Topic: Help me choose my graphics card!

[Lurker]

Yes, I'm going to buy one this weekend. No really. It's a lot of money so I would like your opinions.

At the moment I'm using a GF4 4200 Ti 128mg card which you might think was OK but really I've had it with this piece of $hit. I suspect the chipset was good but the company that put it together, (Inno 3D, I will never by another product from them), did a bad job and I've had to underclock it to stop my PC crashing during games. The memory is slower than the normal 64mg card, no heat sinks on memory chips, (probably overheating), and it is not AGP 8x. Yeah OK, AGP 8x isn't fully implemented yet but I want something future proof.

Anyway, I'm looking at 3 options:

1) Geforce FX5900 - £200 / $374
2) Geforce FX5900 Ultra - £260 / $486
3) Geforce FX5950 Ultra - £290 / $542

(The strength of the pound compared to the dollar may mean that the $ estimates I've given may not reflect the US prices for these cards).

So which one should I go for? The non-ultra is supposed to be a solid chipset but is it worth spending an extra £60 for the Ultra version? If I do, do I want to squeeze an extra £30 out of my wallet and go for the 5950 which is really just an overclocked 5900 Ultra?

I suspect a lot of you are going to scream "get an ATI you muppet!" Well I don't think I am brave enough to make the jump yet. OK the 9800 series is supposed to be faster than any Nvidia card and they're releasing drivers every month now but, heck, the difference between a top ATI and a top Nvidia isn't that great and Nvidia have got hundreds of drivers to choose from, (I should know, I've been through quite a few  ). Besides, I kind of crave stability right now.

Whatever I get it should go well with my 2800 XP barton AMD, A7N8X deluxe 2.0 mobo and the 2 sticks of Corsair 3200 RAM that I have on order. And if your thinking, "wow, what a rich bastard", no, it is called credit and I'm a very naughty boy.    

So...what do I go for??!! Quick, I don't think I can wait.    

[Sirgod]

Actually IF you've got the money, and Your sticking with Nvidia, then go with the Geforce FX 5950 Ultra there Uhm# 3.

I was looking at some benchmarks on It at Tomshardware and PC club, and that card Flys pretty well. + since your looking to the future, It's a good card to go with.

Now I heard you can go with the Other FX5900 series, and Do a Third Party Bios Flash, But I haven't seen anyone do It yet. just unconfermed rumers. besides, If It doesn't work you just wasted a card.

BTW, what are you doing with the TI card? Might want to auction It off here, as alot of people have been looking at cards for awhile. Or heck sell It for Charity or the like.

stephen

[Lurker]

Heh, I've heard of flashing cards but if I got a 5900 there's no way I'm going to risk that!  

My old card would more than likely go to my dad as he is currently stuck with a lowley GF 2 MX 32mg, (which was also my old card). Seriously, I think I would be ashamed to inflict this card on anyone here. It has a fan, (which ceased and I had to send it back to get it repaired), but also have a case fan sitting on top cooling the non stock fan side, (the memory chips go right the way through the board). I think it may have suffered some heat damage at some time, but browsing other forums I think this particular brand of 4200, (Inno 3D), has caused other people problems too. Not all cards are made equally.  

[Sirgod]

That could very well be the case with the heating. I know I looked at some VideoCard coolers in the past, But Have been afraid to try and Mount them , well not exactly that Remove the Heatsink that is pre-existing on the card to then Mount It.

all I know Is If I had the money, I'd go with that 5950 Ultra. and your estimates where pretty much right with the US cost's. The last time I priced one, It was around $500.00 US, Of course this was a few months ago.

stephen

[Lurker]

5950 Ultra, it's tempting isn't it  . Thanks Sirgod.

Anyone else?  

[TheBigCheese]

get an ATI you muppet!

   

seriously though you got the same mobo and CPU as me and my sapphire 9600XT 256MB works an absolute treat on it

and at £140 quid you cant complain.

A couple other guys here have bought that card on my recommendation and they luv it

BTW isnt the A7N8X Deluxe an absolute bobby dazzler of a Mobo
all the reviews were right  

[ActiveX]

ATI is less expensive...

[James_Smith]

Well, you could get an ATI card.

But I will never recommend them. I spent 2 and a half hours the other night trying to get the latest drivers to install on a 9600. Can't claim stray Nvidia drivers (the usual suspect) as it was a completely clean Windows install. Once I got the card installed, it was very slow in OpenGL. I'm pretty glad to see the back of that particular card.

My main rig (now 64 bit....guess where all my money is ) has a Creative FX5950 Ultra in it. Runs everything I throw at it, and I never have any driver trouble at all.

ATI make damn good cards. It's just some systems seem to hate them, including mine. Ran a 9700 Pro a while back, and had similar driver problems. Yet a mate of mine runs ATI cards without a single hitch.

[TheBigCheese]

thats an old story James...

the drivers now work since everyone complained to ATI

we have a driver a month now  

[James_Smith]

Uh, the Catalyst 4.2's I was trying to get working the other day were the lastest available. You using a Tardis to get some future ones?

Seriously, the cards are great. Its just a shame that every time I get my hands on one it drives me spare trying to get it working.

Oh, and one more reason for me not to use an ATI card right now - no 64bit drivers! I have a beta of XP 64 on my machine right now, and Nvidia released drivers for it. ATI won't until its out of beta. Right, so how the hell are people supposed to give ATI feedback?! I can almost forgive them this though, as there are few chipset drivers out there anyway that will let the vid card run in AGP mode anyway.

[hobbesmaster]

Quote:
Uh, the Catalyst 4.2's I was trying to get working the other day were the lastest available. You using a Tardis to get some future ones?

Seriously, the cards are great. Its just a shame that every time I get my hands on one it drives me spare trying to get it working.

Oh, and one more reason for me not to use an ATI card right now - no 64bit drivers! I have a beta of XP 64 on my machine right now, and Nvidia released drivers for it. ATI won't until its out of beta. Right, so how the hell are people supposed to give ATI feedback?! I can almost forgive them this though, as there are few chipset drivers out there anyway that will let the vid card run in AGP mode anyway.  

Dunno what config you're trying to run on, but my ath64 box with a r9800p has no trouble with drivers in win32 but very little is supported (SATA raid controller!) in win64 so its rather useless to run...  I did scored 5400 however in 3dmarks03 when I ran it in win64 without ATI drivers so native video drivers can't be too bad.  

[Lurker]

The A7N8X is a demon of a board but I think it can be a bit picky with what you plug into it. I bought generic memory with my system and to be frank I don't think the mobo appreciates it. Still I will be more than happy if it takes to these Corsair sticks I'm getting, (never bought quality RAM before), and the Asus mobo has plenty of overclocking potential.

I don't even use the PCI slots as the onboard audio and LAN connections do the job superbly. Yes, at long last, I hope to get a system going that will be stable and be virtually top notch, (I'll save 64bit for the future when they get it perfected). Maybe then I'll be ready for Half Life 2 and Doom 3, (I wonder if the hype will be justified). I've had my fair share of crap systems and I've kind of wonder whether I'm just unlucky or don't know what I'm doing   My previous board was an abit and I had a lot of crashes with that too.

Regarding the arguments about Nvidia vs ATI, I've seen a lot of benchmarks going on about ATI taking the lead but in my experience, (and I've plowed through many reviews of these things as I don't have money to burn), these reviews only tell you what it is like if things go right. They don't always. I think I would fell more confident with Nvidia if things don't go swimmingly. Maybe...

OK, i'll browse through Guru3D's forums and get a general concensus, (they have forums for Nvidia and ATI).  

[Towelie]

 Got a GeforceFX 5900 ultra and now run anything at full res (1600x1200) with everything turned on. I cannot slow it down I don't trust benchmarks as much as I used to, especially since that once incident where ATI wsa accused of working to fudge their benchmark numbers.

  I just like to stick to what has proven to be reliable. Costs extra, but I feel better. ATI needs to wait another year or two before I forgive them for the past! I owned 5 ATI cards over the years, maybe I will own one again when they have proven themselves worthy again!  

[E_Look]

Lurker, since I've got a (super, mind you) video card from  thAT canadIan card shop, I won't bother you about it, but in case you are still looking for these, I got the MSI K8T Neo FIS2R mobo and two sticks of regular Kingston 512's to go with my Athlon 64 3000+ and the system DOES fly.  I suspect pretty much that all the socket 754 mobos are pretty good, and I just wanted to say that so that you can go and pick and choose among them for your favorite features.  At the time, a $20 USD rebate helped the decision along...

[Toasty0]

 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1517595,00.asp

Ceck it out. It might help you get to your answer.

Best,
Jerry  

[Lurker]

Update:

Oh...my...God. I thought Nvidia was the way to go but trawling through all the reviews, (courtesy of Google), I'm really beginning to wonder whether the ATI Radeon 9800 XT is the way to go. Take a look at this review of the Leadtek GF 5950 ultra, (the one I was planning to get):

http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/2003/Leadtek5950/

The ATI Radeon 9800 XT pisses all over it! Were not talking about just benchmark programs but real gaming performance here. I'm going to have to start researching this card as I can't ignore this kind of performance...  

[EmeraldEdge]

Hmmm, that goes against a lot of the other 5950 reviews I've read.  Perhaps it's just the brand or something, afterall they are not all created equally, who knows.  You may want to keep searching to get to the bottom of it.  

[TheBigCheese]

I have never seen a bad review for the 9800XT  

[Lurker]

Well I got my new card. Kind of copped out and got the GF 5950 as the 9800 XT was about £50 more expensive than I thoguht. I was lucky it fit in my case because, had my case been less tall, it would have touched the hard drives on the other side leaving no room for their connectors. The board weighs almost a kilo and gets damn hot but it has its own temp diode and it's well eithin tolerable levels.

Had some trouble with Nvidias standard drivers (53.03) but managed to get hold of the 56.56 drivers that work really well. Now I just have to wait for my RAM and I'll be sweet, (could take a while to arrive though ). Thanks for your help guys!  

[JMM]

I agree Towelie, I'm an NVIDIA preference type myself. Not that I knew all the stuff that some people who have posted do, I just stick with a quality product. Is why I became a Toyota man years ago and my family is mainly Toyota.