an ATI 9800...more my price range ;)

/Joonas

Take the GeForce for Doom, take the Radeon for HL2. Fact of the day: When I set my monitor refresh rate to 60hz, it lags when I use mouse3 scroll.:igor:






god, the 5200 sucks balls


[By the way, I even overclock my videocard.]

The 9800 Pro is faster thatn the FX5800 or even 5900 series cards at higher resolutions and image quality. It's a better buy for gameplay. The 6800's and X800's are out of your price range. I believe that there are linux drivers for this card. I'm too tired right now to find links to benchmarks, but you should search for "radeon 9800 review" in Google. You should find many reviews and behcnmarks. I have no objections recomending this card vs the FX series as long as it's around $200.