Guide to Video Cards

[GopGuyCA]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
anymore content you all would like to see added or improved?

I no absolutely nothing about video cards, so much so I have to assume the highest priced one is the better. All I know is that there is ATI and Nvidia.

You're guide has alot of useful information. I had no clue what overclocking was about or how benchmarks worked until I found your guide.

I appreciate the time and effort you put into creating it. It's one of my bookmarks! =D

 

[stardust]

Glad this was stickied, props for helping the community!

 

[vshah]

nice work and props for having the motivation to start something and keep it going

-Vivan

 

[GreatBarracuda]

Do you get paid for this?

 

[g8wayrebel]

This one deserves a bump so all can see it.Lots of good reading.

 

[Farmer]

More features?

 

[g8wayrebel]

Fro,
This is more a personal request than a recomendation, but it would be extremely helpful to me and the noobs I help in the area if you were to make a list of your recomendations and URL's for free and or cheap apps you consider to be tops and necessary for your machine.(ie. antivir over avg...spybot,adaware,cw shredder,etc..) Just a suggestion albeit probably a selfish one. Perhaps a seperate thread for start up recommendations would be in order I guess, but by doing that there would be much more dispute over what's best and by the response I see to your post you seem to garner quite the respect.

 

[wdcoolwater]

very nice job...added to my favorites

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: g8wayrebel
Fro,
This is more a personal request than a recomendation, but it would be extremely helpful to me and the noobs I help in the area if you were to make a list of your recomendations and URL's for free and or cheap apps you consider to be tops and necessary for your machine.(ie. antivir over avg...spybot,adaware,cw shredder,etc..) Just a suggestion albeit probably a selfish one. Perhaps a seperate thread for start up recommendations would be in order I guess, but by doing that there would be much more dispute over what's best and by the response I see to your post you seem to garner quite the respect.

all the applications in the Spyware prevention and removal guides are freeware and the best in their area as far as i know.

 

[jamautosound]

Originally posted by: wdcoolwater
very nice job...added to my favorites

Agreed. Checking it out now.

One thing I noticed on the webpage side of things. Links outside of schadentech.com open in the same window. Just a pet peeve of mine.

 

[g8wayrebel]

Originally posted by: jamautosound

Originally posted by: wdcoolwater
very nice job...added to my favorites

Agreed. Checking it out now.

One thing I noticed on the webpage side of things. Links outside of schadentech.com open in the same window. Just a pet peeve of mine.

Use firefox and right click for open in new tab or window.

 

[shadow369]

Thanks for your time and effort. Very well documented.

Will be a great newb guide and will serve those interested in general info. However it may be somewhat misleading to newbs looking to build a new PC. They may get confused about wether they should go out and buy an AGP 4X motherboard and card or an AGP 8X motherboard and card or PCI-E 6800 Ultra system compared to a AGP 8X 6800 Ultra system. Since there is really no real world diference between any of them.

Don't know if there would be a need to go over the "Fast Write" or "SideBand Addressing capabilities" of an AGP card and to check and ensure these features are enabled on a capable card\system.

I hate Critiquing if I have nothing to offer myself. I have a huge data sheet on PCI\AGP video cards that I have compiled over the years. It lists Manufacture, model, chipset model\manufacturer, voltage, bus, features, memory size\speed etc.... . It contains info on probably every video card made in the last 6 or seven years up untill the last 6 months, Ive started PCI-E on seperate datasheet since then... It could be usefull for anybody needing this info on a card. I don't have a webpage to post it too but, I can E-Mail, if interested leave E-Mail at this POST. May make a good attachment to this guide.

Again, thanks for time and effort on preparing a well defined document.

-SHADOW

 

[mickyb]

I put this in the other thread...looks like it belongs here as well.

I really like the CPU charts like on AT and TomsHardware. It would be nice if it was a sidelink that was always there and not an article that was done every once in a while. When a new CPU comes out add it.

Same goes with Video cards. They are especially harder to keep track of. The video card vendors add new models with old chip features, etc. I would like to see a chart constantly kept up that has columns for:

Vendor
Model
Release Date
DX Max Support
Core Speed
Amount of Memory
Memory Speed (effective)
# Slots required
Max Wattage
Bus Type
SLI
DVI Out
VGA Out
Svideo Out
Svideo In

Review date
Driver version
3dmark @ 1280x1024 using max dx support
And maybe some other benchies.


If I had a table that was always available to me that I could sort by any column, I would not have to spend hours on the net trying to recap all the things they wanted.

My latest request was to have the best AGP Video Card that fits in a shuttle (no 2 slot) and could hook up to an HDTV that can run HL2 in 720p at 60 fps under $200. If it can record TIVO style that is a plus. If I had a chart, I wouldn't have to go looking at all the reviews again to verify what I remembered.

 

[RSanders]

I have an ATI Radeon 9800SE and I softmodded mine (I did this back in June) and didn't ever replace the heatsink/fan... I didn't notice any heating problems untill I actually started overclocking the thing.. haha.

Unfortunetly that computer has a bad powersupply right now, atleast that is what I have came down to because it just completely shuts down anytime I do anything that uses any strain.

BTW, How do you know if you need to replace the heatsink on the videocard? Right now, it has just regular catalyst drivers because I reinstalled windows.

 

[webekyle]

different brand graphics cards have different specs...or maybe i just didnt understand your post

 

[twodaend]

Very nice, I was just looking for a place that explained the different Ati cards in a serice? I was not sure what the Pro, XT and others ment. Now I do. Great job.

 

[dpid]

Hey,

I've been out of the new video card comparison, and this site primed me up pretty well. But would like to know your guys opinion for my case... my geforce2 ti200 crapped out (got no video signal at all) and need to replace it with an equivilant. When I bought mine, nvidia was much better than ATi (and ati sftwre was not too good). Has things changed, what do you think a good replacement would be in todays time?

Thanks!

 

[Baldeagle76]

I just want to say to Schadenfroh .... THANK YOU .... LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS ... REALLY MAN .. THANKS

I am competent when it comes to computers but recently I wanted to build a new system and didn't really know the latest and greatest stuff. My internet surfing brought me to this site. At first I was just reading reviews .. this vs that .. nvidia vs ati .. and it was starting to bug me that I knew how card stacked up head to head but I didn't know how cards stacked up overall. This guide was great. Alas I found it too late. I had already purchased a Xtsay 9600XT 256mb 128bit card. After seeing your guide and checking new egg prices I could have got a pny 5900xt/se 128mb 256bit card for around the same price. That really isn't important. What is important is your awesome guide and the help it brings everyone who finds this forum. Really awesome work on your half. If I was in charge of an IT shop I would defintely want to hire you.

One question though .. non chip specific. to me is seems more important to have a 256bit memory bus on a card allowing for more throughput. Whatever chipset you were talking about, if you have chipset X with 256mb 128bit and chipset X - 1 (the next lowest chipset) with 128mb but 256bit would it not be faster due to the higher memory bus ? is there any info on that ?

THANKS AGAIN FOR A GREAT GUIDE SCHADENFROH

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Dude at this rate you should just go out and make your own hardware website like Anand did when he was around your age. You've reached a level of knowledge that most people 10 years older than you do not possess.

In essence my response is to sticky the thread.

All I can say is ditto that. Oh, and I know it's apparently never going to happen but...

Schadenfroh for Elite for crying out loud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bigboxes]

Found this nifty link that you might want to add to your video card guide. It gives a nice comparison and recent history of various video card models from the major makers. It's interesting to see the data and bandwidth comparisons in this manner. Check it out for yourself.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: bigboxes
Found this nifty link that you might want to add to your video card guide. It gives a nice comparison and recent history of various video card models from the major makers. It's interesting to see the data and bandwidth comparisons in this manner. Check it out for yourself.

nice find, i really need to revamp it. but first i have to bring myself to reinstall front page.

 

[wilson326]

There's something not right about the AGP info.. It says agp 2.0 is 4x speed, but my agp bus' speed is only 2x even though it is version 2.0

 

[Helpme7177]

nice

 

[dklingen]

This is great general informaiton if you are interested!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/2004-27gpu2.html

 

[andy nowotny]

Good, thanks