Radeon 9000 vs TI 4200

[Rais]

Hello all,

I'm new to Anandtech and have been reading all the archived articles about video cards. Which one is recommended at around $125? The Radeon 9000 Pro 64meg versus GeForce4 TI 4200 64meg? I am not an intense gamer but I do want a video card that can play everything well. My system is a Athlon 900 MHz with 512 megs ram. I am replacing a LeadTek GeForce256 that recently became damaged (ie I'm seeing horizontal dark shadows across the screen).

Also, what is a good brand for the GeForce 4 TI4200, or does brand not matter that much?

-Rais

 

[Acme]

And while you smart people are answering Rais' question, can you also include an analysis of the 128mb versions of each of those chipsets? I came to this forum with the exact same question...

TIA,
Acme

 

[Woodchuck2000]

The ti4200 beats the R9000, pro or otherwise, in pretty much every discipline. Same with the 128Mb versions.
The R9500, pro or otherwise, is superior to the ti4200 in pretty much every discipline.

That considered, go with what you can afford...

 

[BFG10K]

The Ti4200 will kill the 9000 Pro unless you start to use anisotropic filtering, at which point 9000 will start to do the killing. However overall I think the Ti4200 is the better card.

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

Concerning the 64mbyte vs. 128mbyte question, here is the answer:

It depends if you are doing serious 3D gaming. Some existing 3D games (like Jedi Knight II) and future 3D games (like DoomIII) will use or are using more than 64mbytes of textures. If your videocard has only 64mbytes, it has to swap textures between the local videocard memory and your system's main memory. This means you are going through 2 bottlenecks: AGP4, which can only transport a theoretical 512mbytes/sec and your systems memory. Both are extremly slow compared to the videocard memory.

Bottom line is, that if you want to play any of these games, spend the additional 20 bucks to get the 128mbyte version. It will also sell for a better price in case you want to upgrade later.

Speedy