What video card do you recommend?

[Unhappy customer 0]

I'm thinking about getting a new video card. My current card is a G-Force4 4X card. But my motherboard supports 8X. So I'm probably gonna get an 8X card here real soon. I have narrowed it down to either a G-Force FX5700 256DDR or a Radeon Sapphire 9600 256DDR. Which card is better in your opinion, and do either one have compatibility problems with Operation Flashpoint? I remember reading earlier that some people were having problems using the newer cards with OFP, but I haven't heard whether or not these issues have been addressed by the current OFP patches.

[Garritos 0]

I would skip the 256 cards and go with a 5700 ultra or the 9600xt. you will get much better performance with the faster GPU's in those models. I opted to spend about $50 more and get an ATI 9700 pro 128. with a few tweaks it runds at 9800 pro speeds. thats a $300 card for about $180. if you check the benchmarks you will see ultra cards are the way to go. you may also wanna wait for the new cards by ATI and nvidia they will be out next quarter.

[Mister Frag 0]

Forget the FX5700 or any of the DDR3 models. The price/performance champ is the 5900XT, but they will disappear fast, so if you want one, get it soon.

Oh, and the AGP rate will have much less of an impact than a higher GPU clock rate. If you get an AGP 8x card, benchmark it once at 8x and once at 4x, and you'll hardly notice the difference.

[bucket man 2]

I am a GeForce guy and currently have FX5700 Ultra. Ones gotta support his 3D card of choise so id say you should go with the GeForce.

[benu 1]

Afaik agp speed does next to nothing for graphic performance, it's only a marketing ploy. You better get a good chipset. I would go with 9000XT or 9800Pro from ATI or the 5900 series from nvidia, maybe the 5700ultra, but not the normal 5700 series...

[Badgerboy 0]

9800 Pro's are getting so cheap now you would be a fool not to get one!

For this generation of cards, Radeon came out on top easily, but no-ones sure what the next batch will be like.

Go for a Radeon, and try to pick up a 9800Pro. The GeForce cards simply haven't got the same raw peformance.

[Gadger 0]

If the 9800 pro is still out of your price range you can't go far wrong with the 9700 pro.

[benu 1]

Except those are hard to come buy in many places as the 9600/9800 were the successors of the 9500/9700 range...

[shinRaiden 0]

1) Anything higher than a 9600/5600 128mb, and you should seriously look at cards with an additional power connector on the back, ala GeForce 6800.

Reason)

Many boards (especially Nforce2 based) don't provide spec level power to the agp slot. Also, 256mb of ram, and your cpu sized gpu sucks tons of juice.

2) PCI-X will allegedly ship this christmas. If it does, there may be price drops on AGP boards by spring '05.

3) The ATI vs Nvidia wars is mainly marketing FUD, except at the Directx9 tests of course. I go with nVidia because it supports -twomon. Otherwise it really is a tossup. Bottom line is price, Tom's Hardware's VGA card lineup, and the bundle you get. My MSI GFX5600 VTD-256 is a good card, until you consider the no extra power connections.

4) Do you plan on hooking your machine up to the TV or TV projectors much? ATI's are said to be much better. That said, VIVO is rare from both lines.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Depending on how much money you want to spend:

I have a AOpen GeForce FX5900XT 128MB, it is a really fast card.

Some friends of mine bought Geforce FX5600/5700 and they are all going to get another card. They used GF 4 Ti4200 bevor and the 5600/5700 cards are not much faster.

The 5900XT is.

MfG Lee

[Mister Frag 0]

One other thing to keep in mind is that ATI and NVIDIA handle multiple monitors differently. It may not be an issue for you, but it is something you should be aware just in case.

With ATI's HydraVision architecture, you have two separate display devices with windows that can spill across them.

With NVIDIA's DualView/NVIEW 3.0, both physical monitors can appear as one large display device. This makes a huge difference in terms of compatibility.

Also, dual DVI connectors are common with NVIDIA cards, while there are just a few ATI cards with this feature.

[JAP 2]

I m not in on all this 3D hardware, but i m looking to buy a new 3D card too.

Currently i have the Ti4600 - 128 Mb and it just doesnt cut it anymore.

I have narrowed it down between 3 cards.

I ve always been an NVIDIA man but am looking seriously @ a radeon card now, but i keep getting mixed information about radeon and stability or patches needed for this and that to make it work. So i too need some advice.

Which one should i pick, and why !

NVIDIA :

FX 5950 Ultra - 256 Mb @ around 479,- €

Radeon :

Radeon 9600 XT - 256 Mb @ around 190,- €

Radeon 9800 XT - 256 Mb @ around 550,- € (but that s Creative, so i should find a cheaper one that does the same )

Mostly i play OFP, America's Army and simulators.

Help me plz

Cheers

[Placebo 29]

I find price comparison search engines indispensible these days for tracking down the best deal, there's a bunch of them around now, Kelkoo & Pricerunner are perhaps the best known, Kelkoo has a Belgian version

[JAP 2]

I find price comparison search engines indispensible these days for tracking down the best deal, there's a bunch of them around now, Kelkoo & Pricerunner are perhaps the best known, Kelkoo has a Belgian version

I can buy this stuff at wholesale prices, so put down the regular salesprice in Belgium.

The prices arent really the issue, it s more like the best performance i need out of those cards. And pros/cons.

Cheers

[LT.Schaffer 0]

Hi,

I Too Need Advice,I'm Building my own Gaming Rig,And here are my specs i wanna have:

Case:POWMAX Mid Tower ATX/W 450Watt PSP

CPU:P4 3.2EGhz 800MHz

1GB Of RAM

FSB,1MB L2 Cache,Hyper threading

Video Card:GIGABYTE Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB

But I Do Wanna Get A Geforce 6800 Ultra...

Soundcard:Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI Sound Card Model: "SB0350"

Motherboard:ASUS "P4C800-E DELUXE" I875P Chipset Motherboard For Intel Socket 478 CPU

Will That Be A Fast PC???

Any Other Parts I Should Change Or Get Extra?

[S_Z 0]

If you want to get away without spending too much money then I recommend getting a 9800P. It’s pretty cheap now and it's still a very good card. I would not recommend a nVidia card based on NV3x (5600 – 5950) unless you are using linux (ATIs linux drivers are not as good as nVidias). NV3x is (and will always be) a bad DX9 card and most new games take advantage of DX9 Shaders.

If you’re planing to spend more money and get a next generation card (6800/X800) then its much harder to pick a card. I have read alot about them but I’m still not sure which one I would choose. The X800XT is the fastest card at the moment (in the majority of DX games) but that might change with DX9c and games that support Shader Model 3.0. Many upcoming games that are part of nVidias "The way its meant to be played" will support SM3.0.

I would recommend waiting until DX9c is released and see how much performance the 6800 gains from SM3.0. Both the X800 and 6800 series are great cards though so you cant really go wrong with anyone of them.

[shinRaiden 0]

The initial problem with BOTH the Nvidia and ATI DX9 boards was that they jumped the gun on development and crapped up their driver support. Look at the the HL2 demos. Notice that they don't use AA/AS? Well that's because ATI was scared that the horsepower of the first 9800's wouldn't be enough, so they designed the chip around a beta DX9 spec. Well, microsoft fixed some more bugs, after ATI had started fab'ing chips. Nvidia got wind of what ATI was doing early on enough that they did the same thing. Supposedly things are straightened out now, but I'm holding off until next spring at the earliest.

[S_Z 0]

The initial problem with BOTH the Nvidia and ATI DX9 boards was that they jumped the gun on development and crapped up their driver support. Look at the the HL2 demos. Notice that they don't use AA/AS? Well that's because ATI was scared that the horsepower of the first 9800's wouldn't be enough, so they designed the chip around a beta DX9 spec. Well, microsoft fixed some more bugs, after ATI had started fab'ing chips. Nvidia got wind of what ATI was doing early on enough that they did the same thing. Supposedly things are straightened out now, but I'm holding off until next spring at the earliest.

I don’t really know what you talk about… First of all they don’t use AA in HL2 demos because the game like a few others does not work well with MSAA (Multisampling AA).

Secondly, R300 does follow the DX9.0 standard very well. ATI/nVidia work close with Microsoft so they know the DX spec long before it’s released to the public. Its not like they(ATI/nVidia) can wait until a DX version is released to the public to start working on a card that support that version.

I have no idea what issues you talk about that have been straightened out. Microsoft is constantly developing DX, the upcoming DX9c is alot more than some bug fixes. With DX9c we will have support for SM3.0 for example.

[4 IN 1 0]

well for beginner the choose is simple, if you are one of those "FPS need for speed" freaks and want more OpenGL support then nV card would be your choose, but if you want some eye's candys and better DX game preforment then ATI wont let you down

[drewb99 0]

ATI's generally been faster at Direct3D apps, while Nvidia's held onto OpenGL. The Radeon X800 series is slipping a bit though, it's only real advantage is that it's faster than the 6800 while using AA and it runs Farcry a little better (Nvidia's been talking to the devs about this, mostly about implementing PS 3.0).

[ozanzac 0]

I don't know which driver it was that NVidia released that screwed up the 'night graphics' of OFP to make the game 'dull and close to black and white', but for that reason alone, and until they release a driver that repairs what I see as a bug, and not a welcome one, I would steer clear of Nvidia stuff.

(That's for my el cheapo ge-force fx 5200 though)

[ale2999 0]

I don't know which driver it was that NVidia released that screwed up the 'night graphics' of OFP to make the game 'dull and close to black and white', but for that reason alone, and until they release a driver that repairs what I see as a bug, and not a welcome one, I would steer clear of Nvidia stuff.

(That's for my el cheapo ge-force fx 5200 though)

that is no bug..... it is realistic. ATI cards do it too methinks.

the game is made to simulate real life color perception. At night you dont see colour unless a light illuminates the surface you are looking at (you are using the cones and not rods of ur eyes). Anyways there is a detailed description somewhere, search in some OLD thread.

[benu 1]

I don't know which driver it was that NVidia released that screwed up the 'night graphics' of OFP to make the game 'dull and close to black and white', but for that reason alone, and until they release a driver that repairs what I see as a bug, and not a welcome one, I would steer clear of Nvidia stuff.

(That's for my el cheapo ge-force fx 5200 though)

Afaik thats a feature in ofp that only works with some "newer" (at the time of resistance) cards. Are you sure this was caused by a driver upgrade and not a hardware upgrade?

[ozanzac 0]

I don't know which driver it was that NVidia released that screwed up the 'night graphics' of OFP to make the game 'dull and close to black and white', but for that reason alone, and until they release a driver that repairs what I see as a bug, and not a welcome one, I would steer clear of Nvidia stuff.

(That's for my el cheapo ge-force fx 5200 though)

Afaik thats a feature in ofp that only works with some "newer" (at the time of resistance) cards. Are you sure this was caused by a driver upgrade and not a hardware upgrade?

Very Sure it's driver orientated. I read up on it when I noticed a 'dullness' effect during night missions during play after updating drivers whilist on my old Ge-Force 2 mx 400. .

Quote[/b] ]At night you dont see colour unless a light illuminates the surface you are looking at (you are using the cones and not rods of ur eyes

I don't like it not because it dulls, not darkens, and also dulls 'illuminated' textures. I don't get a 'dulled' vision effect whilist out and about at night. Sure things darken, but they don't 'dull', at least not for me. Then again, I have been told by my optometrist that I have 'perfect' vision, but still I can read smaller texts at greater distances than any of my freinds who have also been told that they have 'perfect vision'. So mabe it is just me.

After reverting back to a previous set of drivers, I even noticed that the green and red lights on choppers were dulled by the newer drivers so called effect. As soon as I trawl deep into my IE history files, I'll post a link of the effect (which should IIRC, contain a comparison shot, as well as driver reference numbers).

[ozanzac 0]

I couldn't find the page that I had originally seen, but this one is close enough.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1201081,00.asp

I know 40.72 detonators never produced the 'dullness effect' because those are the drivers I fell back too after I upgraded to the 'latest' drivers (whichever they were at the time) on my GF2mx400

If possible, I'll post comparison OFP screenshots between the 40.72's and the latest (that I know of 56.64) If I can't use the 'trusty' old 40.72's on the FX5200 (which I haven't tried since I got the FX5200), I'll re insert the old mx400, which I know will show the effect.

If I can't find webspace to host them at, I'll e-mail them to someone who does (or can) and if I can't do that, I'll have to e-mail them to you, or anyone who wants them personally.

Bear with me. It will take a while.