Best GFX to buy now

[-ag-bometal]

Gonna upgrade my GFX card

Always had NVIDIA cards ,never had problems, only when i upgraded my system and had the infinite loop problem

So thinking of a RADEON card,

wich one is the best buy

tia

 

[Deadmanwalking]

What is your budget and current system specs?

Are you planning on a system upgrade in the near future?

The more info you can give me the better the choices i can give you are.

 

[-ag-bometal]

Just bought state of the art system

PIV 3.0 GHz
MSI 865P NEO
1 GB PC 3200 DDR RAM

budget, bwa i have money to spend

+/- 300 € or so

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Well for a start i am from UK so all these prices are with current exchange rates and from UK suppliers

You got a beast of a system there, but you didn't get a GFX card with it?

Ok a little over budget but a very nice card:

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 128MB TV-Out/DVI : (£221.49 Inc VAT)

or slightly less under budget but with quite a lot less kick

Hercules 3D Prophet 9600 Pro 128MB DDR : (£158.63 Inc VAT)

They are radeon's and IMO are your two best bets. As i have already said that is Uk VAT at 17.5% and with the exchange/cheaper wherever you are from, you can prob cut those prices down a little.

Hope this helps

Edit: Depending on the prices you can get your hands on a Radeon 9800 pro 128MB version then you would have a quite amazing system

 

[-ag-bometal]

Well i didn't bought a GFX card because i upgraded my system and i thougt my GFX card was strong enough (Geforce 4 TI 4200 128 MB).

But got troubled with infinite loop bug and realised it is a shame to put such a GFX card in this system.

so i want to upgrade my GFX card

so the best card i can buy is a Radeon 9800 Pro ?

Or is a Geforce better ? (although i have bad experience with the stupid loop bug, it dont exist on radeon i hope :/ )

 

[Deadmanwalking]

The radeon 9800 pro 128mb (Please don't bother with the 256 mb version) is widely regarded (By people who know what they are on about) as the best production card out at this moment in time.

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

I hate to say this but...

As a games developer I would advise you to stick with NVidia. Unfortunaly driver stability is everything, and youll find the majority of games are developed or at least very well tested with their hardware.

 

[Nazgul]

Nvidia are having some driver issues at the moment but give them time and I am sure they will sort it out (and Half Life 2 will be tested properly!).
However in value for money terms the 9800Pro is better than the 5900Ultra.

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Originally posted by boni_ofdavoid
I hate to say this but...

As a games developer I would advise you to stick with NVidia. Unfortunaly driver stability is everything, and youll find the majority of games are developed or at least very well tested with their hardware.

Seriously "I'm a games dev" .... and?

That is recycled ATI bashing rom about 4 years ago. I could go and get several hundred decent webites that back up this point but it would be wasted.

Edit: That was prob a little harsh.

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by Deadmanwalking
Seriously "I'm a games dev" .... and?

That is recycled ATI bashing rom about 4 years ago. I could go and get several hundred decent webites that back up this point but it would be wasted.

Edit: That was prob a little harsh.

ok let me rephrase that:-

Im one of the worlds leading 3d engine programmers.
I have been lead programmer on RPG's released recently.
I have been working professionaly on games / 3d engines for 20 years. I get to goto all the dev conferences and talk to all the other developers. I run test myself , I never read magazines / websites as most of them are biased, fllawed or simply paid for in cash...

I think Nvidia are scum, im not here to promote their hardware, there are better cards around, but facts are facts, if you want a stable 3d card / drivers for DAOC then you may as well bung a GF4+ in your machine, all other cards are less well tested and more prone to driver cockups. Fact imo, and why I would advise people to get Nvidia, cause joe blogs doesnt want driver nightmares, he just wants his game to run fast and cards like Gf4ti series will do this fine. DAOC is still so buss lagged that you wont get any real advangtage from having a more powerfull 3d card than this, and in all the time i have played daoc i have never encountered a driver bug with the unified drivers that affects DAOC in any way.

A good sample test to provie this is to take a look at the techincal problems in this section that people have. Note down what 3d card they have and tot them up ... thatll tell you if this is 4 year old mumbo jumbo or not

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Surely this comes down to DAOC and its (numerous) shotfalls in this case?

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by Deadmanwalking
Surely this comes down to DAOC and its (numerous) shotfalls in this case?

In a way yes.

If a games developed well, then there shouldnt be a problem whatever graphics care you have.

But... take the last place I worked, only 10ish test machines for the game and 6 of them had nvidia cards in them. Stands to reason that a game developed there is bound to work on nvidia, but less chance with more obscure cards.

As I say I dont like to recommend nvidia, there are a lot better cards out there, but this sad reality is why I would advise nvidia

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Nowadays it is more to do with which games devs get their next new car from nvidia or ATI. But im sorry i have to disgaree with you, ATI cards on pure power (DAOC aside) out perform Nvidia. ANd their drivers are now equal to/better then nvidias poor attempts of late.

Nvidia are acting more like a PR company atm trying to convince everyone their cards are the best and not making sure they actually are

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by Deadmanwalking
Nowadays it is more to do with which games devs get their next new car from nvidia or ATI. But im sorry i have to disgaree with you, ATI cards on pure power (DAOC aside) out perform Nvidia. ANd their drivers are now equal to/better then nvidias poor attempts of late.

Nvidia are acting more like a PR company atm trying to convince everyone their cards are the best and not making sure they actually are

agree with all of that, possibly bar driver stability, lets just agree to differ on that

 

[Deadmanwalking]

I want a new car

*starts producing a game*

 

[Cyradix]

The SI engine is not very happy with my GF FX 5900 Ultra.
The game runs at 40 fps max. My old card was a GF3 and it ran at 40 fps too.

Pc is a P4 2.8 GHz so processor is not the bottleneck.
All other games run at 100-200 fps at 1600x1200 with full details etc.

Maybe this has to do with the nvidia drivers cause I heard Radeon 9800 cards run at 60+ fps

 

[-ag-bometal]

Ordered a Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB card

Tired of the gfx bugs & not happy about nvidia's products

Time to change

Thx for the input tho

 

[Deadmanwalking]

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by Cyradix
The SI engine is not very happy with my GF FX 5900 Ultra.
The game runs at 40 fps max. My old card was a GF3 and it ran at 40 fps too.

Pc is a P4 2.8 GHz so processor is not the bottleneck.
All other games run at 100-200 fps at 1600x1200 with full details etc.

Maybe this has to do with the nvidia drivers cause I heard Radeon 9800 cards run at 60+ fps

Probably just cause the DAOC engine is buss lagged, youll still get the same problems regarless of video card I suspect. Slow memory, hard drive or FSB is your problem most likely.

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by -ag-bometal
Ordered a Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB card

Tired of the gfx bugs & not happy about nvidia's products

Time to change

Thx for the input tho

Pleasure, good luck with the Radeon.

 

[Cloak_]

TBH Boni,

Doesnt matter how good the drivers are if the Hardware is a pile of overheating noisy crap (IMO! !!!)

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

lets just hope is problems arent drivers eh