NEED ADVICE FOR PURCHASING GOOD GAMING VIDEO CARD

[FearoftheNight]

I just built my new comp w/ Sapphire Atlantis 9500 Pro.
It was 17x @ mwave.com OEM
Very oustanding card indeed.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: nick1985

Originally posted by: BoberFett
How does everybody recommend the GF4 4200 as the best bang for the the buck. It's slightly faster than the ATI 8500/9100, but also costs 50% more.

slighty?? it beats it pretty bad in most of the tests. and it is more stable and thats a fact

Wrong!!!!!!! You guys are reading too many reviews again and using that to base your opinion. This is a list of video cards I have in the house right now.

Radeon 8500 64MB
Radeon 8500 128MB
Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB
Geforce4 Ti4200 128MB
Radeon 9500 128MB
Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB
Radeon 9700 Pro

First of all the most "stable" cards in that bunch are the 8500's and GF4's, dead equal, they run everything perfectly, I mean everything. The 9500-9700 series are a little buggy, and on some motherboards will not tolerate a high fsb speed.

With the lower end cards I play all my games at 1600 x 1200 with no FSAA. The 128MB Radeon is easily the equal of the GF4's at these settings. While the GF4's show higher maximum framerates, the average is much closer to the Radeon and in UT practice maps with 16 bots raising havoc on "Godlike", the 8500 128MB is just as smooth in the most intense graphics scenes. This is testing on a 2100MHz Athlon with 350MHz DDR, so except for the 9700 Pro the cpu has plenty of power for the graphics cards. I would suggest the Radeon 8500 (or 9100 with decent clock speeds) 128MB versions for the most bang for the buck. I also noticed that the 8500 shows the biggest performance gain when going from 64MB to 128MB, the GF4's show a much smaller boost. After using the Radeon 9700 Pro (it is really fast) I came to the conclusion that using FSAA at 1600 x 1200 shows only a small improvement in image quality. Any of these other cards will easily run high framerates at 1600 x 1200 with no FSAA on a fast system. My 9700 Pro is sitting in a box now, waiting to be shipped because I sold it. Say I am crazy, but quite frankly 100-150 fps average at 1600 x 1200 is fast enough for me, I cannot see anything faster and as I said FSAA at this resolution is barely noticable. I paid $170 for it and sold it for $270. I am sure sometime in the future I will need the speed of the 9700 Pro, but by that time it will likely cost less than $100, why pay too much for what isn't needed right now? I only upgraded two of my systems to 2100MHz because the cpu's cost less than $60 shipped.

 

[kylebisme]

sweet rogue1979, i had acutaly assumed that was more the case. however i desided to stick to "facts" to back my arguments and wound up finding benchmarks pointing to the 4200, all of which were rather dated though. it is good to have some real world feedback.

 

[BoomAM]

rogue1979, dam you loaded.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
sweet rogue1979, i had acutaly assumed that was more the case. however i desided to stick to "facts" to back my arguments and wound up finding benchmarks pointing to the 4200, all of which were rather dated though. it is good to have some real world feedback.

The GF4 Ti4200 is one fine card, me likey alot.

 

[blindtothagame]

I HAVE A FEW CARDS MYSELF BUT I WOULD HAVE TO AGREE WITH ROGUE1979
MY RADEON 8500LE PERFORMS BETTER THAN MY 9700PRO
IF I WAS YOU I'LL PICK UP A OEM 8500LE 128MB NEWEGG HAS THEM FOR AROUND $88
I PAID $90 FOR MINES N IT'S KICKIN THE HELL OUT OF MY 9700PRO WHICH I PAID $300+
SAVE UR SELF SOME $$$$ GO WITH THE 8500LE WAIT UNTIL GEFORCE COMES OUT WITH NEW CARD ATI
PRICES WILL DROP THEN BUY...........
I PAID OVER $400 FOR MY GEFORCE2 64MB ULTRA A LIL OVER A YR AGO NOW I CANT EVEN GET $50 FOR IT
SAVE UR $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$..
DX 9 WHAT GAMES OR SOFTWARE USE IN RITE NOW NONE!!!!!!!!!!
BY THE TIME WE CAN USE IT THE CARDS WILL BE ALOT CHEAPER......................

 

[BoomAM]

Stuck caps lock?
Anyway, how the hell can a lowly 8500LE be better than a 9700PRO?
Unless you`ve got driver problems, or it isnt installed right, the 9700pro will kick the 8500le`s a$$ every time.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: nick1985
everybody will recommend the ati 8500...yadda yadda yadda. geforce 4 ti-4200 is the best bang for your buck and it is right in your price range. the card kicks ass, nobody i know regrets purchasing one

Yep. My Ti 4200 rocks, right now I can get about 80fps on 1200x1024 with max details. But some people with lightning fast CPUs can get 1600x1200 at 60fps. Its a solid card.

BTW, these are on Jedi Knight 2.

 

[KickItTwice]

niwi7 sounds a little new to all of this. I would reccomend the GeForce ti 4200 simply because he'll have a lot less hassle installing the newer drivers. Depending on the Detonators he's running now, he may not even have to install drivers if he's lucky. Foe someone currently using an nVidia product thats a little noobish to computer tech, I would reccomend staying with the current brand.

 

[kylebisme]

oh woes the add/remove programs menu, lol KickItTwice i have to argue on the importance of such a factor. sure i like my gefoce beter in that respect; but still, i might as well say the geforce isnt as cool because the pcb is just plain green.


-kyleb

 

[kuman]

hi.. its been awhile...

anyway..

Even a TBird @1333MHz runs modern games (just beat Unreal 2) just fine. With the 9700 Pro there is absolutely no performance hit when running games with aniso filtering and anti-aliasing wide open as opposed to otherwise.

looks like this is the place for me to ask this question based on the above arguement...

at first, i'm thinking of upgrading my geforce 2 GTS Pro to any RADEON card (8500 most probably) now after reading all the above posts... i think i'm gonna change to geforce 4 ti4200... now my question being....

1. Will my mobo be able to support geforce4 ti4200 (MSI Kt7 limited -> kt133a) 4x agp?
2. or do i need to upgrade the mobo, cpu in order to use the geforce4 ti4200 (currently Athlon 1.3Ghz Tbird)
3. Will my current mobo and cpu create a bottleneck for the geforce4 cards?

thanks..
kuman

EDIT:

my system rigs displayed below it obsolete,
just updated in the url for the latest one... thanks.

 

[blindtothagame]

BoomAm
i told yo its the card it a lite -pro 297mhz/263
i play games all day with the 9700 i cant play bf1942,rogue spears etc.
pass 2700mhz...
w/8500le im stable pass @2880...
checked drivers , installation etc..
no go.........

:|:Q

 

[rogue1979]

On some motherboards the 9500-9700 cards have stability problems at higher agp bus speeds.

 

[RobsTV]

Originally posted by: nick1985
everybody will recommend the ati 8500...yadda yadda yadda. geforce 4 ti-4200 is the best bang for your buck and it is right in your price range. the card kicks ass, nobody i know regrets purchasing one

Have had nVidia cards for ages, and finally had the chance to get an ATI 8500LE at next to nothing (traded GTS installed for the price of card).
The 8500LE is a nice card, but to compare it to the Ti4200 is absurd.
I do not have a Ti4200, but do have a Ti500, and the Ti500 slightly outperforms the 8500LE, at both stock speeds
and Max Overclocked speeds. Sure when both cards are overclocked they can run with a "Stock Clocked" Ti4200,
but even when overclocked the Ti500 outperforms the overclocked 8500LE. So if you get the 8500LE, expect a little
less than Ti500 performance.

Next issue is drivers. ATI has made huge improvements in drivers, and based on what I read, I thought all was fixed.
That was one reason I gave the ATI 8500LE a try, (+ price) because I thought drivers were no longer an issue. Wrong....
There still are issues. An example of issues are with AOE Age of Kings. Game is too dark, and the drivers gamma
settings do nothing for this game. Had to use Powerstrip to get decent brightness. Also in same game, after completing
a multi-player game, clicking on Timeline shows distorted text. While these may not seem like big deals to most, since
this is the only game tried so far, it doesn't look as good for the drivers as nVidia does. Of course all testing done on
fresh install, different settings and drivers tested. If the 8500 is the best ATI has for stability, then stick with nVidia.

 

[arnon99]

They say that the Radeon drivers are bad. sometimes its unstable, sometimes the image is corrupt....
is it true?
i had ti4600 and sold it when nvidia announced the FX. now, ATI looks apealing, but i'm scared of the driver quality.
can some1 shed some light?

 

[rogue1979]

I am running both Nvidia and ATI. The ATI DirectX8.1 drivers are every bit the equal of any Detonator. The DirectX9 drivers for ATI are very good, but not perfect yet. Anyone that tries ATI now and removes/installs their drivers properly will not be disappointed.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: arnon99
They say that the Radeon drivers are bad. sometimes its unstable, sometimes the image is corrupt....
is it true?
i had ti4600 and sold it when nvidia announced the FX. now, ATI looks apealing, but i'm scared of the driver quality.
can some1 shed some light?

The driver quality if fine, equal to nVidia IMO.
The drivers are stable, fast, and mostly bug free. I say mostly cos nothing is 100% bug free.

 

[EdipisReks]

radeon drivers are fine. if you can get away with it, ask for the Radeon 9500 Pro. however, instead of asking for a card, ask for the money. you can generally find OEM 9500 Pros for abour $175 online right now, and if you wait a week the online places will have them in stock again. if you can't just get the money and the 9500 Pro is too expensive in B&M stores, then ask for a ti4200.