Tom's 46 Video Card Roundup

Hoagie writes "Tom's Hardware has posted (12/29) a huge 46 video card roundup. Included are a few generations of nVidia and ATI chipsets. Along with the newcomers/return of XTI, Parhelia, and S3."

Comments

So?

[rafael_es_son]

My GeForce2MX (64 MB) runs Max Payne 2 and Tron 2.0 reasonably well. Why should I upgrade?

Re:So?

[DZign]

good question - that's the problem I have with tests of video cards, usually they only test current models and not new models compared to old models.. at home I've got a P3-500 with some Diamond Viper card in it.. would like to know if it's really interesting for me to upgrade the videocard or not.. or just buy a new computer, but if I buy a new computer I won't be spending $500 on a videocard, so are the built-in graphic cards better then what I've got now ??

Re:So?

[rafael_es_son]

True, I agree. I can still play games reasonably well with the aforementioned video card on a 1GHz P3 w. 512MB RAM.

This essay pretty much sums-up what these round-ups amount to

Re:So?

[Trashman]

Simple answer: If your current hardware does what you want acceptably, then there's no need to upgrade.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Atari VCS runs asteroids and lunar lander reasonably well. Why should I upgrade?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

That essay is a fat load of shit.

Re:So?

[rafael_es_son]

You cave troll. I'll be nice and feed you some.

Re:So?

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Because they only run reasonably well

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the MX series is that it is a suped up GeForce 2 and does not support 1.x Pixel Shading. I ran into this issue when I wanted to play the new game Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. It states specifically on the box that it will not run with a GeForce MX.

Thus, all of us with MXs are in for an upgrade if we want to play the next generation of games utilizing DX9.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it's anywhere worth $500 to someone such as yourself (or even myself frankly) but I'm guessing you haven't seen Max Payne 2 on, say, a Radeon 9800 Pro with 16X anti-aliasing and the whole nine yards...

I'm upgrading soon and will probably get a 9600 Pro XT

Re:So?

[operagost]

Well, the guy who wrote that article would think that gaming itself was useless. I mean, he thinks that air bags, ABS, and power windows are excessive. I guess he has never driven or ridden in a car.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't.

Re:So?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

For HalfLife2, Doom3, and other new games. Also to make Max Payne2 look better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm using a GeForce2Mx400 64MB pci, but if I had the money I'd update. (Personally, its more for having a constant FPS in counterstrike, as I play matches where I need to be able to stand in 3+ smoke grenades and still be able to aim.)

Re:So?

[rafael_es_son]

I agree with h/er view on how the mayority of Noncanadiannorthamericanunitedstatians consume.

++Features = ++better.

Microsoft products are a prime example of this. Most of their product's features are plain useless, just pure marketing-induced-bloat.

I do not agree with h/er about ABS and air bags, but dual-speed power windows? I do not agree with your correlation between the author's views on purely useless technology and h/er interest in computer games.

Re:So?

[randyest]

Hmm, I read it too (can I have that time back please?) and I have to agree with the troll. It is a fat load of shit. With extra corn chunks. Anything that the author doesn't personally like (or understand the uses for) is assaulted as completely useless to everyone. This is an incredibly vain (and ignorant) viewpoint, IMHO.

Have you ever seen one of those robosweepers, which you link as "useless technology", work? I have, and it seemed to work rather well (somewhat to my surprise). How is it useless to have an autonomous device clean my floors? Am I wrong for wanting clean floors? I mean, they are my floors, but I don't particularly enjoy spending my (limited) time cleaning them. I might (but haven't) spend some of my (less limited) money to have a device that cleans them for me. Your author (and presumably you as well) somehow think that's a bad thing, and I don't understand why.

Moroever, one of the many forms of entertainment I enjoy is playing online video games. In particular, FPS games. My enjoyment of these games is increased by having a suitably powerful video card to more quickly and beautifully render the images in which I immerse myself for a bit while I have some fun. How, exactly, is this "useless technology"? I use it to have fun. Therefore it has a use.

And, BTW, WTF is "h/er"? Do you mean "his/her"? How bout "his/her/its", just to cover all the bases?

Re:So?

[Idarubicin]

If your current hardware does what you want acceptably, then there's no need to upgrade.

See, it's that kind of anti-capitalist suppression of consumption that tells me that the terrorists have already won.

Shame on you.

Oh, and happy new year!

Re:So?

[rafael_es_son]

"Have you ever seen one of those robosweepers, which you link as "useless technology", work? I have, and it seemed to work rather well (somewhat to my surprise). How is it useless to have an autonomous device clean my floors? Am I wrong for wanting clean floors? I mean, they are my floors, but I don't particularly enjoy spending my (limited) time cleaning them. I might (but haven't) spend some of my (less limited) money to have a device that cleans them for me. Your author (and presumably you as well) somehow think that's a bad thing, and I don't understand why."

If you are content with current, high-quality "robosweep" technology, be my guest. For the time being, and for hygiene's (and my also-limited time's) sake, I preffer to contract human cleaning services.

From my perspective, you have missed the whole fiddling with the parts, literally, while reading this essay. Honestly, do you need two-speed power windows on your car? I cannot find any refference to what you propose.

My point is that too many people consume products with features/performance they don't really need, won't use or simply won't make a difference proportional to the amount of capital invested. If you need get a new video card, don't let me stop you. Cheers mate!

Re:So?

[rifter]

From my perspective, you have missed the whole fiddling with the parts, literally, while reading this essay. Honestly, do you need two-speed power windows on your car? I cannot find any refference to what you propose.

Yes, actually. Yes, I do. Being able to choose between quickly bringing the window all the way down or gracefully lowering or raising it to an acceptable level has all kinds of benefits. Like you, I once poo pooed such features because I did not have them and think I needed them. But if you get the chance to use them, you will realize how useful they really are. Granted, you can use manual rollers if you wnat, but there are all kinds of situations where bringing the windows up or down quickly might even save your life (like disposing of something dangerous like a grenade or a wasp, or stopping a carjacker).

Likewise, I wish that my vehicle had power mirrors. Power mirrors aren't just something for lazy people. They make your car safer to drive. You can set the mirrors without assistance from someone else outside the vehicle, and set them from the spot from which you will be viewing them. That is a MAJOR improvement over the method I currently use, which is to reach over and fiddle with the passenger mirror, adjust the driver mirror, and eventually give up when I can basically see what is behind me. Then I have to do it again when my mirrors move (which they do even if people aren't brushing up against them in the parking lot). If you have power mirrors, you can trivially eliminate all blind spots so you always see vehicles which are behind you. This is a Good Thing.

Computer tech is the same way. I used to say "who cares about new kit. 640x460x256 shoudl be enough for anybody." Then I saw what you can do with a 21" monitor at high resolutions. You get more work done, is what. And using the computer is a vastly different experience in that environment. It is easier to Get Things Done. Same deal with broadband over dialup, or multiGhz CPU with MultiGB DDR RAM vs your old PII. These are not useless geegaws. They change the experience and therefore make the overall use of the technology better. That is why billions are invested in R&D to develop this stuff. It is not just to get consumers to waste money or for slashdotters to geek out.

Warcraft III @ 1024 x 768?!?!?

[actionvance]

Thats a complete YAWN. Any card worth a damn should be running that in 1152 x 864 mode!

kudos on fbucks.

0 FPS?

[ScribeOfTheNile]

I noticed there were about three cards that produced 0fps in a number of the games tested. Isn't that just a little bit low-quality?

Re:0 FPS?

[knightPhlight]

Obviously, you failed to read the story but posted as soon as you had the chance. Would you happen to be a Slashdot editor in training?

Re:0 FPS?

[xie]

Those cards are still early beta w/ very beta drivers ... not even sure why you would throw them into a benchmark roundup like this? Why not run it on the next beta mobo w/ beta cpu?

Re:0 FPS?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I noticed there were about three cards that produced 0fps in a number of the games tested. Isn't that just a little bit low-quality?

You can view gorgeous hi-res truecolor high-quality tiffs at 0 fps ...

Re:0 FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that'd be 1 frame per ever.

Re:0 FPS?

[digital bath]

Well, if you take the limit of 1/X as X approaches infinity, it does indeed reach zero (FPS).

Wow, 46 video cards at Tom's!

[sharkey]

At an estimated 7 pages per card, plus 4 pages of exposition on the front and 3 on the back, plus a big chart: a whopping 330 pages of ads estimated! Go Tom!

Re:Wow, 46 video cards at Tom's!

[Tran]

Last tiem this charge was made about Tom's several other boards where mentioned that where supposedly better, but i found that not to be the case. One that was praised even forces you to go page by page - exposing you to way more ad impression's than Tom's, where you still can jump to the page you might be interested in via the table of contents.

Re:Wow, 46 video cards at Tom's!

[jooniqzb1tch]

he could be serving plenty more ads if he was offering more services around these tests, such as let people run db queries on the results ..

I know I would have liked an easy way to compare two cards's performances without having to find the right columns in these big tables (should I buy this ? was my last upgrade woth it ? ..) or simply filter the results by price range, directx version, ..

that would make a shitload of ads-loaded pages served and take ~20 minutes to write in PHP :)

Prices

[Via_Patrino]

I think those benchmarks would have prices in, the boards would look much less atractive :)

When will VGA board makers will compete by price, like AMD started to do few years ago and not for hundreds of FPS that no one uses (because they're over humam eyes limits)?

Re:Prices

[Tim C]

It probably doesn't make a great deal of difference if a card can "only" run Q3 at 200fps rather 300.

The card that can run it at 300fps, though, stands a better chance of running a new game at an acceptable frame rate than the slower card does. That's the point, really - chances are if you're a gamer, the last card you bought was benchmarked against Q3, so when shopping for a new one, you can do some comparisons based on that. Of course, the system used now is completely different, so you can't really compare, but I digress...

The point is that a card that can run, say, UT2k3 at high settings at 50+fps is going to have no problems with Q3. One that only gets 50fps on Q3, though, is probably going to struggle on UT2k3 or similar. The problem is not so much the card manufacturers, as the tests used to benchmark the cards; Q3 really ought to have been retired long ago, imho.

Re:Prices

[Ba3r]

The really high fps might seem unreasonable, but as this is an average, and it gives a clue as to what your fps would be if all hell broke loose (i.e. shitloads of polys to be drawn). Although counterstrike(cs) is an old game, a good example is on dust with 32 players, when you pop out into the bombsite and there are close to twenty players running around, you do not want you framerate to drop below 50 fps, and you would prefer to see things at 1600x1200, not 800x600. My ol' gf3 can take this burden without flinching in counterstrike, but we will see how well it handles a similar situation in half-life2.. that is a good reason for me to upgrade!

Re:Prices

[Zathrus]

When will VGA board makers will compete by price

They already do. Both nVidia and ATI have high end and low end chipsets, and they're very price competitive. They also segment them for sub-$100, sub-$200, and high-end (for which the price limit keeps going up).

not for hundreds of FPS that no one uses (because they're over humam eyes limits)

I'm sorry you have such poor eyesight. Have you considered seeing a doctor about it? I doubt they can do anything though -- it's probably neurological. Did you stare into the sun as a child?

I wish people would quit spouting out the crap about "above human eye limits". There is no such thing. We don't know what the maximum frame rate that the eye can see is. Don't go talking about movies or TV -- they're not the same. All video capture methods (be it film or digital) capture motion blur, which our brains happily interpret when shown at a somewhat adequate frame rate. But that doesn't help a bit for somethings -- like fast pans (move the camera horizontally). Throw in some vertical definition (like, oh say, a white picket fence) and you'll wind up with a headache because what comes out on video does not look good. It's doubtful that it even looks like a white picket fence.

Games don't render motion blur (3Dfx was working on this when they went tits up, but nobody has revived the work -- it wasn't well received at the time either). They render individual frames with static content. You CAN tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. You can tell the difference between 60 fps and 120 fps too.

And, of course, this doesn't address the minor issue that what the card is rendering still isn't photorealistic. Or truely 3D. When we get to ~300 fps of photorealistic 3D holograms then we can start talking about where to go next.

Hey, go check out the benchmarks for the high end cards on HL2 or people's impressions of Doom3. IIRC, none of the cards were breaking 60 fps in HL2 at 1024x768. And those weren't even in intense firefights.

Re:Prices

[Transcendent]

When will VGA board makers will compete by price, like AMD started to do few years ago and not for hundreds of FPS that no one uses (because they're over humam eyes limits)?

The limit of the human eye does not limit the desire for more frame rates. Any hard gamer can tell you what an extra 30 fps (say... 30-60) can do for their game. Frankly, the higher the frame rate, the more continual the image looks (and hence, more like real life). I agree that after a certian point the mind does not notice anything, but for me, at least, that certian point is a good step above 60fps.

Also, they need to pump out all those frames per second in order to meet the demands of the latest video games. Just look at the Halo benchmarks and wait for DoomIII to come out... then you'll be hurtin for the extra power and you're running around trying to cap people off at 15fps.

The card need to beocome faster as well to compensate for gamers turning up AA and Antistropic Filtering (along with color depth, texture quality... not to mention little goodies each maker offers like TrueForm). Sure 150+fps in a game seems a little overboard, but just turn up the eye candy and you'll drop down to a more normal speed... and that eye candy is what the consumer is now demanding.

Re:Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would quit spouting out the crap about "above human eye limits". There is no such thing. We don't know what the maximum frame rate that the eye can see is. Don't go talking about movies or TV -- they're not the same. All video capture methods (be it film or digital) capture motion blur, which our brains happily interpret when shown at a somewhat adequate frame rate. But that doesn't help a bit for somethings -- like fast pans (move the camera horizontally). Throw in some vertical definition (like, oh say, a white picket fence) and you'll wind up with a headache because what comes out on video does not look good. It's doubtful that it even looks like a white picket fence.

Games don't render motion blur (3Dfx was working on this when they went tits up, but nobody has revived the work -- it wasn't well received at the time either). They render individual frames with static content. You CAN tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. You can tell the difference between 60 fps and 120 fps too.

Eyes are analog and not digital so you really cannot set a FPS rate on them however, eyesight really doesn't matter. When monitors typically refresh at around 75-85hz and LCDs are even slower those extra frames are wasted and not even sent to the frame buffer. I am very suspicious of people that claim to see differences in frame rate that go beyond the speed that the frame buffer is sending signal to the monitor.

Motion blur is supported by DirectX 9 and I believe it has been in DirectX a lot longer so games can use it if they wish to.

Re:Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

But does Ati/Nvidia support it in their hardware?

Re:Prices

[DeltaSigma]

Even if the BS about humans being capable of interpriting a mere 40 FPS, unless graphics card manufacturers discovered a way to sync the frames timing with your nervous system ( I don't think they've done this yet, actually I don't think they will... at all ), then you NEED additional frames. We see an approximate 40 FPS (according to some sources). Which makes that a bare MINIMUM for acceptable frame rates on displays.

Re:Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need any special video card effects to recreate motion blur, just get an old LCD with a 50 ms response time!

Re:Prices

[iantri]

You don't care to explain how one's graphics card can display more than 60 frames per second when the refresh rate is 60hz, do you?

Even if the refresh rate is 100hz (!!), you're going to top out at 100fps. If the display is updated 100 times per second, you simply can't display more than 100fps.

Re:Prices

[WoTG]

Some others have mentioned that Nvidia et al have lower end $100 cards. Don't expect those prices to get much lower. Do expect onboard video on motherboards to get better though. The market for "cheap" video belongs to the onboard chipsets - they don't necessarily have to be pathetically slow either. There are a few motherboards out with separate memory channels for the video, which brings overall performance reasonably close, all other things being equal. Once it's all added up, it's pretty tough for a "standalone" graphics card to compete at the low, low end.

Re:Prices

[ameoba]

It's called vertical sync / frame limiting. It can be enabled or disabled. When it's disabled, the card can start displaying a new frame at any point in the screen's refresh; when enabled, the card 'stalls' until the screen starts the next cycle.

Which is better comes down to personal preference.

Re:Prices

[Bitmanhome]

Monitors refresh as fast as the card tells them to. Many cards (and monitors) can go to 200 Hz, though the resolution may be limited.

Re:Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely dependent on the application. e.g. Halo on the Xbox runs @ 30 fps and it is still real-time because the pace of the game is slower. On the other hand if you ran Q3 @ 30 fps you'd definately notice because the game is so fast there can be a huge difference in a small amount of frames.

Games don't render motion blur (3Dfx was working on this when they went tits up, but nobody has revived the work -- it wasn't well received at the time either).

There are plenty of people doing work in motion blur, lots of primitive motion blur is done using render-to-texture (which is very hw dependent).

Re:Prices

[Idarubicin]

wish people would quit spouting out the crap about "above human eye limits". There is no such thing. We don't know what the maximum frame rate that the eye can see is.

Others have noted that the eye is an analog device, and so the notion of a 'frame rate' is absurd for that reason. Fair enough. Still, there's a limit to how fast the receptors in the human eye can 'refresh' themselves. Light shining on the eye triggers reversible chemical reactions; the rate at which the receptors can be restored to their unstimulated state after exposure to light arguably places an upper limit on the eye's 'frame rate'. In getting that signal to the brain, again a number of reversible reactions take place, all of which may impose an upper limit on your vision 'refresh rate'.

For those that are interested, there's not a bad description of the entire process in point form here, as well as a more detailed description of phototransduction (what happens when photons strike the retina) here. A diagram of the phototranduction cascade is here.

Re:Prices

[iantri]

Perhaps I should revise my statement. You can't cram more than 100 FULL frames in with a 100hz refresh rate.

Re:Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the monitor you are using set to a refresh rate higher than 120 Hz? If so, there is a very real limit to how many 100's of frames per second the human eye can see. The extra frames aren't being displayed. While I do agree with you about motion blur being important, and FSAA improving things, etc, we certainly have a long way to go; IF THE FUCKING IMAGE NEVER GETS DISPLAYED, IT DOESN'T MAKE THINGS ANY SMMOOTHER. Sorry, don't mean to be specifically rude with you, but I talk to lots of gamerz that don't seem to have any idea how the games work, don't care how they work, and are beligerently ignorant if you try and explain to them how things work.

Yes, I am an animator and OpenGL coder, so I'm reasonably qualified to comment.

:quote:

I wish people would quit spouting out the crap about "above human eye limits". There is no such thing. We don't know what the maximum frame rate that the eye can see is. Don't go talking about movies or TV -- they're not the same. All video capture methods (be it film or digital) capture motion blur, which our brains happily interpret when shown at a somewhat adequate frame rate. But that doesn't help a bit for somethings -- like fast pans (move the camera horizontally). Throw in some vertical definition (like, oh say, a white picket fence) and you'll wind up with a headache because what comes out on video does not look good. It's doubtful that it even looks like a white picket fence.

:endquote:

Re:Prices

[rifter]

Is the monitor you are using set to a refresh rate higher than 120 Hz? If so, there is a very real limit to how many 100's of frames per second the human eye can see. The extra frames aren't being displayed. While I do agree with you about motion blur being important, and FSAA improving things, etc, we certainly have a long way to go; IF THE FUCKING IMAGE NEVER GETS DISPLAYED, IT DOESN'T MAKE THINGS ANY SMMOOTHER. Sorry, don't mean to be specifically rude with you, but I talk to lots of gamerz that don't seem to have any idea how the games work, don't care how they work, and are beligerently ignorant if you try and explain to them how things work.

Yes, I am an animator and OpenGL coder, so I'm reasonably qualified to comment. :quote:

I wish people would quit spouting out the crap about "above human eye limits". There is no such thing. We don't know what the maximum frame rate that the eye can see is. Don't go talking about movies or TV -- they're not the same. All video capture methods (be it film or digital) capture motion blur, which our brains happily interpret when shown at a somewhat adequate frame rate. But that doesn't help a bit for somethings -- like fast pans (move the camera horizontally). Throw in some vertical definition (like, oh say, a white picket fence) and you'll wind up with a headache because what comes out on video does not look good. It's doubtful that it even looks like a white picket fence. :endquote:

Even so there is something you are all missing here. So what if the game displays 120FPS at optimum conditions! When you are actually playing the game you will quickly approach suboptimum conditions. The more crap starts appearing on the screen in conjunction with having to deal with the various issues of multiplayer the less FPS you are going to get. So fine if 60-85FPS is enough for you to see the image. That may mean you need a card that benchmarks at 240FPS. Which is the REAL reason to shell out kiznash for higher level cards.

Not only that, very often you get these bleeding high framerates at the cost of quality. Start turing on curves, lights, shading, and depth and the framerate drops like a rock. So again you wnat as high a framerate as possible on the benchmarjs because it means you might possibly be able to turn on the features you have paid for on your precious and expensive video card which are used by your precious and expensive video game and aqctually still play the game with said eyecandy turned on.

Everyone bitches about "Man! you can see movies at 15FPS and that should be enough for anybody!" without considering that if you are at 15FPS with 640x480x256 with no shading or anything, you are going to be unable to go to 1024x768 or even get any lighting or shading features in. Whereas you might get the monster 200+FPS card and by the time you actually use the real features of the card under real gaming conditions you might be lucky to see that 15FPS that you thought was good enough.

Fbucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That Fbucks chart at the end is fantastic, I hope they make extensive use of it in the future.

But be careful when you type Fbucks!

long in the tooth

[GerbilSocks]

6 years ago I could get excited about these roundups but lately, it's becoming a real yawn. Who cares anymore? Fine, give me a -100 flamebait, but I although I hardly play games now that I'm in my late teens, my old nVidia GEFORCE 2mx with 32MB RAM is more than enough for my daily computing. My enthusiam for video 3d accelerators died about the same time as 3dfx.

Re:long in the tooth

[airjrdn]

That's more than likely because of your age. In my late teens, I pulled away from gaming quite a bit too. However, now in my 30's (34 in Feb), Married, w/2 children, I play when I get the time. It's a nice way to relieve stress, and the lan parties are still fun. Almost all of us are between 27 and 35 that attend. I'm also at the point where I can afford the latest technology, so it's nice seeing the benchmarks. The FBucks are interesting, but won't sway my purchasing decision. I typically buy one step below the best, and upgrade when a new tech comes out (GF1 to GF3, etc.). FWIW, I'm currently running a 2.8Ghz Intel, 1G of Crucial XMS, a R9700 Pro, and an Audigy 2 ZS. Basically, about one step behind the leading edge.

Re:long in the tooth

[AKnightCowboy]

although I hardly play games now that I'm in my late teens, my old nVidia GEFORCE 2mx with 32MB RAM is more than enough for my daily computing.

You know, it's kind of funny. I used to have a GeForce 2 Pro with 32 megs of RAM and I was getting system lockups playing graphics intensive games like GTA3 and BF1942 so I went out and bought a $250 GeForce 5600FX card with 256 megs of DDR ram on it. The lockups are gone, but gameplay doesn't really seem to be much smoother than it was with the GeForce 2. I guess it's time to upgrade the tired old 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon under the hood... that's probably what's causing the slowness, not to mention the measely 4x AGP bus.

Re:long in the tooth

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Maybe we should give you a -100 flamebait, because it's obvious that a lot of us do care, or else we wouldn't be posting. Check the moderating guidelines: I haven't gained anything by reading your post, it's just you stating your apathy. The irony here is I doubt anybody gained anything reading my post

Re:long in the tooth

[mcpkaaos]

Not even 20 years old and bitter... You must be a blast at parties, bow tie and all.

Re:long in the tooth

[Anonymous Coward]

I did, you saved me the trouble of typing the response you gave to Mr. Apathy

Re:long in the tooth

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh! You're using a CPU that is not powerful enough to pump data to the video card at full speed AND run the game.

Re:long in the tooth

[Sylver Dragon]

You also sort of screwed the pooch on the card you picked. Take a read through the article, you'll notice that the higher end GF4 cards tend to beat the heck out of the FX5600 card. And the price difference is really minor. At home, I run a GForce4 Ti4600 at 4X AGP, and am very happy with it, granted my processor is a bit faster, but I think this has more to do with the video card.
Unfortunatly, I have watched more people fall into this trap than I care to count, they buy into the latest cards when, in fact, a slightly older card runs better. Yes, I can't run the spiffy DX9 features, but consider that:
1. There are no games out there that require them, or even make that big of difference with them.
2. By the time I have to upgrade (e.g. full DX9 support required) the FX5900 or Radeon9800 Pro should be reasonable in price (for me sub-$200).
But, as long as your new card plays the games you want to play, and does so well enough for you, then I guess that's what counts. But to everyone, I would recommend staying one step behind the technology curve, you save money and still get good performance, unless, of course, you have the money to blow on the latest video card, then, um, could you buy me one too? :-)

Re:long in the tooth

[crisco]

Yeah, according to their 'FBucks' (FPS per $) the 4200 - 4600 models stood out on top.

Considering I got my 4200 from my buddy for $50 when he 'upgraded' to a 5600, I'm sitting fat and happy counting my 'fbucks'.

Re:long in the tooth

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I got my 4600 (or is it 4400?) shortly after it came out, paid some $350 Canadian for it, and it still kicks ass. Don't need any more on my dual P3 1GHz rig either.

Why u/g the GX card, just

[Anonymous Coward]

go out and buy a Dell with an ATi 9800 Pro in it.

That's what I did. Buying a full machine from a supplier impacted on the price of the LCD screen and the GFX card enough to make it worthwhile. The reason it's a Dell is cos they seem to be the only mainstream supplier that gives you a decent choice over the matter. There's no way I'd ever buy a GFX card for 250 or an LCD for 500, but when I can get them inclusive in a PC for 1000, that's too much of a bargain to pass over.

Generally, I find I can get through a PC every 2-3 years. If I'm buying machines with cutting edge stuff in them, why should I ever need to buy a GFX card upgrade? I'll just wait that extra 6-12 months and upgrade the whole caboodle...

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[gspr]

We're not just talking about upgrades here. If you have the intelligence to open a door, you'll want to build your own (personal) computer yourself.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Anonymous Coward]

Building a machine yourself is all well and good, but after doing it for the last 10 years or so, I find that it just get's incredibly boring. Although in that time, I've seen the GFX card eat up a larger part of the budget as time has gone on, to the extent that the benefits you now get from upgrading the card do not give as much bang per buck as they did 5-6 years ago. Therefore, I'll find a cheaper way to get hold of what I need. Dell - for me - are a great source of bits.

In any case (no pun intended), why should I reduce myself to becoming a production line doing something that someone with the intelligence to open a door can do - assemble a computer?

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Joe U]

That way lies maddness... or at least crashes.

I rarely get a home-made system to work 'just right' there is always one (usually minor) problem somewhere that won't go away, or shows up every 10~15 reboots.

I gave up this year, bought my first (personal) desktop from Dell, after assembling my own since about 1986.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Brushfireb]

I have assembled at least 10 PCs for myself and close family members. I have never had the trouble that you are describing, save for some bad components along the road.

On the other hand, family with dell computers always end up getting shafted on support (guess what, they are in india!!) and the components are about as cheap as dell can get them.

Not to sound insulting, but perhaps it isnt the hardware, its the assembler in your case that is making things unstable. Regardless, if you are going to buy a big-name PC, for god's sake, make it anything BUT a dell.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[fyonn]

that's not a given you know.

I've built my fair share of PC's for bhoth windows, linux and freebsd and frankly I've got bored of the hassle. yes, you can save money doing so but I'm not a student anymore, I've got a decent job with a decent salary, I don't need to penny pinch anymore and I'm coming to the conclusing that my time is worth more to me than the money I might save by hand making it, esp considering all the hassle you can get.

yes, all the individual bits have their own warranties but that's little help when all you know is that the box is crashing. is it the mobo that's at fault? how about the ram? maybe the PSU isn't providing enough juice. maybe I just didn't plug a pci card in hard enough?

if you try and take the mobo back they'll ask if you tried it with different ram, well, of course you didn't, this machine takes shiny new ddr400 ram, you don't have any more of that. then they test it and it works and they charge you a tenner for wasting their time, you go home with the mobo, having wasted an hours worth of time and petrol driving and you've still got the same problem, it keeps crashing.

so you go on the beg, can you borrow some sticks of ddr400 from a friend, so now you're inconveniencing both yourself and a friend to fix this problem. and so the story goes.

and it's not just due to buying crap components either. my last handbuilt PC had an abit mobo with, it turns out, a propensity to run the CPU at high temps (60 degrees C). not a major problem, the machine ran without a glitch, but I couldn't cool it without making a racket etcetc.

I've built PC's ever since I finally put my amiga in the cupboard and it rarely goes all according to plan.

I'm now at the point where if I want a new PC. I want to get it out of a box, all built, put it on a desk and turn it on.

dave

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[RicoX9]

One thing that you should be aware of is that you are NOT (usually) getting the same 9800 Pro that you'd get from ATI.

Dell has the power to bulk order graphics cards to thier own specifications. They can say "leave off this IC" or "use this cheaper (ie slower) memory". It is standard practice to do this. They may actually just license the design and have them built by their own fabrication contractors using their modifications to cut costs.

Either way, it is RARELY the same card. You are frequently limited to using Dell drivers, not ATI drivers, as they've modified the firmware somehow.

I would be very wary of doing this as a method to acquire a cheaper card. I have found that the old adage "You get what you pay for" is almost always true in the computer world.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[aldoman]

Exactly. Remember that the mobo and PSU (and therefore usually the case) are all deal specific and therefore can't be changed without getting rid of the whole lot. A real pain if for example the PSU fails and its usually just worth salvaging some stuff from Dell machines and putting it in a new case.

Also, you are paying $80 or something for a Windows XP Home license... something that's not really needed if you aren't that moral ;).

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Sevn]

It depends on your level of dedication. For example, I know full well your issue with the high temps was because of a bad bios because I had the same problem. I'm up there in age but actually enjoy building my own systems in hand. I get a sick thrill out of doing research and finding deals and putting together exactly what I want. Recently that included:

Antec Sonata quiet case (incredible deal btw)
Extra 120mm case fan
wd 2000jb drive
black NEC 17 inch monitor
ti4600 (ebay, 60 bucks)
Optorite DVD -rw +rw -r +r etc
Lite-On DVD 16x
1 gig AData ram (absolute best ram made but good luck finding it)
P4 2.4C
MSI Neo2-LS
Thermalright SK-94 Heatsink
Vantec Stealth 92mm fan (for heatsink)
Cheap logitech z-340 speakers
Cheap 11 dollar logitech internet keyboard
mx500 mouse (with internal steel weight removed)
Rocketport 133sb card (for harddrive)
Sony 1.44 fd
Braided copper cables all around

EVERYTHING in black.

I snuck in at just over 1000 for the system.

I'm running Gentoo at 540 FSB with the memory in sync at 3-4-4-8 timings with the processor humming along at 3.24Ghz. The system is dead quiet. No problems with overheating. It passed 12 straight hours of memtest86 from the leka single linux distribution with no problems. I'm ready for the Linux version of Doom3. I ALMOST went with an FX5700 Ultra, but didn't see the point because no Linux games require DX9. The ti4600 should be just as fast under Linux. This entire system was the culmination of 5 months of careful research and reading. For slightly more than a grand (around 1100 with shipping factored in) I have a system that will destroy most systems costing double. It's a purpose built Linux system. If you go this route, make sure the first thing you do is flash the bios on the Neo2. I can't praise AData ram enough. Komusa has it, but calls it something else. Run every IDE device alone as master on it's own channel. Invest in high quality shielded drive cables.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[juhaz]

You may have a decent job with a decent salary, but some of us are still students.

I'd get distressed by a mere thought of spending thousands for new Dell if I can upgrade a few years old system for 400e or so to a relatively modern beast. That's helluva lot of beer and pizza.

And some people may actually like the very tinkering and tweaking you're so full of.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Anonymous Coward]

Home built PCs can be flaky as hell. I put together a system based on a spec listed on one of the popular sites. Pure crap. The motherboard couldn't handle AGP, I had to swap it out. The PSU burnt up (literally) after about 6 months. The system never could burn an error-free CD and corrupted my Win2k hive file several times a year, requiring a rebuild.

You can say it was my fault because I don't know how to plug an IDE cable in, but that is just bullshit.

This computer cost about 95% the cost of a dell after considering shipping costs. If you include even a $5/hour rate for all the troubleshooting, downloading drivers, searching for "tweaks" and packaging and returning pieces, the homebuilt cost me far more than a Dell.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Lord Ender]

Come now, you buy from Dell? A Slashdotter who does not build his own PC is like a Jedi who does not build his own lightsaber.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, you are paying $80 or something for a Windows XP Home license... something that's not really needed if you aren't that moral ;).</i>

I also had built my own PCs, but found that I could get a really good hardware/price deal with Dell (and they look good too :)

Problem was that I had a <b>legal</b> XP licence, but was forced to buy another... If Dell could supply a Linux based computer for consumers (like they do for corporations), this could be avoided.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[hetairoi]

Home built PCs can be flaky as hell.

so can the owners/builders

You can say it was my fault because I don't know how to plug an IDE cable in, but that is just bullshit.

There is a lot more to building a pc than plugging in an ide cable. If that's your understanding of it then it's no wonder your system was flaky.

I have bought many many Dell/HP/Gateway/IBM machines that worked just fine. But If I'm getting something for myself I'm going to put together exactly what I want, not what Dell or Gateway offers me. My current system was built for one purpose, to play Unreal Tournament 2k3 in my very hot upstairs room. Special case, special heat sink, special fans, etc. It is ROCK solid and plays most new games just fine even though it's almost a year and a half old. It was also ~$500 cheaper than anything Dell had that I would have accepted.

Sure, I spent many hours reading reviews, scouring forums and comparing bits and pieces, but that's part of what I do anyway. Putting everything together and getting the system up and running took about 2 hours. Again, that's what I do anyway, I'm not going to skimp on my own system.

If I'm buying 200 pc's that I will have to support then I'm going to buy Dell and make sure they are all exactly alike and are easy to take apart. If I'm buying a pc to make myself happy I'm going to invest some time and energy into it and make sure I get exactly what I want/need.

Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I can build a better system that Dell anyday.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Jett]

Same here, if you pick the right parts you won't have any problems. I have seen some systems built by people who don't realize that contemporary systems need solid PSU's. Back in the day you could throw in any old PSU and not have to worry, these days unless you get a solid one (e.g. an Antec TruePower) you are going to have a lot of problems.

I have always compared my own homebuilt machines to pre-built ones and have never saved less than $300 by building my own. I remember on one system I built back in the late '90's I saved a little more than $1000 for a nearly identical system (it was actually not as good, the case I got was a high-end full-tower vs. a cheap mid-tower case in the pre-made system).

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[fyonn]

oh, I'm not saying that it's not right for others, and when I was a student, I did my fair share of it. it's just that there have been lots of posts recently implying that anyone who is a geek and doesn't put together their own machine is stoopid. I'm just trying to say that there are very valid reasons for even a geek to buy a premade machine.

I used to like the tweaking, but frankly I've gone off it :)

dave

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Sylver Dragon]

That way lies maddness... or at least crashes.

I rarely get a home-made system to work 'just right' there is always one (usually minor) problem somewhere that won't go away, or shows up every 10~15 reboots

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that most people who build thier own machines tend to get junk parts. I have a friend who is forever trying to build and upgrade his machine with parts bought at Fry's. Now, not to knock Fry's, but if you walk in there, make sure you have a good clue about manufacturers and all the in's and out's of system building, 'cause while they have some low prices, its often on junk parts. This friend, unfortunatly, has really no clue about what parts are good and what parts are junk, nor does he take the time to research his purchases, so his computers are always running into trouble, and I am forever fielding questions from him. I, on the other hand, have built two computers for myself in the past several years, and both have run flawlessly (except for the one time the network driver blew out in WinXP, though that was a software issue, and right in the middle of a LAN party, too) (Oh, and that whole WinMe virus. I got a pre-release [legal] copy, installed it and now realize that it was basically a virus).
Ok, so to put a conclusion on this rambling post, if you're going to build your own computer, make sure you know what brands/parts to get, and research your choices. Yes, quality parts cost a bit more, but they tend to last longer and be more stable. And, for those that have bought Dell recently, Dell uses junk parts. At work I get the joy of pushing out several Dell machines a week, and its a damn good thing we have the Gold Service contract, or my job would be much harder.

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[fyonn]

that looks like a nice system you've set up there, very nice bu I'm afraid I took the easy (but more expensive) way out and bought an apple which so far I've been very happy with, but then I might add, I'm not a dedicated gamer. I used to pla a few games but the only game I've played with any regularity is angband :)

dave

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a Raedeon 9800 and a fast processor, on a computer with an LCD monitor is like having Porsche 911 with an opaque windshield. Even with top of the line LCD's are fuzzalicious; once the action starts, you cant tell whether or not you have antiailising turned on!

Re:Why u/g the GX card, just

[dsherer]

I rarely get a home-made system to work 'just right' there is always one (usually minor) problem somewhere that won't go away, or shows up every 10~15 reboots.

Hmm, let me think... I get about 200 days between reboots (on average for my home computers) so that's 2000~3000 days between "usually minor" problems? One video problem every 5 to 8 years?

I think I can live with that.

The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

is that normal ones, the cheapo ones witl 8M of ram and no 3D-XYZ and hyper-acme rendering, that work just dandy for word processing, spreadsheeting and other forms of work (oh the dirty word!), are disappearing.

Pricewise, that's not a problem in itself, I don't care if I have a super vidboard for dirt cheap and underuse it, but with all those bells and whistles that I won't use, manufacturers don't release their specs anymore, and so I have to install shitty binary drivers instead of using kernel-compiled ones.

In short, with my old Matrox Millenium, I could do 1600x1200x16 just like I do now, but I didn't have to fight with the nVidia drivers that belch on me each time I change something with libc, modutils or the kernel. And I suppose I could try out 2.6, while with the proprietary driver, I can't.

I reckon there should be a market for sub-$10 basic video cards with open specs, for those who care more about low-cost, driver support and not having headaches to do real work, than playing games.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[diablobynight]

Sir, no offense, but your first problem is that believing your 8M card is fine. Secondly, I have never had any problems with my Nvidia drivers, oh and Matrox Millenium was an expensive card when it came out seven years ago.

Get older, get wiser, upgrade

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[bzzzt]

Then just buy a Radeon 9200 (the fastest ATI which is supported by the open source drivers). Vote with your dollars...

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[proj_2501]

what happens is that the market for motherboards with built-in video increases.

eventually nearly all expansion cards will exist as outboard boxes or built-in motherboard components anyway

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you there. How much could a Rage 128 with 8MB ram on it be these days? It's 2D performance pretty much matches anything else out there now (yes, I'm ignoring 3D cos it's useless to most of us) and it's had time in the market to be well supported.

I'm sure you could be making them these days for sub $5, and selling even for $25 would be a massive profit.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

your first problem is that believing your 8M card is fine

It's fine for what I do, which is non-3D, non-video, non-graphic-intensive computer work. And I believe most secretaries, lawyers, small biz owners, marketting guy, salesmen ... don't need anymore than that. For some people, architects, graphic artists, ..., higher resolutions, good color definition and high-quality video signals may be needed, but hardly anything that requires the kind of calculating power todays video cards sport.

Would you tell me then what's wrong with my 8M card, apart the fact that it won't work in an AGP port?

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Tim C]

The problem is that with the low-end 3D cards so cheap, there really isn't a market for people like you. Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with what you say - there are plenty of machines, from desktops that are never used for 3D stuff to servers, that have no need of anything as remotely powerful as even the cheapest of currently-available cards.

But the thing is that those cards are so cheap already that the profit on them must be next to nothing. Making cheaper cards probably wouldn't be cost effective in the slightest. Even ignoring manufacturing costs, there's transportation, storage, etc - if you're only making a tiny profit on each card, you'd have to sell an awful lot more to cover your costs. I don't think that there's anything like enough people in the market for that sort of card to make it worthwhile.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[tmark]

I reckon there should be a market for sub-$10 basic video cards with open specs,

Considering that the company would not only have to make the video card, but also support the video card, market them, distribute them, etc., it's hard to imagine that any market could exist for a peripheral card under 10 bucks - people might only pay 10 bucks for them, but it would cost more than 10 bucks to get them into the hands of the consumer. Name me one other peripheral card which is marketed, new, under 10 dollars. You could make a similar argument that hard drive makers ought to sell say 5 GB drives under 10 bucks too, because there's people out there who would need them. But do you really think that makes sense for the company ?

Seems to me that the market you're describing is ALREADY satisfied. People who don't care about playing games are probably mostly buying motherboards with integrated video, either themselves or indirectly through a Dell or Gateway.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[nelsonal]

Can't you get new cheapo lan cards for about $10?

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[iainl]

"In short, with my old Matrox Millenium, I could do 1600x1200x16 just like I do now, but I didn't have to fight with the nVidia drivers that belch on me each time I change something with libc, modutils or the kernel. And I suppose I could try out 2.6, while with the proprietary driver, I can't."

If anything works fine for you there is no need to go spending extra for features you don't need. But to cover your problems with the nVidia kernel modules, I'm fairly sure you only need them to support the 3D hardware accelleration features of the board. 2D stuff in X runs just fine out of the box without any proprietary module nonsense on any nVidia card.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[fyonn]

Vote with your dollars...

there is a problem with this. they see you buying the 9200 but they don't know why. they probably think you're buying it because it's cheap and this gives them cause to bring out a cheaper version of the bigger cards, still with a proprietry driver. they don't know that the reason you're getting it is because it has OS drivers.

dave

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[orasio]

Architects and graphic artists need those things, and they need 3d. Better quality (good DAC , good connectors, shielding) is expensive to produce in a video card, and color definition and resolution are solved by dvi output and a good monitor, not just the video card. The thing is that you want a copy of your old, very expensive card, for 10 dollars, when it is on-board in most motherboards, anyway. I want a g-force 3ti for 10 dollars, too.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Sparr0]

10/100Mb NICs cost under $10 every day of the week, brand new, from a thousand different vendors and a hundred different manufacturers. We (my office) get ours for $3 each in bulk.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[juhaz]

I'm not sure where did you got the idea that nVidia cards need their binary drivers if you only do 2d - because they don't. Never (or at least for a loooong time) have.

And the same is probably true for ATI, even though I'm not quite as sure because lack of first hand experience.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia works for me... 2.6.0 on Fedora Core with NPTL and Nvidias binary drivers.... goes like mad! I see your point about getting stuff you won't use (or not getting excited about stuff you won't use).

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[FyRE666]

Well, judging by the current standard of onboard graphic chipsets, the graphic card makers needn't worry for a while yet. I just inherited a new P4 2.6ghz machine at work with an Intel 830 (I think) chipset, and it absolutely sucks for 3D (running Linux). It works, just, but try turning any options up in any of the GL screensavers and it really starts stuttering. I have an old Athlon 1.4 with a GF2MX that's used as a headless server that can easily double or tripple the fps that the Intel chipset can.

Then there's SiS. Possibly the most crap graphic chipsets on Earth. Absolute shite. In fact, SiS themselves are so ashamed of their products they refuse to release the specs so that anyone could attempt to use their 3D "features". Yes, Nvidia are guilty of this too, but at least they write drivers for Linux, and make damned good cards ;-)

No, the only time I buy a machine with onboard graphics is when it's going to spend its life running headless in some server room...

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[proj_2501]

Well, I meant more like 5-10 years in the future. This is what I'm thinking.

-Your case has a motherboard, which has a processor, RAM, FireWire 400 and 800, USB2, LAN (maybe), and video. Maybe a boot drive as well. The board costs about the same as a new video board does now, dependent on chipset quality.
-audio interfaces, hard disks, optical storage, and any other peripherals connect by FireWire or USB or some other yet-undeveloped bus
-all you external thingies are stackable

As long as you can boot off your external storage, you're all set.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Jett]

The nforce2 mobo chipset has a variant with built in video that is supposed to be pretty decent. I've never used it myself, but have seen it run deployed systems with no problems and the ability to play older games at solid framerates. It's basically a slighly slower version of the gf4 MX, which sucks in my opinion, but as an onboard solution for low-end users is fine.
Now the onboard sound that comes with the nforce2, that is very solid. I gave up my Soundblaster for it.
As long as there are gamers there will always be seperate video cards. Sound cards are much more likely to go away since they don't require the same kind of processing power 3d hardware acceleration does, and the kind of advances made are much slower and less important to as many people as is the case with video cards.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[the_mad_poster]

Except, downloads of the OS drivers will increase with the purchases if people are buying them solely for that reason.

Marketeers are good at that crap. If the "9200 series" sales increase and the "9200 series drivers" downloads increase in tandem and at a relatively similar rate, they'll put two and two toghether. Whether they'll care is a whole different story.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly sure you only need them to support the 3D hardware accelleration features of the board. 2D stuff in X runs just fine out of the box without any proprietary module nonsense on any nVidia card.

I'm no specialist, but X sure doesn't start if the nvidia module isn't loaded.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[randyest]

+5 FATALITY

Good one. I wonder if he will reply and eat his crow in public or not?

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[iainl]

"I'm no specialist, but X sure doesn't start if the nvidia module isn't loaded."

There is a different module, that comes in the X package, for basic 2D GeForce support. The nVidia 3D that you get from them does need the other stuff though; you're right.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[ameoba]

Well, you can find these cards for $20 or so. The question is, why bother buying a card like this in the first place? Just make sure to get a motherboard with onboard video, which will outperform the Rage anyways, make your 3D screensavers look nicer, and only adds like $10-15 to the price of a high-end motherboard.

If you don't even want that level of performance, there's plenty of $50 motherboards out there that have low-end video chips integrated and perform at a Rage128 level.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably because open-source drivers suck for video cards.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a motherboard with on-board video. The Intel ones are nice.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[mcbridematt]

AFAIK The open source nv driver didn't support the >= GeForce4 series, and I don't know if it does. If you want to ditch the binary there, you have to go vesa and 16-bit color, which is still resonable for word processing etc

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[bluGill]

My 8M Matrox Millenimun is more than just fine, it is GREAT. Even compared to todays most expensive cards, everything is sharper. Text is clearer. In all it is a much better card than the expensive ones you can buy today and well worth the price I paid for it years ago over a cheap card.

Sure, it doesn't do 3d at all. However I don't do 3d myself so that doesn't matter to me. I do spend my time looking at text, so sharp clear text matters. Once in a while I play a 2d games so clear pictures matter, and I get that from my current card.

It is all a matter of what you want. I knew when I built this system that I had no use for 3d, but I wanted good 2d, so I got the best 2d card money could buy. I know others who care about 3d games, so they spend money on those expensive cards, and upgrade often to get better. A matter of choice, I still haven't found a better upgrade for my needs.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Use the nv driver.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

The drivers you are speaking of are included in the kernel and xfree86.
Yes you could concivebly hammer dri.sourceforge.net cvs and see if ati marketing cares, I very much doubt it.
Not only development differs between proprietary and open source, but also distribution.
How many computers are running debian?

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[juhaz]

The older versions might not, but nv man page for XFree86 4.3.0 claims it supports GeForce 4 and FX as well as nForce integrated graphics chips.

http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/nv.4.html#sect3

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[diablobynight]

I know we like making wild, subjective arguments at this board but comparing an 8M matrox to even an GeForce4 MX the quality wouldn't be similar. I don't know if your smoking crack or what, but your wildly unfounded arguments that your text is clearer made me laugh so hard I fell off my chair. Also most text and 2d clarity has to do with your monitor more so than the graphics card, because of the simplicity behind rendering a 2D image.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[bluGill]

Do a side by side comparition then, with a GOOD monitor. Matrox cards look excellent. In theory a 3D card can look just as good, but in practice then tend to skimp on the final stages.

A bad monitor will not show these differences. I have no idea who digital interfaces (LCDs) compare. A high quality CRT will show a difference.

Re:The problem with this super-duper video boards

[Erich]

Sir, no offense, but your first problem is that believing your 8M card is fine.

I bet next you are going to tell me that my NeXTStation and VT125 terminal aren't fine, either!

I'd really like to have a dumb terminal that folded up like the palm keyboards. 80x25 character screen, with a serial port and embedded 9600 baud modem or so. With really great battery life. I don't want a SuperDuperNotebook, I just want something with enough characters to see what is going on and a low power connection. Running on AA batteries.

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like every other part of a computer it is inherantly obsolete the moment you buy it. If you have the money to throw away, get the latest and greatest each and every time they release a card. I personally don't care.

One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[Channard]

.. was that working with PCs every day, coupled with the hassle of upgrading my own PC to play the latest games got on my nerves. Currently, my PC does all I want it to do - can be used to go on the internet, play most older games, and so forth. I may upgrade at some point when I'm not dealing with PCs every day, but at the moment I prefer just being able to get a game, slap it in my console and know it'll run at a decent rate.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[rafael_es_son]

I agree. I haven't bought a console since N64 came out (I sold it a week later), what I would like to see is more depth in those console games. On the other hand... Final Fantasy X might be my ticket to getting myself a console.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[Anonymous Coward]

I may upgrade at some point when I'm not dealing with PCs every day, but at the moment I prefer just being able to get a game, slap it in my console and know it'll run at a decent rate.

You know, I thought I'd try to give consoles a chance, but both times I bought one (first a PS1 and then a PS2 last year) I went running back to my PC. The Playstations are just boring after awhile and the controllers are a major limiting factor in playability. I played on the PS1 for a few weeks until I noticed a game called Half-Life advertising the Team Fortress Classic mod on the cover of a box at Compusa (it was the Game of the Year edition) so I picked it up and got instantly hooked the same way I did when I first played TF on the Quake 1 engine. Then by chance I downloaded this interesting little beta project some guy was working on called Counter-Strike and the next 3 years were kind of a blur. I don't think I bought any other games in the 3 years since I started playing Counter-Strike.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I promised my wife I'd stop playing Counter-Strike if she'd buy me a PS2 for Christmas. I played on that (GTA Vice City) for about 2 weeks, got bored again, and it's been sitting on the shelf for the past year. I went back to playing Counter-Strike, discovered Battlefield 1942 and eventually Desert Combat and I've been hooked on PC games again ever since. The moral of the story? Don't ask your wife for an X-Box for Christmas after you've burned her twice in the past on the consoles even if they do have Counter-Strike for X-Box now. It's probably not as good anyway with a stupid X-Box controller. I need at least 34 key bindings.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[JackJudge]

Oh come on! You're locked into a hardware build that was "mature" when the X-Box first came out. Now all your titles are limited by the relatively workmanlike performance of the platform.
People complain console games have no depth. Well the two main limiting factors here are the crappy resolution on the TV screen and the controller.
I'm sure some folks have got marvelous key-bindings and will swear blind they could play an old Infocom text adventure on the X-box of they had to, but that kinda defeats the point don't you think ?
The USP for consoles is plug-and-play, whats the point in spending half an hour getting the controller setup ? You might as well go back to a PC and enjoy games with some depth and variety.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[pipingguy]

I prefer just being able to get a game, slap it in my console and know it'll run at a decent rate.

Let's hope that the increasing sophistication/availability/popularity of console games doesn't decrease what's available for the PC. I don't use my machine for gaming very often, but when I do, it's fun to install, run and modify some of the mods that are out there (TA, C&C, for example). With console gaming, that wouldn't be possible anymore.
==
PS: Know of any good sites for newbies to Slashcode?

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[monkeyfinger]

I was talking to a gamer friend who only uses consoles. I asked him why he didn't play games on pcs and he told me that he didn't want to buy buggy games that need patching and he didn't want to be constantly upgrading his computer to play the latest games.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk of wanting more "depth", but then go on to say you've got a hard-on for FFX?

I don't think you understand the term.

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[rafael_es_son]

Depth and complexity of story, that is. Any Noncanadiannorthamericanunitedstatian title pales in comparison. What's your point John?

Re:One of the reasons I got an X-Box...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if your friend realized the differences between developers of games for consoles and developers of games for pc's then he'd be more informed. First group try to develop games that run as well on the console as possible since thats all the hardware they have to deal with. They know it won't be any faster and that you only have that many buttons on the controller, so they have to leave some features out that you could normally put in the release for the pc title of the game. The second group however can go for the highest end gamer video card with advanced graphics and such. In other words, develop for the latest hardware. Now for the gamer differences betweenn the 2. The first group on the console has to put up with hardware they can never change and if they want it to be faster, then they have buy a whole new console. Now the second group can simply go out and buy new hardware to upgrade their pc bit by bit. They can modify their games to run mods and tweak it so that it runs reasonbly well on their hardware and if not satisfied, they can upgrade their hardware to run the game better. As well, games on pc's don't use the crappy resolution offered by tv's and are 3 times more clearer then the console version usually. Over all, a better experience is had.

Is it me or...

[JFMulder]

... has video card technology have become pretty much uninterresting in the last 1 or 2 years. I mean, I can remember being in awe when the first GeForce came out, reading everything about what made it great and how it worked. It introduced us to a whole new world of possibilities. Then came the GF2, boring. GF3 raised my interest for a while with it's vertex and fragment shaders, but it dissipated pretty quick. Then GF4 and GF5 FX. I don't even look at card comparisons anymore. It's been a while since I've been anticipating new video card technology. Am I the only one?

Re:Is it me or...

[JFMulder]

Come to think of it, the same thing is valid for CPUs also. I should be exited at the different AMD 64-bit offerings, but since it mostly involves more memory and bigger data type, I fail to be excited when I read about them. Itanium was very interresting to read about, but sadly it failed to deliver.

I'll patiently wait until quantum computing comes out I guess.

Re:Is it me or...

[cozziewozzie]

Let's see...

AMD vs Intel: check
Who needs 64bits?: check
Knock on Itanium: check
Quantum computing: check
Computers not as exciting as they used to be: check

Dude, that's like the archetypical Slashdot post, all in three lines. Respect!

Re:Is it me or...

[karnal]

In addition, I'm noticing a "slowdown" trend within CPU and Video cards. They seem to remain "higher priced" for longer, it seems.

I've got a spare mobo and would like to get some pieces and parts to complete another machine. Of course, this means mildly upgrading my current machine, and then throwing most of the parts I'm currently using (amd2100+xp, GF4ti4200, memory) to the currently unused mobo.

My problem is that I could buy the same parts I bought when I first built my primary machine, and only pay about 50-100$ less than what I did 1 year ago. I'd really like to have the secondary machine up and running, but I look at the numbers and it's just not worth it to me.

Maybe I'm just getting older, too. Seeing the value in keeping a computer around for 3-4 years instead of looking once a year at upgrades or revamping.....

Re:Is it me or...

[sklib]

You are the only one.

Recent advances in video card technology may not be blatantly obvious from the gaming side, although certainly the difference between half-life 2 and half-life will make all of that clear.

The real changes are from the programming side. Pixel and vertex shaders allow a programmer to use the hardware in un-foreseen ways, unlike the fixed-pipeline cards of the past. A lot of graphics programming on the fixed pipeline (GF1) came down to playing with parameters that OpenGL or Direct3D would expose to you -- as in how to look up textures, how to transform your geometry, etc. You say the GF2 came out, and it was "boring". In fact, it's the first generation of slightly programmable video hardware, because it supported hardware bump mapping -- a huge feature used by every modern game, although at the time it was still playing with pre-existing settings.

Nowadays (since the geforce3), a programmer can invent his own parameters to tweak -- a huge step. You say things "dissipated" after that -- completely untrue! With every new generation of video card, the vertex and fragment programs can be longer and more complicated. The next-generation games (hl2, doom3) already use all of this technology, and next-generation consoles (xb2, gc2, ps3) will undoubtedly integrate all of it.

Re:Is it me or...

[JFMulder]

Nah, I wouldn't put it that way. I'm not saying new cards and CPUs are useless, of course not, I'm just saying their not exciting as they used to be. They just faster than before, not revolutionary.

Re:Is it me or...

[cozziewozzie]

Yeah, these new times are not as exciting as before... Why, I remember when I first got my 386, that was a revolution, 32 bits.........;-)

As for me, I'm very excited about x86-64. Actually, with these new Athlon64 3000+ babies, I will probably buy one.

Re:Is it me or...

[JFMulder]

Software developped for these cards is really cool, of course, I never meant to say otherwise. What I meant is that hardware wise, since GF3, it seems the only thing nVidia and ATI have been doing to the rendering pipeline is making it faster and allowing bigger shader programs. So basically they've upped the clockrate and bolted more memory for the shaders.

That's why I said I wasn't really interrested in hardware advances anymore. It ceased to be revolutionary to a certain extent, just faster.

Re:Is it me or...

[Pulzar]

Software developped for these cards is really cool, of course, I never meant to say otherwise.

His post was talking about pixel and vertex shaders, which are enabled thanks to the huge advances in the hardware of the video cards. The old cards simply ran through 3d calculations and texture mapping, the new cards are completely programmable, with instructions, registers, etc. -- you run actual programs on them that are used to produce the amazing new effects you see in DX9 games.

If you read up on it a bit, I'm sure you'll quickly change your mind about the lack of revolutionary progress.

Re:Is it me or...

[aldoman]

Personally I think the Radeon 9200 is an excellent card. It's a directx 8 card so it can play all but the newest DX9 games. It's also got great OpenGL performance and the best thing is that it is fanless!

Re:Is it me or...

[operagost]

I got excited about 64-bit CPUs when the Alpha EV4 came out in 1992.

Re:Is it me or...

[cozziewozzie]

Bet you couldn't buy one for 200 EUR, though.

Re:Is it me or...

[sklib]

So basically they've upped the clockrate and bolted more memory for the shaders.

And added a lot of new instructions (like conditional statements and looping) and data types that didn't used to be there (like half, single, full, and maybe double-precision floats). There's also some support for 10 or more bits per color channel nowadays.

Re:Is it me or...

[Anonymous Coward]

again, for you it's not interesting, but I don't think you understand the significance of programmable hardware. It's like the difference between running a game in soft3D and hw-accelerated 3D applications.

Re:Is it me or...

[JFMulder]

People don't seem to get my point. What I said was that the current advances in hardware were boring, from the hardware point of view. What you can do in software with it via vertex/fragment shaders, like bump-mapping, refraction, collision detection, depth of field, vertex skinning, etc is awesome. But look how it's done. I'm not saying it could have been done better, not at all, but what they did basically is take the existing transformation and rasterization stages of the pipeline, replace it with some highly speciallized vector-processing unit, gave it a lot of registers and memory so the shaders can be very long (9012 instructions IIRC for the GF5FX), and that's about it. We're far from the wonders of a radically new architecture like the VLIW (even though Intel's implementation seems flawed). That's what I meant by boring. The results are impressive, but the means to it are not.

Re:Is it me or...

[karnal]

That's actually a bitch of mine lately.

Everything I've had a fan on eventually gives me problems. Video card? yup. Motherboard? Yup.

I bought a kt400 board from Giga-byte a year ago, and found it had a fan on the chipset. Grrr. Was having stability issues, so I went with an Asus N78x board... no fan... schweet!

I also have a kt133-raid board (abit) which, aside from the fact that it was a very hyped board (and turns out it's actually got a fair share of bugs...) the fan has died on it 3 times!!! If someone out there in slashdot knows where I can find 40mm fans on the "less expensive" side (ball bearing, and not having to buy a "vga cooler kit" just for the friggin' fan) I'd owe ya a beer.

Laptop Video Cards

[AssClown2520]

It would be nice to see a review of this extent at least mention a few laptop video cards. Laptops video cards have really progressed, but how do they compare to their desktop counterparts?

Obviously, the desktop cards are always going to be ahead of the curve considerably, but does the 4200GO perform similar to the 4200 cards? For everything I do, this seems to be a pretty solid card, but I always wonder what kind of power I am giving up by going to a laptop only setup.

Re:Laptop Video Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

you give up the power of easy upgrading. have fun in dx8 land. ;)

Re:Laptop Video Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptops video cards have really progressed, but how do they compare to their desktop counterparts?

I can answer that for you without even bothering to check.

They don't.

Are high end cards worth the money?

[heffel]

I recently bought an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 for about $50 after rebates, to replace my aging ATI Rage Fury Pro.

This card I bought is as low end as they get, however I can play Enemy Territory under Linux just fine with it, at a resolution of 800x600. The graphics look fine at that resolution, and I don't experience any slowdowns.

Is it really worth it to spend $400+ on a video card? I don't think I've ever seen a game being played using one of the high end video cards, therefore I might be blissfully ignorant, but I believe a low end card is enough for a satisfying gaming experience.

Re:Are high end cards worth the money?

[BlueTrin]

It's all about what do you need ... Some people want to enjoy the best experience when they play. For myself, I will never downgrade the speakers or the sound card to get the latest graphic card, because most of the time when I am stuck at home I don't play but listen to music or watch DVDs

Re:Are high end cards worth the money?

[Dagowolf]

While I see the validity of your arguement, and agree with you in principle, there is at least one case that comes to mind where a $400 video card makes sense. Video editing.

Granted the number of people using these expensive and powerful cards for this purpose is small, it still represents a powerful buying force and a big reason for cards like the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeons still occupy shelf space at computer parts stores.

Re:Are high end cards worth the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a Radeon 9500, with the 9700 version PCB so I can do the softmod up to a 9700, for about $120 a while back. While I don't have the softmod in Linux, it doesn't really matter; in Linux and Windows I play Enemy Territory at high detail and 32 bit color, at 1600x1200. That's right; for about twice the price of your card, I see at least four times the information in a given screen than you do. If you use 16 bit color, it's even more. Don't say 800x600 is fine; 1600x1200 is a hell of an advantage in seeing the head and rifle barrel of that sniper across the map, behind a tree.

The 9500/9700 consistently ranks not horribly behind some of the latest and greatest cards, too. With the softmod in Windows I'm only about 25% slower than the cutting edge, and still as fast as my monitor refresh rate.

Re:Are high end cards worth the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really worth it to spend $400+ on a video card? I don't think I've ever seen a game being played using one of the high end video cards, therefore I might be blissfully ignorant, but I believe a low end card is enough for a satisfying gaming experience.

Well, what this article is pointing out is that you have a huge choice, and trust me, there are some gems in the middle between the $50 and $400 cards. A new R 9600 XT lists for $200, and playing some new games, like starwars galaxies, it makes a huge difference between that and a cheapie $50 card.

It's all about what you want to do with it. If you're just running word processors and spreadsheets, then stick with the lower end stuff, by all means. If you're playing a new game where the graphics make up a big part of the experience, then you're going to want a better card. After all, why do people get 46" HDTVs? Simply because it looks better!

Don't waste your money

[MicroBerto]

The biggest mistake I ever made when building a new computer was buying a $300 graphics card. Unless you game 24 hours a day, don't waste your money.

Instead, money is best sunk in a good set of speakers and monitor -- these things depreciate way less. Along with that $300 graphics card, I also bought a 19" Sony monitor and Klipsch Promedia v400 speakers with my athlon 550 back in dec 99 (yep, still using it!). While that graphics card has long been in the graveyard, the speakers and monitor are still rockin along.

My graphics card, however, was a 2nd rate GeForce2 for about 60 dollars that performs excellently for what I do.

My opinion? Look for a good price gap on graphics cards and processors, and go with something a bit older than the newest. But splurge on the stuff that won't depreciate as quickly.... unless you game 24 hours a day.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Jorrit]

Or unless you make 3D engines :-)

Greetings,

Re:Don't waste your money

[nelsonal]

I don't know why so many people are shocked when they come and ask my advice on computer purchases and I tell them not to worry about the box, and the places to shell out are on faster drives and a good monitor, and be picky. I don't think I'll mail order another monitor I want to see the thing work. On graphics cards, I've found the best value for my dollar comes in the $50-$100 range, I get the newest card to enter that price range, and keep it for 2 years or so. My Radeon is getting a bit old now, but so is the rest of the system, Athlon 64 and Serial ATA are begining to call.

Re:Don't waste your money

[tmark]

$300 graphics card....don't waste your money.

It's really all relative, isn't it ? There are subjective values to things like video quality which cannot just be measured in terms of dollars because they differ from person to person. Some people might only game for an hour a week, but when they do so, they really want to have the best quality video they can.

Who is anyone to say they're "wasting" their money, especially when it is undeniable that the more expensive video cards ARE measurably better in several ways ?

Someone else might well argue that you wasted your money on your Klipsches because you could buy cheaper Logitech speakers that sound pretty good for 15 bucks. Are they wrong or are you ?

Re:Don't waste your money

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Actually, I wish programmers had worse video cards. It seems that nowadays game companies don't tweak their engine for the slower machine anymore. Back when Quake III came out, it ran SMOOTHLY on my 200 mhz machine. But even then that was anomaly. No One Lives Forever stuttered, despite looking much worse. Games today (though half of them are running on it) really haven't improved on Quake III all that much. I blame it on the processor war and its suddenly skyrocketing mhz, starting around 200.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I agree.

The reason monitors and speakers don't depreciate so much is because the technology can't improve very much.

While silicon processes and transistor design might allow for a performance doubling every year or two, that simply doesn't apply to most other industries because it is much easier to max out any particular technology and improvements can only be incremental at best in comparison.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, for someone working at Burger King $300 is probably close to a weeks wages.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Anonymous Coward]

Or unless you make 3D engines

Yes the best way to develop software is to run it on high end machines that only 2% of computer users actually have.

Its no wonder cs is well, shit.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Anonymous Coward]

just because a game uses the Q3 engine doesnt mean it hasn't added to it. When developers make games they want to take advantage of the latest video card features so they don't get left in the dust by some one who is. DoomIII isn't revolutionizing the FPS genre, but you won't see other developers sitting on their asses not using the same features.

Re:Don't waste your money

[MicroBerto]

My qualification of "unless you game 24 hours a day" really meant just that -- unless you really know it's worth it. I was just speaking of depreciation for Joe User.

Re:Don't waste your money

[holland_g]

Awesome advice. I am still runing my Sony 17" 17se2 monitor from '96. It was 1300 retail back in the day, but it has NEVER been anything but spectacular.

My speakers are steel encased, triangular shaped self powered Advent 570s that totally rock, and I can use them for DJing parties.

Usually I will pick up the latest M'board, and stick a low-end CPU, with enought memory to get me going, then upgrade as the price/performance point changes.

I'm running a Nvidia TNT and am going to go to the store right now to get a better card.

Re:Don't waste your money

[Jorrit]

Isn't it the idea to develop for the future instead of sticking with the paste? Keep in mind that Crystal Space is intended for FUTURE games. i.e. there are currently no (finished) games with CS so why bother trying to run on current hardware?

Note though that we actually do run pretty well on low-end hardware. We will never forget where we came from (I started programming CS on a Pentium 90 with 16 megs RAM and no 3D hardware acceleration).

Greetings,

Re:Don't waste your money

[blair1q]

A plug for a good deal, not a spam:

pcmall.com is selling Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speaker kits for $108 plus about $30 shipping (the subbie is heavy). They're factory refurbs, but maybe that means they won't blow (like mine did a week before xmas). $108 is about 40% of MSRP, btw. This deal is screaming.

Trust me, the Klipsch speaker lines are by far the best audio units you can get that are designed specifically for computer use. Orders of magnitude better than anything else.

Get some cheap 36-inch stands to put the rears behind your ears, and marvel at what real dynamic range and flat, wide frequency response sounds like.

If I can, I'm taking my old ones downstairs and putting them on my livingroom media setup. No sense wasting the best speakers in the house just because the amp went tits-up.

Read the article!

[poge]

He does include prices - and the last two pages of the article include a comparison of FPS per dollar - much more useful than a straight performance comparison, IMHO...

Re:Read the article!

[Anonymous Coward]

a comparison of FPS per dollar - much more useful than a straight performance comparison,

Huh? Not especially. Everyone will have a price limit and a minimum FPS and featureset they'll put up with. Across sich a large price range FPS/$ is just an academic statistic.

Re:Read the article!

[maraist]

They had likely-cost per card as well (if you'd read the article). The previous poster was saying that Tom one-upped the simple price point.

In fact, I was checking pricewatch and his numbers are pretty much on the mark - you could find cheaper no-names, or more expensive top-tier name-brands.

Most casual/avid gamers are very interested in price-performance (e.g. value), so this new metric is very useful. Of course, we gamers had long been able to assess this comparative "value" metric heuristically.

One final point, he provides two price-performance metrics, "raw performance/$", and "graphics-quality performance/$". I often switch back and forth between the two modes.. When I'm just casually playing I like the quality settings to be on high. But when I'm playing against other people (and every FPS counts), I switch to the performant settings.

Personally I like setting limits like $100. This in fact use to be the sweet-spot for price-perf. Unfortunately graphics card manufacturers are REALLY trying to raise the bar.. Currently it looks like $150 is the new price-perf region, and all reviews are sitting in the $200<->$300 range (with sub $200 cards occasionally getting spot-light)

Re:Read the article!

[Anonymous Coward]

They had likely-cost per card as well (if you'd read the article). The previous poster was saying that Tom one-upped the simple price point.

Yeah, I did read the article. I'm saying that it's pointless throwing the $100 cards in the same perf/price graph as the $300+ ones - they're completely different markets.

When I buy I new card I buy the most powerful one in my price bracket with all the features I need. (Like the disclaimer at the bottom of the price/perf graph says.) That way I get a good card that'll last as long as possible. I'm not going to sweat a few dollars here or there so the price/perf won't sway me.

Re:Read the article!

[Sylver Dragon]

I don't know, having read through the article, I thought that the FBucks thing was pure shite. The problem is, that you can get some of the older cards for dirt cheap now, plus the bargin cards cost very little as well, so it tends to inflate thier numbers in that table quite a bit. Granted, anyone researching video cards is probably capable of looking at the data and realizing that the GF440MX card is junk for gaming.
Now, as you mentioned, the idea of picking a price point and buying the best card in that range is a great way to go, I wish that Tom's had just created a table based around that insted. It would have allowed someone with a budget to look at the cards in thier range and pick the best one. though even this can be misleading, depending upon the price range.
About the only interesting thing I did see in the FBucks thing, is that is backed up what I have been telling people for some time now, get a GForce4 and wait on the FX cards. Though, just looking at the raw data you can come up with this. The 4600 tends to beat the stuffing out of the FX5200 and FX5600 in most tests, and it really doesn't cost much more. Sure you don't get the DX9 features, but with the 5200 and 5600 your not going to have a fast enough card to appriciate those features anyway.

Re:Read the article!

[Jett]

Setting a budget and then finding the best card in that range is how I and everyone else I know shops the majority of the time. The only benefit of a big shootout like this is seeing how much you are missing out by not going for the high-end. From what I gathered the Radeon 9800 is the best for price/performance, its one of the faster cards but can be found for $150 from newegg.com, if I were buying a card at the moment that'd be the one I would go for. Personally I'm going to wait a little longer and pick up probably a 9800 for that price once Doom3, HL2, etc. are closer to release. At this point with no games (or none I'm interested in anyways) really needing the kind of performance and features offered at the high-end it makes no sense to buy now, unless of course you really need that extra 50fps in existing games. For the extra cost I think very few people can afford to decide that they do.

Re:Read the article!

[ameoba]

Actually, for about $100 you can get a GeForce4 Ti4200, which was a one of the high end cards from the last generation. In a lot of older games (those without complex shaders like Quake3) it'll beat out some more modern cards (all but the high-end Radeon 9x00s and GeForce FXes).

For current generation cards, $100-150 is the sweet spot (the 'mainstream' cards : Radeon 9600 Pro/XT or maybe 9800SE, GeForce FX 5600 & 5700). While you might not be able to get the raw frame rates of the GF4 Ti4200 in older games, these cards will do some powerful image quality improvements (AA, AF) without a significant hit in performance. They also have the modern programmable shaders used by DirectX 9 and are capable of being used as a vector coprocessor.

So, while there are a number of good cards at the $150 point, there's still some very good deals at the $100 level (lowest pricewatch price for a 9600 (not the crippled SE version) is $92 shipped; the 9600 Pro starts at $107. nVidia has equivalent cards at similar price points.

If you're not doing 3d, why would you need more?

[CarrionBird]

8m should be plenty, since you're using it as mostly framebuffer.

Toms is a stinking sales site anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

When I want facts on graphics, I go to beyond3d.

P.S. NV3x architectures can't do everything in 8x1 mode. Has to drop to 4 ops/clock with color operations.

Re:Toms is a stinking sales site anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, there's nothing quite like going to a hardware site that talks in terms of theoretical benchmarks. Sure beats those wildly inaccurate real world tests.

Re:Toms is a stinking sales site anymore

[benzapp]

That article is way outdated.

The GeforceFX 5800 sucked. It only had a 128-bit memory bus. etc. We all know this.

None of that is true anymore. The 5800 isn't for sale anymore. The 5950 has as much memory bandwidth as ATI's fastest card.

FBucks?

[PhiltheeG]

I had to do a double take to make sure it was FBucks and not something else...

The most advanced card I have is the ATI AIW 8500 DV and I really don't see a reason to leave it for something newer. For the $300 I could get a sizable memory upgrade and another hard disk, or a cheap LCD.

I was caught up in the "upgrade" fever a while ago, though. Getting burned a couple of times by Matrox (Marvel capture/driver support is not and will not be supported under Windows XP) and once by ATI (early 8500 drivers were horrific) diverted my geek money elsewhere.

It works now, why bother changing

A bit off-subject...

[evilviper]

A bit off the subject, but interesting news for sure:

MPlayer has XVMC support (with mpeg1/2). That means any videocard, with an XF86 driver that supports XVMC, can now do MPEG1/MPEG2 playback entirely on the card's processor, so no CPU load at all.

NVidia's binary drivers support it on the Geforce4, and Intel 810/815 cards have open source X drivers that support it as well. ATI's driver don't support XVMC just yet, even though the hardware has the capability.

Re:A bit off-subject...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig needs a BIT more warning...My computer is in the family room..

Re:A bit off-subject...

[evilviper]

Sorry... My sig is already longer than the slashcode limit (don't ask). I just can't fit anything more into it, no matter how many times people ask.

Re:A bit off-subject...

[Anonymous Coward]

ASSHOLE for having that sig...

Re:A bit off-subject...

[smallstepforman]

Oh god, I actually clicked the link. Disgusting.

RTFA

[dubbayu_d_40]

Old chipsets are reviewed too. I took their charts went to newegg and found their #2 for under $100. Very useful if you ask me.

Flawed results

[Call Me Black Cloud]

The GF4 Ti4600 comes out at or near the top of their "Fbucks" rating, which is fps/$. They show a price of $65 for the card, based on what bizrate.com reports. If you go to bizrate.com and look at the Ti4600's available it does appear there are some for $55-65.

If you dig a little deeper and follow the link for the Jaton 3DForce4 Ti4600 for $54 you'll find all the retailers listed are actually selling the MX440, a lesser card.

If you follow an $89 link (still a great price) you'll find half.com is offering the PNY Verto GEFORCE4 TI 4600 for that price (according to bizrate). Click the link to half.com and hey! you can get a new one for $319 or a used one for $180. No $89.

While I respect Tom's hardware I think fact checking is a much larger task in these bulk reviews and is something they need to pay a little more attention to.

Re:Flawed results

[iainl]

Arrgh, I thought that was the case. The first thing I thought when I looked at the tables were 'blooming heck, is a Ti4600 that cheap in the US? They are like 5 times that over here!'

Re:Flawed results

[faust13]

You do of course realise that Bizrate's prices are near realtime, whereas Tom's Hardware uses the prices at the time of publish. Be careful before you start accusing ppl of not checking their facts. Remember realtime is different that publish time.

Re:Flawed results

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying that GeForce4 Ti4600s have quadrupled in price since Tom's Hardware did their research?

It strikes me as rather unlikely, to say the least.

Little DX9, low resolutions...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is the way Tom's shows its bias towards nVidia. Their may be plenty of reasons to get an ATI or nVidia, but Tom's is not a site to use to make a comparison. He also avoided much of the futuremark fiasco (which made nVidia look bad), but was all over quack (which made ATI look bad). I think Tom's, like many of these sites, either avoids ballsy reviews to keep getting free stuff, or is outright taking payoffs (in this case, nVidia).

Re:Little DX9, low resolutions...

[PygmySurfer]

I didn't notice - probably because the ATi cards STILL thwomped the nVidia cards.

I'm almost as disillusioned by nVidia now as I was by 3Dfx when the Voodoo3 line was released.

Matrox

[GeckoFood]

As I look through the benchmarks, I see the Parhelia consistently in the basement. For a 256bit card, it's a pig. And this raises an interesting question -- do any gamers actually use Matrox anymore?

Re:Matrox

[jandrese]

The Parhelia isn't a gamers card though. It's optimized for professional 3D uses (whatever those are). That's what Matrox claims at least.

Re:Matrox

[grung0r]

err....they never did. In the 3d era, Matrox's best card(for gaming)was the rage fury MAXX, and it was too little, too late. Matrox has been all about the buiesness side of things, they have pretty much ignored gaming since the advent of 3d acceleration, which has cost them quite a bit. Oh, and no one refers to cards by their "bit" number.

Re:Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get this straight, Matrox's best card was an ATI card?

Re:Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the next best Matrox card was the Riva TNT2 Pro.

He must have meant the G400 MAX.

Re:Matrox

[grung0r]

Yes, thank you that is correct, I meant the g400 MAX.

Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[TrollBridge]

I don't know about you guys, but I thought that at ~$140, the Radeon 9800 scored pretty well for such a reasonably priced card. That was the first non-NVIDIA card I've bought since '99, and believe me it's worth every penny. No need to spend $400 on the PRO models or the latest NVIDIA offering. Ya can't beat the price/performance of the 9800, IMHO!

Re:Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[faust13]

Most likely, you have the Radeon 9800 SE, which is grossly underpowered-marketing-named-it-to-cause-confusion video card. There is however, a real Radeon 9800, built only by ATI, which was never priced below $200. The real Radeon 9800 was killed by ATI because it presented too much threat to their Pro lines. The Radeon 9800 SE is priced in the $120 - $160 range.

Re:Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[BaronAaron]

9800SE is not THAT bad. It has 128mbit bus with 4 pipelines opposed to the 9800 PRO with 256/8... But besides that, is has the same exact core meaning you get all of the DX9 bells and whistles.

Plus you can Softmod your 9800SE making it 128/8

Combine that with a little overclocking and I personally got a 40% speed increase making it a good performer for a great price!

Re:Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[juhaz]

There are 256/4 versions of R9800SE as well.
And succesfully softmoding one of THOSE gives you a full 9800 Pro for half the price. That's what I'd call a good deal.

Too bad the article didn't mention what version they were testing, doubling the memory bus would probably bring up the scores up somewhat.

I just wish there would be more data about how good is the change of softmod before buying one ... probably the 256 bit Hercules AIW version.

Re:Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[faust13]

I didn't say it was bad, just underpowered, missing the other 4 pipelines just kills the performance (verify here: http://www.anandtech.com/ or here: tomshardware.com). Modding your card is an expensive venture if you fail.

My best advice is pick up the R9600 XT, for the same price as R9800 SE, comparable performance and best of all you get that HL2 voucher. What a deal!

Re:Underappreciated Value Card - Radeon 9800

[BaronAaron]

Softmoding as the name says is only a software change.... It's completely reversable .. It either works or doesn't work.

If it doesn't work you simply get artifacts everywhere on the screen. It's simply a matter of a reboot to go back to the old way.

And it "usually" works anyway ...

As far as the 9600.... It tends to get 3DMark 2003 scores around 3300 which is better than the out of the box 9800SE score of about 3000.

Softmodded and slightly overclocked I get 4100 with my 9800SE... ;-)

If you're not afraid to install a non-ATI driver (Omega driver) and play with the overclock slider a little the 9800SE has one of the best performance/price ratios out there right now.

It's going to piss gamers off

[BoomerSooner]

when Doom 3 limits the max frame rate to 60fps (I think that is what was said).

Re:It's going to piss gamers off

[Mitleid]

Personally I think its about time a company took some liberties and did something like this. I can understand someone wanting to build a total powerhouse machine, but testing a system like that is what "benchmarking" programs like 3DMark are for. With a cap on the FPS for gaming (at least by default... I'm sure someone will find a way to remove the cap once the game is released) people can start worrying less about how many FPS their game gets and more about how fun it is to play. Games are for playing, not using as a technology demo. That is, unless id is just simply using the cap to hide something else, which could very well be a possibility...heh.

Re:It's going to piss gamers off

[ameoba]

higher resolution.

more detailed effects.

better image quality.

never going below 60 FPS.

Re:It's going to piss gamers off

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah it pisses me off when I only get 280 fps in Q3 as opposed to 300. 60 fps is more than ample for a real-time application, especially one that uses dynamic lighting.

Re:The Technology of Uselessness

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I already ready that stupid essay the fisrt time you posted the link, shitbreath. Did you write that drivel yourself, or does it just make you feel smart to read it?

Interesting comparison at bottom

[Millbuddah]

The fbucks feature was pretty interesting to me. Being able to see just how much performance you can get for the price for all these cards definitely helps to narrow the field somewhat. These newer cards just don't seem to be worth the money they're asking for if that's all the performance you'll get, not counting the quality cut from not enabling all the latest "features" like FSAA and Anisotropic filtering.

Newcomer... Prahelia

[faust13]

Um, the Prahelia is no newcomer it's been on the market for well over a year.

Re:Newcomer... Prahelia

[Anonymous Coward]

it's been on the market for well over a year.

And people still can't figure out how to spell that f'ing name!

I suggested they go with The Matrox 'Make pixel go fast now' card. Or give it a number. People know how to spell numbers.

Re:Newcomer... Prahelia

[faust13]

D'oh, sorry Parhelia. And the Matrox PARHELIA hit the market in June, 2002.

Re:What I'm sick of

[karnal]

What are you trying to do with the "extra" monitors?

I know that when I enable dualhead on my machine, you specify a "primary" monitor for games and overlays (on an nVidia card) and the secondary just blanks on these...

If you want all 4 monitors to have 3d displays on them, then MAYBE the pci bus would be slow for that. However, for what I'd use 4 monitors for (more code windows, more windows of slashdot, more terminals up at once, monitoring networks etc) PCI would be just happy.

Now, finding a deal on monitors and a new desk......

It's you.

[ceeam]

Well, welcome to the "old farts" club ;-)
(sorry)

How about DVD Burner round up?

[ackthpt]

Has there been one and I missed it? I took a couple months off and now I don't know wtf is going on.

And I'm just using my ATI Radeon AIW 9700 Pro as basic VGA and TV as trying to run games still resets. Probably time to go see if anyone over at the ATI support forum has a clue or it's the same old idiot line "take it back and get another one."

Summary for those with ADHD

[B5_geek]

#1) New cards are faster then old cards
#2) Old cards are cheaper then new cards
#3) Best bang for your buck = older cards

Re:Summary for those with ADHD

[freeweed]

#1.5) Hey, let's go ride bikes!

Re:Summary for those with ADHD

[shfted!]

What? I didn't make it past step #1!

ATI 9700 pro

[BrookHarty]

I upgraded from a GF3-TI500 to an ATI 9700 pro, almost as fast as the GF4-4200 or ATI 8500. At the time (2002) it was the king.

I first tried the Nvidia GF4-4600 for 199, and it didn't even feel faster(took it back). The ATI 9700 Pro, Ati's main comeback into the game, really was impressive. It was worth every penny (39,900 of em).

Anti-Aliasing was the new kid on the block, and the ATI 9700 pro allowed all games at the time (and most now) with AA turned on. Toms benchmarks shows the ATI 9700 pro still to be in the top 10. With video cards not doubling in speed every 6 months anymore (i miss you 3dfx), I dont expect to see the speeds jump like they use too. This card might just last me another year, and in the last 6 years, thats amazing in gfx card releases.

The only problem I've seen so far, is Nvidia's CG code really messes with ATI's textures and shaders. And with lots of developers loving Nvidia SDK's. ATI has been good to fix most bugs with ever new Catalyst release, but I'm still waiting SecondLife to get patched. (Nvidia CG bugs) Such a work horse of an engine (Havok), should be interesting to see Havok2 engine used. (Also used in Max Payne2)

The benchmark had me wondering, why only a P3.2ghz? I'd like to see them also include a High End AMD, and both mid range (2.6hz P4, AMD 2600) to round it out. Always wonder how many more FPS a faster CPU will give me, so I can just if its worth the cost. BTW Save those pics from toms hardware, then you can compare hardware later. I had to search the tomshardware.de for the benchmarks I was looking for 2002.

Hey, lucky they didnt use a P4EE ;)

Re:ATI 9700 pro

[Tycho]

They didn't use an Athlon64 in the reviews because some Radeon cards were showing some artifacts. The article states that the artifacts may have been due to overheating due to an incompatible motherboard. I think that they were using a crappy case without enough cooling.

Re:What I'm sick of

[way2trivial]

multiple monitors on flight sims looks good.
I've seen a setup with three- it's just nice

Re:What I'm sick of

[gnu-generation-one]

"multiple monitors on flight sims looks good... I've seen a setup with three- it's just nice"

We use 10 displays for flight sims (4 projectors for outside world, plus LCDs for instruments), and they tend to have at least one computer per display to control it, each one running an image rendering program, and synchronising over the network.

open source nv drivers

[mattdm]

They don't have accelerated 3D support, but from what I've read, they'll do the basic things you want.

You can also just install a good OS...

[Otis_INF]

... which takes care of the misery. While I understand your point about paying for features you don't use, it's YOUR problem that your OS doesn't do what you want. See, it's software and a free world. If you use an OS that sucks in an area you don't want it to suck, perhaps you should move on and install another OS which doesn't have these problems.

Re:You can also just install a good OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what other OS do you think will free him from binary-only drivers? Windows? I don't see any sources on the Nvidia site for Windows either.

Or perhaps you're referring to the fact that users' inability to tweak the OS kernel in Windows makes binary-only drivers seem stable. Well, by that logic, couldn't you also just say "stop tweaking the kernel and use the stock kernel that came with your distro" and yield the same results? Is not being able to tweak the kernel, even if you want to, really an advantage?

Sound cards

[ajaf]

It's called marketing.
Why should I buy a soundcard with 5.1 DTS technology for my computer?
Just make a card with a lot of features and put it in big letters in the box, give some bucks to sites to review your product and put a good qualification and people will run to buy your product.
"Same card at lower price? hmmm, no, I'm sure there's something wrong with that card, I'll buy the same card that costs more, I'm sure it's better."

Re:What I'm sick of

[way2trivial]

This used to be possible with an early iteration of doom..
it required one computer per monitor-
I totally forgot until your post, I did this once as a proof of possible to my roomates with one side only..

Fan Noise

[Slider451]

They really need a column for fan noise. My Gainward FX5600 Ultra Flip Chip has the noisiest fan by far of the eight in my case. And it's a high-pitched whiny noise, the worst kind, because it reminds me of my wife after I've been playing on the PC too much.

Re:ATI 9700 pro - Read a little deeper

[faust13]

Tom's said they wanted to use a AMD 64, but couldn't because of stability issues with the mobo, but said they would update the benchmarks with the AMD results when the problem was resolved.

ANTI-SEMETIC MODERATORS

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever moderated this post "Underrated" is ANTI-SEMETIC. You know who you are. Your heart is as black as coal. DO NOT downmod posts by me or my people!

Re:ATI 9700 pro - Read a little deeper

[BrookHarty]

I did read it. ;) He could of used another motherboard, and he didnt include any mid level CPU's.

FEED ME, Seymour!

[Medievalist]

I agree with you 100%, and hope everyone else does too!

I get nearly all my hardware from dumpsters and recycling bins, so the faster you upgrade the better my stuff is.

Yet another useless video card review

[Anonymous Coward]

Driver stability/quality is *way* more important than a few FPS, and none of these video card reviews even touch it. Leaving people to wander through various video card forums trying to determine whether more people are complaining about ATI's "used to be sucky but are now improved" drivers or NVidia's "used to be great but are now going downhill" drivers.

If these hardware sites actually rated driver stablility, features, etc then the companies would have an greater incentive to work on stability enhanvements instead of figuring out how to cheat on benchmarks.

Issues with my new ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, if anyone cares:
- there were system-ending "stuck in infinite loop" crashes with numerous games until I messed with the BIOS settings (changed from initializing PCI before AGP to AGP before PCI - which was the opposite setting to what my old setup needed)
- numerous other crashes which may or may not be related to above
- no individual brightness/color controls for the TV out, thus leading to a way too bright picture on my TV or a way too dark picture on my monitor.
- drivers don't remember color settings after exiting many games
- drivers don't remember to turn on TV out when I reboot
- tray icon app crashes if a second video card is installed

Re:Yet another useless video card review

[toddestan]

Have you tried the newest drivers? I have found a few of those things fixed in the later ATI driver releases, atleast for my older Radeon 8500. Especially with the TV out feature (now the TV can be used as a second monitor. Woohoo!)

It's too bad...

[MightyPez]

The article is filled with innaccuracies and inconsistancies. Calling the FX architecture 8x1 when it always operates in 4x2, the strange results of the FX 5800 ultra beating the 5900 ultra in Aquamark (by a considerable amount). The "Fbucks" is a nice idea, but only mentions one important aspect of video cards, the FPS. What about image quality? Features? Drivers? To greater extent, bundles with the brands? The chart is also listing cards that have long been out of production and are becoming exceedingly difficult to come by (see: Geforce FX 5800 series, Radeon 9500 sries).

Re:It's too bad...

[MrDolby]

"the strange results of the FX 5800 ultra beating the 5900 ultra in Aquamark (by a considerable amount)"

Actually I think thats possible. Wasn't the 5800 clocked at 500mhz and the 5900 clocked at lower speeds. Though I don't think the 5800 should really be counted as it never was really distibuted in large numbers.

Re:It's too bad...

[MightyPez]

"Actually I think thats possible. Wasn't the 5800 clocked at 500mhz and the 5900 clocked at lower speeds. Though I don't think the 5800 should really be counted as it never was really distibuted in large numbers." I'm not sure what the effect raw clock speed has on AquaMark, but you'd think the considerably better memory controller and slight architectural advances on the 5900's would make up for that, and not leave it in the dust. Not to mention driver trickery which makes things even more difficult to compare.

Re:It's too bad...

[rinkjustice]

What about image quality? Features? Drivers? To greater extent, bundles with the brands?

I feel you brother, but image quality is more a subjective thing. One card may have brighter colors while another may have smoother anti-aliasing. Whose to choose which one is better? And drivers change often, especially when it's regarding new hardware. Frame rates should always be the primary measuring stick IMO.

Re:It's too bad...

[MightyPez]

But high FPS is also subjective matter. If I get a steady 30fps, I consider that good. Other say they need at least 60. It's a strange fascination people have with high FPS. If I am getting FPS in the 100's and it starts dipping down to the 50's, I can really notice it and get pissed. But if it's steady (thank you, vertical sync) I can play fine and afford to turn up the eye candy.

As for IQ, it would be considerably hard to do, but that's not to say it hasn't been done. It's widely accepted that on the current generation, ATi's FSAA is superior to nVidias across the board. In AF, ATi doesn't apply the settings to 45 degree angles, so nVidia's is superior. And then you factor in drivers. For instance, the 52.16 detonators (now Forceware) do not render some lighting properly in Halo (among others), so it could be said that their IQ is inferior in many apps.

Re:It's too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel you brother, but image quality is more a subjective thing. One card may have brighter colors while another may have smoother anti-aliasing. Whose to choose which one is better? And drivers change often, especially when it's regarding new hardware. Frame rates should always be the primary measuring stick IMO.

Yes, of course they're comparing apples and oranges in some cases, but realistically, it did at least give you an impression of what to look at in your price range. I think choosing a new video card is now the most mind-boggling part of upgrading your computer. I wish I'd seen this article a week ago! It would have cleared up what is otherwise a wasteland of outdated and piecemeal information on the web.

Interestingly, I just went out last night and bought a Radeon 9600 XT before I saw the article, but that was after a lot of research. I'm happy to see it favourably mentioned at the end. The article reinforced what my research seemed to show, that it's a "knee of the curve" card for price/performance.

Re:It's too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the image quality usually like this?

Matrox > ATI > NVIDIA

Re:It's too bad...

[MightyPez]

" Isn't the image quality usually like this? Matrox > ATI > NVIDIA" It's depends on what is going on. Matrox clearly has the upper edge in 2d. In 3d, it's hard to say because each card has it's strengths of certain aspects. Like my previous example,

FSAA: ATi > nVidia AF: nVidia > ATi

DirectX 9 compliant fo' shizzle!

[rinkjustice]

It boils down to whether you want to play Doom 3 with all the bells and whistles (provided you have the loot for it natch). If so, you don't need the latest screamer videocard like the 9800 XT, but a reasonably good VPU which can exploit DirectX 9's more advanced features. That's really key, it's got to be DirectX 9 compliant for the new crop of ubergames. I've tried the Radeon 9700 (which is several hundred dollars cheaper than the latest generation) and it killed.
That way your not shooting your whole wad on just one thing. Put the money you saved against more system ram or a faster harddrive which will make a more significant difference for all your applications.

Re:We need a hot geek babe roundup!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight. If I install BSD, will this Ceren girl will have sex with me?

You do.

[MrDolby]

You care enough to post.

Figures... the day after you buy the wrong card...

[dspyder]

So I go out and buy the Radeon 9200 128... and a day later this review comes out. Anyone know Best Buy's restocking policy?

--D

p.s. Anyone offer a guess as to why the 128 performs no better than the 64?

Fastest AGP 2x card? (HHOS)

[abischof]

It may seem a bit unusual to ask about fast AGP 2x cards, (especially since we're up to 8x now) but I have an older motherboard and that's the most it'll take :-/. It's an Asus K7M -- one of the first Slot A boards -- and it only supports the AGP 1.0 spec (AGP 1x/2x).

You'd think that AGP would be backwards compatible, but that's doesn't appear to be the case. Due to voltage changes as the spec evolved, my motherboard will only supply 3.3v (as opposed to 1.5v or even 0.8v of some of the other AGP versions). And, while there is a "Universal AGP 3.0" spec which supports all three voltages, I'm not sure which cards fit into that category or even if those cards may still be keyed in favor of more recent motherboards.

For what it's worth, the processor in there is an Athlon 700. And I only have a TNT2 in there now but I figure that if I can get a more recent card (relatively speaking), perhaps I can perhaps enjoy some Quake III on there from time to time :).

Re:Fastest AGP 2x card? (HHOS)

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

(AGP 1.0) Short answer: Anything that will physically fit will work.

Re:Fastest AGP 2x card? (HHOS)

[abischof]

That helps a bit -- but how do I know if a card will physically fit without buying it? :(

Re:Fastest AGP 2x card? (HHOS)

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Open your computer and take a look at your agp socket, search google for pics of the card you want.
Remove you existing card and take it to your local comp. store and compare.
Purchase a card from somwhere with a good return policy.
(There is a lot of misinformation surrounding agp compability, i'm pretty sure any card will fit, and if it fits it will work.)

A frame rate limit wont matter.

[Charcharodon]

That is not going to have much of an affect on gamers. It will not handicap those with a better system.

It's not going to make the game run any different, it'll just cap the max frames at 60. Older cards will still bottom out when there is too much on the screen at the same time, while the more powerful systems will stay parked at 60fps.

Re:Figures... the day after you buy the wrong card

[Anonymous Coward]

is slashdot your only source for reviews?

Compare to older cards - GeForce 3?

[SamDrake]

I wonder - where would a GeForce 3 (the card *I* have) come up on these charts? Naturally, it's a bit too old to have been tested.

I'd hate to trade yesterday's top-end card for today's midrange card and wind up going backwards...

Re:Compare to older cards - GeForce 3?

[Wooky_linuxer]

about the same as a Radeon 8500, depending on the model. I had a Radeon 8500LE and it perfomed much like a a GF3Ti200, sometimes better, sometimes worse. I opted for the GF3ti200 due to the much better driver support under Linux, ok, ok, they taint mey kernel, they are closed, they gave me some headache in the past, but even then, they're miles ahead of ATI.

My new ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

[superpulpsicle]

Ok, I bought a Sapphire atlantis ATI Radeon 9800 Pro just alittle before Christmas and it took a massive amount of effort to get everything working. These cards IMHO are excellent assuming you know what you are doing, but definitely not ready for the masses. Simple games like RTCW enemy territory, call of duty, delta force bhd, battlefield1942 all took an insane amount of tweaking and research to get working perfect.

Things to do to reach Nirvana

1.) catalyst 3.10 driver was the best there is, and I had to completely reinstall windows xp to get it working flawlessly.

2.) The key components I had to update was RAM (from generic to Kingston) and powersupply (from 300W to 600W). I know it sounds irrelevant but I cannot tell you how many mod_errors I got in games until these were updated.

3.) I now run completely open cased on BOTH SIDES! They mind as well call it ATI OVEN 9800 PRO. I still get the occasional overheat and get spotty dots on the screen if I leave my computer on 4-5 days in a roll.

4.) I disabled fast write and also the VPU feature in the catalyst software.

5.) I also reshuffled the PCI cards next to the agp slot so that the smallest cards were next to the graphic card to give it more air space.

Re:My new ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

[randyest]

I have had similar experience with every ATI card I've ever owned (flaky drivers, overheating, promised patches that never come, etc.).

In fact, I foolishly tried ATI again when building my nephews a new computer during my visit to Florida this Xmas. I picked up an ATI 9600 because it seemed like a good deal compared to the Nvidia's I saw in the stores around there. Plus, I had read so many /. posts over the last year or so saying how much better the Catalyst drivers were than the old ATI drivers, and how their support and quality had improved dramatically. And, if you look at the benchmarks, it does seem that ATI's offerings have more bang for the buck.

Two days of watsed misery later, I gave up, returned it, got a Ge4 5700, popped it in, and it worked fine. Zero hassle, excellent drivers, no overheating.

I still have an old ATI TV USB stitting around waiting for the WinXP drivers to be released. Years after promising them, all ATI has available is some non-WHQL "drivers" that crash every box I've tried them on). Never again ATI.

Re:My new ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

[L10N]

I have the R9600 Pro with 256MB of ram. I have had zero problems tweaking games under windows xp and it has worked out just awesomely.

Now under Mandrake 9.2 it is a different story. In fact I cannot get it work at all. I am currently using vesa drivers for X. I have tried updating the ATI binary drivers and I must be too freaking dumb because I keep getting a dependancy error and I cant resolve this. I havent spent much time on it but some and I am usually rather adept at having a clue regarding upgrading the necessary drivers to fullfill dependancies but with this I am getting no where fast. I get pissed and give up and use vesa and limp along.

bah....

How about Linux support?

[Jagasian]

Tom's charts list such things as DirectX version support... but it doesn't list Linux support. Anyone want to slap together an addition to Tom's chart that lists Linux support?

Re:How about Linux support?

[ameoba]

Short answer :

nVidia gives you binary-only drivers to enable 3D in X11; 2D can be done with XFree86's own drivers.

ATI's cards are a bit more complicated. XFree can do 2D on all the modern ones. The 9500+ require binary drivers to do 3D. The 9200 and below can do it with Free drivers.

Depending on your politics, there are different 'best' cards. If you're OK with non-free drivers, nVidia's cards work a lot better under Linux and perform as well as they do in Windows; ATI's drivers aren't quite as mature and don't perform as well as the Windows ones. If you want good 3D with free drivers, the Radeon 9200/9100/9000/8500 series are going to be your best bet (don't be confused by model numbers tho... higher numbers don't neccessarily reflect better performance).

Re:How about Linux support?

[L10N]

any words of advice? I run Mandrake 9.2 and I have a radeon 9600 pro with 256 MB of vram. I continually crap out on x11 when I try to use radeon drivers for Linux. I end up resorting to vesa. I have attempted to update my radeon binary drivers and I get dependancy errors, I fulfill the requirements and try an install again to only get the same freakin error. I will fully admit to being lame and not spending the proper time researching the problem. But since this topic came up I figured I'd ask if anyone has this problem licked and what they did to resolve it. Friendly geeks that feel especially kind, feel free to answer. If not then once I am over my holiday apathy I will figure this out. =)

Re:How about Linux support?

[Jagasian]

Thanks! I currently use a laptop with a Radeon 7500 Mobility. It has great free drivers for both 2D and 3D, but the hardware itself is slightly underpowered for my tastes.

I will have to check out each of the Radeon 9200/9100/9000/8500 series to see which one is the most powerful under Linux.

So yes, I want to stay away from non-free closed drivers that taint my kernel. I will take a slightly less powerful card with free drivers any day over a more powerful card with non-free drivers.

Re:How about Linux support?

[Jagasian]

Ok, from Tom's Windows benchmarks and your addition, it looks like the most powerful "libre" graphics card is the ATI Radeon 8500 64, which can be purchased OEM new for about $60. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Re:Hey retardo

[Anonymous Coward]

Games are meant to be fun, not realistic. If these game developers spent less resources on graphics, and more on other factors like controls, concept, playability, etc. maybe most new games would not be so shitty. Half life 2 is gonna be like most other fps's but with better graphics, same as Doom3. I still play quake2 and do not care for newer fps's because they do not offer much except better graphics with much the same gameplay. Fuck upgrading every 6 months to play new fps's that only upgrage the eye candy and little nothing else.

Stop being a consumerite! Retardo, no respondo.

Re:Figures... the day after you buy the wrong card

[toddestan]

The extra memory allows the card to store more textures on it. The reason it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot is that older games simply don't need that much memory, and newer games really don't seem to take advantage of it very well (my guess is they don't want to break things for the 64MB and 32MB cards out there).

Then there is the extra overhead of managing twice the memory, which makes some chipsets slower (like the Radeon 8500) in many tests.

Finally, in many systems the system ram and AGP bus is so fast that there isn't a huge performance hit if the card has to pull things out of the main memory anyhow.

Powerful cards

[iantri]

With cards being as powerful as they are now, are programmers getting sloppy with their coding?

I just got Halo for the PC. I have an Celeron 2.4ghz machine with an ASUS P4R800-VM (integrated ATI 9100IGP graphics).

It sucks. The VPU supposedly keeps crashing while I try to play it, I get about 3fps at 640x480, and it doesn't LOOK (at least as far as I've been able to get) much better than Half-Life, which can run with SOFTWARE rendering on a Pentium 166mhz machine, 320x240 resolution at ~15fps!

(For the record, Half-Life gives more than acceptable performance (>30fps) at 1024x768 on my 9100IGP.)

Re:Powerful cards

[Anonymous Coward]

in general no, but for Halo, yes. Halo + ATI = disaster.

Re:Figures... the day after you buy the wrong card

[Anonymous Coward]

you have 14 days to return without paying restocking. I did the same mistake of buyin it from best buy. Paid 105$ when it only costs 40$ on pricewatch.

Re:We need a hot geek babe roundup!

[Anonymous Coward]

uhmm sorry to spoil your fun, but go outside, you know that place with sunshine and fresh air that doesnt reak of stale pizza and farts, and meet some real women!

This bsd girl is some busted nerd girl and a wanna be goth. Get some sense will ya!

Thanks, Lars!!!

[CrazyClimber]

If Lars hadn't created the Fbucks chart, I would have done so for my own use. With a family to support, I can't justify bleeding-edge hardware.

I just hope that retailers don't think, "Hmm, the Ti 4600 is too good a value. We should raise the price..."

GeForce FX 5600U

[Studlee]

I was warned about getting this card, "Don't get it, and get a 9600 PRO or XT". But no I had to go with this one. Now I'm sorry I did not cause of the benchmark results but because of FPS in newer games.

Wrong information

[AshuBhai]

Tom's sure have their stats messed up

-The Radeon 9200 in the charts is actually Radeon 9200 SE. ( a 64 bit GPU card as opposed to the 128 bit Radeon 9200). I am sure people are gonna return cards back to the store basing on the review itself.

-A
ps: Any ideas from slashdotters on what should be an acceptable non gamer high performance card?? Stuff good enough for dvd's,photoshop ..the works..

The Fbuck's is so skewed it's incredible...

[ProppaT]

Okay Tom....great idea, I love the fbuck's concept. But just the concept....

See, to make it work you have to have VALID prices for your hardware. I want to know WHERE IN THE WORLD you can get a TI4600 for $65. If you go to www.bizrate.com, his source (btw, why not pricewatch? That's the defacto standard among computer geeks) you DO pull up a TI4600 for that price. However, when you read the details it's for a MX400 card.

Good work but, please, next time verify your information and use price watch. Until then, long live Anandtech!

Re: Multiple monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the real trick is to have (3) hooked up to a single PC, with monitors 2 & 3 running Terminal Services client to a pair of headless servers (or use them as extra desktop space for the main box). Unified clipboard makes it pretty nice. Easy to kick off CPU/disk intensive tasks on the servers while you keep moving right along on the main box.

$149.99, but no stock. $159 looks real.

[Futurepower(R)]

Froogle shows he's right. $149.99 is the minimum price, but they don't have any in stock. $159 looks real, but that is before shipping.