Whats A Good Video Card?

[joel_029]

Neither is gonna be specific to AMD processors or Intel. But I would suggest just being smart. Use a page like www.pricewatch.com to search for the best prices.

And don't listen to the ATI or Nvidia fanboys, they're in a never ending battle. I prefer ATI because of their All-In-Wonder series, but I'm currently using a GeForce 4 Ti 4400. It's a great card, and I'm using it with an old P3 450. I get playable framerates in all the games that I want to play (Zelda, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, SSB, etc.) So just find a brand that you like in your price range, and look at a review site such as www.tomshardware.com, and see how good it compares to the competition in it's class.

I would also suggest going with a more total upgrade than just your v-card. If you can afford the update the mobo, memory, cpu, and v-card. Which with a $500 budget, you could do really well with a AMD setup, and still have enough for a great v-card. But don't blow it all on the card, as someone said, it will really bottleneck the performance of your system.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I think that GeForces are better for N64 emulation because it is what Jabo and Rice use, and they are the authors of the 2 best plugins.

It would be best to get a GeForce4 and above depending on exactly how much you want to spend. Make sure that your Processor is fast enough, Video is one thing, but you have to have a decent processor as well (1.3 Ghz should run almost all games).

My Radeon 9000 Pro works well with Jabo's GFX 1.5.

 

[Tagrineth]

And don't listen to the ATI or Nvidia fanboys, they're in a never ending battle. I prefer ATI because of their All-In-Wonder series, but I'm currently using a GeForce 4 Ti 4400. It's a great card, and I'm using it with an old P3 450. I get playable framerates in all the games that I want to play (Zelda, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, SSB, etc.) So just find a brand that you like in your price range, and look at a review site such as www.tomshardware.com, and see how good it compares to the competition in it's class.

Bull SHIT he should look at Tom's Hardware. That's one of THE most nVidia-biased sites out there.

If you want the most objective opinion available, check Beyond3D, simply by virtue of its being the "least biased" of any site out there (slight ATi bias but that's mainly because nVidia fucked up so horrifyingly much with the FX line).

nVidia's last truly great product is the Ti4200. Period. The higher Ti's aren't fast enough to justify the price difference (plus there's always overclocking), and the entire FX line is just utter crap considering that the entire Radeon line beats it in some way or another.

Oh, and RJARRRPCGP, the Radeon 9000 is different from the 9500 and up. It's the high-end Radeons that have the problems... with most plugins. Quite a shame really, good thing glN64 is being developed on a Radeon.

 

[nephalim]

With Radeons it's all about drivers. For sure, Radeons are superior hardware, generally speaking, to Geforces (especially the value cards.) You CAN find drivers that will make Jabo's 1.5 run without Radeon-Specific errors. NVidia does have far better drivers. I think, very generally, NVidia is better for the casual user and Radeon is better for the technophile.
No video card works better with a specific processor or vice versa AFAIK.

 

[Player 1]

is there a site where it tells you framerates for games for certain video cards?

 

[Clements]

Benchmarks here:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/index.html

Just don't read the opinions, make them yourself. For N64 emulation, I get massive framerates at good resolutions using PJ64, default plugins thanks solely to my processor speed. Graphics cards show themselves to be important at very high resolutions though.

For Tenebrae (Quake 1 mod that uses the latest graphical 'stuff') I get terrible framerates (10-20fps at reasonable res). So if I wanted better performance here, I'd need to upgrade my card to a GeForceTi/Radeon 9xxx (If only life was that simple).

Considering my bizarre fanaticism with N64 emulation, I made the right choice for me.

Conclusion: If you want good framerates in N64 emulation, all you need is a fairly decent card and a fast processor. If you want to run the latest PC games with good framerates, buy a high-end card and respectable processor.

 

[Hexidecimal]

Is there any card for under 200 bucks thats going to perform well for both N64 emulation AND the new PC games like DOOM 3 and Knights of the old Republic? I'm upgrading my video soon as well.

 

[Clements]

I'm planning to upgrade to the 256Meg GeForceFX 5600 (to get rid of the horrible bottleneck on my computer). I picked it because I'm used to using/handling GeForce cards, it supports loads of fancy features like Bump-mapping, DX9 etc. I am no graphics-whore, I mainly play ZSNES, I just need something faster to complement my processor.

It should work alright with Doom 3, and performs well in benchmarks for PC games. It will be better than what I have at the moment, so I will be happy no matter what. I comtemplated a Radeon 9600 Pro, but I wasn't satisfied with how it performed in benchmarks; lower than the GeForceFX 5600 in the games that mattered, and it is more expensive.

The GeForceFX 5600 will work well with all the plugins apart from Rice's Daedalus, which may need tweaking. That has to be the best thing about my current GeForce MX, its supports all the plugins well inc. Rice's. A high-end Radeon will have accuracy problems with many plugins which would bother me like crazy. Due to the massive 256MB of of V-RAM the GeForceFX 5600 has, I'll see a marked boost in PSX emulation as well with all the Super2XSAI Filtering which requires mucho V-RAM.

Tagrineth will always recommend a Radeon, but if the newer DX9 Radeons mess up the accuracy in N64 emulation, I ain't interested, I simply don't play enough games for PC to justify it. It depends on what sort of stuff you want to do.

Granted, you're not going to get the best framerates or even AA or AF, but for the price its a steal. The prices of the top 3 graphics cards (GeForceFX 5900 Ultra, Radeon 9800 Pro, Radeon 9700 Pro) I believe to be greatly inflated and are well out of my price range. If I was richer and actually had a job, I'd snap them up though.

This is just my plan. I jsut had to 'vent my opinion' as I've been reading the topic and I couldn't bottle it up much longer.

 

[joel_029]

If you do decide to go with a high-end Radeon though, I would suggest waiting a few more weeks. Last I heard, the 9900 was supposed to be shipping sometime in September, I may be wrong, but I heard that somewhere. So that would drop prices pretty well, and might make it just a little more worth it.

 

[Player 1]

someone explain to me....how do i upgrade my MHz to GHz? do i need a new processor to do that?

 

[dukenukem]

you need to upgrade your processor if you want it to be 1ghz and higher instead of mhz which would show some improvement depending on what you use your computer for.

 

[revl8er]

I don't see any problems with nvidia based cards. I have a fx5200 and it works fine. My computer I just ordered is going to have a fx5900 256meg. and a 3.2ghz athlonxp

 

[Tagrineth]

I don't see any problems with nvidia based cards. I have a fx5200 and it works fine. My computer I just ordered is going to have a fx5900 256meg. and a 3.2ghz athlonxp

The FX 5200's are embarrassingly slow, period, they're often even slower than the old GeForce4 MX line.

I still maintain that the best choice on the nVidia side is the Ti4200.

Oh, and Clements:

Make sure that's an FX5600 Ultra.

Oh, and which games are the "Games that Matter"? because last I checked, the FX 5600 Ultra is still slower than a Radeon 9600 Pro... except in UT 2003 (cheats massively) and 3DMark03.

And can we please ignore Tom Pabst? He's retarded, through and through. Even without reading his conclusions, his numbers tend to be a decent bit skewed.

 

[HigherHeat]

Blah Blah Blah!

If you are concerned about FPS, then upgrade your processor by 500 to 700 MHz. You will see a HUGE increase no matter what video card you have.

If you had a 2.5Ghz CPU and 8MB Ati Rage Pro, you'd be blaz'n. :w00t:

 

[Clements]

Oh, and Clements:

Make sure that's an FX5600 Ultra.

I know the 5600 Ultra FC is faster than 9500 PRO and 9600 in most benches... but I don't think they sell them here yet or something. The 5600 Non-ultra is better than a 9500 Non-Pro in all benches I've seen, still good, and rivals, and infact often beats both the Radeon 9600 PRO and 9500 PRO.

Oh, and which games are the "Games that Matter"? because last I checked, the FX 5600 Ultra is still slower than a Radeon 9600 Pro... except in UT 2003 (cheats massively) and 3DMark03.

Being resourceful, I researched beforehand, and the 9600 PRO beats the 5600 Non-Ultra in UT (1072X768X32 @60Hz, AMD 2700+) by a staggering 2.0 fps. The 5600 Ultra beats the 9600 PRO by 16.4 fps. With 4XAA, 8XAF (1072X768X32 @60Hz, AMD 2700+), the the 9600 PRO beats the 5600 Non-Ultra by 1.2 fps. The 5600 Ultra FC is below the 9700 PRO.

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-12.html

So, the 9600 PRO is a smidge faster than the 5600 Non-Ultra in UT. They are almost equal... but:

In Quake 3: Team Arena, the 5600 Non-Ultra is faster than the 9500 PRO and 9600 PRO consistantly in all resolutions. The 5600 Ultra FC even beats the Radeon 9800 PROs and the 9700, let alone 9600 PRO or 9500 PRO. With 4xFSAA & 8x Aniso, the 9600 PRO is marginally faster than the 5600 Non-Ultra and the 5600 Ultra FC is faster than 9500/9600 PRO.

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-14.html

Moving on to Gunmetal, 4xFSAA, the Radeon 9600/9500 perform lower than the 5600 Non-Ultra again. They infact run this really badly.

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-16.html

Judging from these bunchmarks, the 5600 Non Ultra is a good choice, performing better than the 9600/9500 PRO in Quake (mostly) and Gunmetal in all resolutions, but is slightly slower than those in UT2003 by a couple of unnoticable FPS. I believe I have made a good choice based on these results. Whether the results are skewed is pure speculation and is irrelevant to me. The 9600 PRO will also be a dog when emulating the N64 as well. That's why I'll take the 5600 Non-Ultra over the 9600 PRO. I've got my heart set on it now, and I'm not changing my mind!

 

[Tagrineth]

Clements, compare the numbers at the reviews at Beyond3D.

Tom Pabst has been nVidia biased since Riva 128, and that will never end. He knows how to skew benchmarks one way or the other, and he does so pretty consistently.

 

[Hyper19s]

all right all right already thats enough you. just test them using 3dmark 2003.Dont ever believe beyond3d there allways wrong

 

[ray16]

Get a Radeon 9500 Non-Pro and softmod it to a 9700. Thats what i did, just make sure you buy a NON PRO radeon 9500 with a Red PCB and a L-Shaped memory lay-out (two memory modules on top and two on the right). Not all of them will work with the softmod, but if it does you'll have a Radeon 9700 for less then $200 USD.

 

[Trotterwatch]

hypershadow1, could you get a clue before posting

Dont ever believe beyond3d there allways wrong

So says the person who suggests using 3D Mark 2003, lol

 

[CLSugarman]

i did the same thing ray16 did, it's completely worth it. i paid $135 for my card. it's running great, like 9700 w/ 9800 driver features, the only difference between my card and the 9800 and 9800Pro, is clock speed, but a cooler can make it run exactly the same. i just have too much junk in my case to overclock (3 HD's, 2 CD Drives, neon lights, blah blah) definitely get a Radeon 9500 non-pro 128mb, REALLY WORTH IT. best price/performance ratio ever!