Purty colors

[Allnatural]

Looks like my GeForce 3 is finally giving up the ghost. This is the one that lost its cooling fan long ago. After some time, even just sitting on the desktop, there will be vertical lines, pink squares, and other assorted anomalies on my screen. Then everything locks up. I thought perhaps underclocking the card may help a bit, but that seems to make things worse. Does everyone agree with my diagnosis? I could use a new card anyway. What's the newest GF FX? The 5900? More importantly, what model is right below top of the line? Obviously I haven't paid much attention to video cards for some time.

 

[nullroute]

The FX 5900 and 5800 models have twice the processing pipelines and memory bandwidth as the 5600, but the 5600 is affordable. The drivers are still a little buggy (slow degradation or resource leak), but nv is working on that.

 

[Lex]

The 5900 Ultra is the fastest one.

 

[vampireuk]

A nice solid card to get is the 9600, the 9700 would be ideal but the prices havnt fallen significantly

 

[Allnatural]

A nice solid card to get is the 9600, the 9700 would be ideal but the prices havnt fallen significantly

Yeah, I've been thinking of going back to ATi (used to own the original Radeon). The experience wasn't entirely positive though. Numerous little glitches with games and so forth disappeared when I swapped it out for my GF3. Everyone claims that such issues are a thing of the past, but I dunno...

 

[dukenukem]

you may want to get a fx5600 or wait to save up and go all out for a geforcefx5900ultra with 256megs of ram.

 

[Allnatural]

you may want to get a fx5600 or wait to save up and go all out for a geforcefx5900ultra with 256megs of ram.

Actually, I'm leaning towards a plain 5900 (non-Ultra). Practically identical to the Ultra, just half the ram and about half the cost. Found one online for $240.

 

[Acorn]

Radeon issues arn't passed.. they are good for speed but if you hate little bugs.. well yer out of luck cause Nvidia has started screwing up and ATI never got past it. I don't like either of them at the moment really, but Geforce 5800 would be my choice if upgrading cards. Bad time for video card buying imho.

 

[dukenukem]

I found a regular fx 5900 for less than $200 online,if you want i'll try and find it again for you.

 

[Martin]

A friend of mine just bought the FX 5900 ultra and he's very pleased with it. You should be if you pay like $500 for just a graphics card. I would never pay that much for a card, so if I was to get one from the GeForce FX series it would be the FX 5600 Ultra, or possibly FX 5900 non-ultra. From the ATI series I would get an All-in-wonder 9700 PRO (which I have myself already so it doesn't count ), or a softmodded 9500 if I wanted to save some money and didn't need the video-in feature (which I need, or want at least).

 

[nullroute]

One interesting note about the fx5600 (And don't get me wrong... I bought one knowing this) : In terms of raw fill rate, the high end gf4's out perform the low end gfFX's. The trade-off is that the FX's deliver incredible image quality and a lot more shader-op thru-put then the gf4 could ever dream of.

 

[vampireuk]

I've had no problems with my 9700 pro, it plays every game I have perfectly with no bugs or any noticeable issues.

but Geforce 5800 would be my choice if upgrading cards

*rubs my eyes* did you actually say that? the 5800 is a failure, it is no longer been made and a 9700 will wipe the floor with it

 

[joel_029]

I agree with Vamp. The 9700 Pro kills the 5800 and it's only about the same price as the 5900 regular. There is also a 256 MB Version of the 9600 and is cheaper and better than the 256 MB 5600.

 

[vampireuk]

I wouldnt go with a 256mb card however, that's purely for bragging rights and gives no practical increase.

 

[pandamoan]

I wouldnt go with a 256mb card however, that's purely for bragging rights and gives no practical increase.

wow! my geforce 3 fan quit too! i had to switch it out for this geforce 2 mx

i'm also thinking of the 9600 when i have the cash.

screw nvidia anyway cheating on benchmarks... i'd much rather support the sneaky ati bastards who released doom 3 prematurely... >

jamie

 

[Allnatural]

The question is moot now, as I have a 5900 on the way. $255 shipped, which is far less than I paid for my GF3 two years ago.

Kind of sad though, the video corruption was starting to grow on me.

 

[Lex]

I wouldnt go with a 256mb card however, that's purely for bragging rights and gives no practical increase.

That's not true, a 256mb card has less drop in fps with a lot of FSAA and Anistrophic filtering so there is a big iincrease in performance if you are using a lot of FSAA en AA.

 

[GogoTheMimic]

Right now 256mb cards may be for bragging but when Doom III comes along, it won 't be.

 

[vampireuk]

That's not true, a 256mb card has less drop in fps with a lot of FSAA and Anistrophic filtering so there is a big iincrease in performance if you are using a lot of FSAA en AA.

Yes but the difference is hardly worth the extra cash at the moment.

 

[Tagrineth]

One interesting note about the fx5600 (And don't get me wrong... I bought one knowing this) : In terms of raw fill rate, the high end gf4's out perform the low end gfFX's. The trade-off is that the FX's deliver incredible image quality and a lot more shader-op thru-put then the gf4 could ever dream of.

BAHAHAHAHAA!!! Yeah, SURE. Um, no.

The only "advantages" to the FX line above GF4 are:

• "Performance" Aniso modes - that look like CRAP
• "Performance" Aniso modes - that don't even offer full Trilinear Filtering
• More, new AA modes - actually only one, really - 8x, and it's too slow to be useful. Previous AA modes are identical to GF4's.
• Pixel Shaders 1.4 (no difference over GF4's 1.3 in GFFX's case)
• Pixel Shaders 2.0 - WAY TOO SLOW to be even REMOTELY useful.

Apparently according to Anand, the Radeon 9600 NON-pro is faster than a GFFX 5900 Ultra 256MB in Half-Life 2.