Video cards help

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » November 8, 2004, 9:44 pm

So I know this has been debated here a gazillion times but.. what is once more! I'm looking to upgrade my video card, first for EQ2 and possibly for WoW. I'm not looking to spend $5-600 but want a decently priced good card. I know the ATi vs Nvidia debate will kick off again so.. give me some pointers please!

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » November 8, 2004, 10:55 pm

Kelshara wrote:So I know this has been debated here a gazillion times but.. what is once more! I'm looking to upgrade my video card, first for EQ2 and possibly for WoW. I'm not looking to spend $5-600 but want a decently priced good card. I know the ATi vs Nvidia debate will kick off again so.. give me some pointers please!

I just bought this card and it rox.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » November 9, 2004, 12:02 am

Ok call me stupid, but.. is that AGP or PCI-Express? It says both!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 9, 2004, 3:23 am

you said you didnt want to spend 5-600.00

If you are looking in the 350-400.00 range, the nVidia 6800GT (its direct competition would be the ATi X800 Pro) is the card to get. I've had it a little over a month now and it's rock solid and works great. I can't help with any other price range as that's all I researched.

Drolgin Steingrinder · November 9, 2004, 7:29 am

Another option is looking at the slightly older cards and o/c'ing them or getting firmware fixes - like getting a radeon 9700 and upgrading it to a 9800 XT.

archeiron · Post by **archeiron** » November 9, 2004, 8:55 am

It would be best if you let everyone know what your price range is. There are fairly well accepted leaders in each price range save the top positions - which can be disputed based upon which tests you rely on.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » November 9, 2004, 9:56 am

Kelshara wrote:Ok call me stupid, but.. is that AGP or PCI-Express? It says both!

It's an 8x AGP card

Those of you talking up the high end cards...look, I'm all about the value. When I see a card with 256 MB of video RAM, and a processor that only six months ago was close to the best you could get, priced at $99, I'm all over that. I'll pocket the $300 difference and smile.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » November 9, 2004, 10:30 am

I've been looking at modding an older card like Drolgin stated. It appears to be a hit or miss as to the mod actually getting full benefit from the firmware mod (9600 to 9600 pro, 9700 to 9800 pro etc etc).

For it to work and for the pipes to be fully utilized you have to buy cards from specific manafacturers and even then you may get the full range or you may get some subset of a complete upgrade.

I'm looking specifically at the 9800se to 9800 pro mod. What pretty much happens is the guys that make the VPU get defective chips when they run a batch. Then they use these defective chips in the SE model, assuming it has 4 working pipes. You can load the 9800 pro firmware and enable the other 4 pipes. Any bad ones can cause visual artifacts or even cause the card not to work.

Supposedly the Sapphire 256bit 9800 SE rarely if ever has defective VPU's crippled to only 4 pipes. So if you can track one of those down that's the best bet on getting the most bang for the buck.

Here's a link on the card mod needed:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?lo ... 101&var2=0

edit: After reading a bit more, the article linked above uses a Powercolor instead of Sapphire. I'll have to find the one that recommended the Sapphire.

archeiron · Post by **archeiron** » November 9, 2004, 12:13 pm

The reason that mod'ing the 9800se was so popular was that many manufacturers couldn't keep up with the demand and so they were putting basically functional chips in that could be mod'ed with a high success rate.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » November 9, 2004, 12:27 pm

Did Winnow say that he is currently running an NVidia card?

Besides that the 6600GT should be out soon if not already and it will run about $200 and is almost as fast as the 6800.

Marb

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 9, 2004, 1:45 pm

Drolgin Steingrinder wrote:Another option is looking at the slightly older cards and o/c'ing them or getting firmware fixes - like getting a radeon 9700 and upgrading it to a 9800 XT.

I upgraded to the 6800GT from one of the first ATi 9700 Pros. The ATi9700Pro will go down in graphics card history as one of the top performing cards for its time and for the length of time it spent as king of the kill. The small step up to 9800's wasn't worth it for me so I ended up keeping that card much longer than I normally would.

Where are you seeing 9700 pros for sale? I haven't seen them for sale in a long long time...like over a year.

As much as I like the 9700Pro, I wouldn't recommend it for EQ2. It's on it's last legs. Get a 256mb card (EQ2 takes advantage of the extra memory)

I'd check into the new 6600GTs being released this month if you are thinking in the 200.00 range.

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » November 10, 2004, 10:52 am

I got one of those 256bit 9800se's. Don't do it. They are on New Egg for like $130, you can get a 9800pro for $200....so just buy the pro and accept the guaranteed performance.

My 9800se was a powercolor, and it did not unlock without artifacts. I only paid $50 for it (ebay), and did not expect it to unlock, I figured it was worth the shot.

In other words, if you can get it for less than $75, sure, try it out, any more, just buy a real deal card.

To give you an idea about performance: the 9800se with only 4 pipes can play Doom 3 at high quality (not ultra high) @ 1024 x whatever and it only gets an average of 23fps on my rig. (2.4 P4, 1gb dual channel DDR). Not the best rig, but a better card would still fly on it.

Also, I would listen to Winnow. The 6600GT will be out in agp format shortly, and at only $200, you cannot go wrong. It will perform better or comparably to a 9800pro, and they will be $200 as well once that 6600 comes out in agp. My rationale for this is that the x700pro is $200 now, and it is basicly the 9800pro in pci-express...so the agp 9800pro should be the same price....when it has proper competition.

That way, you can get a great card from either of your favorite company.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » November 19, 2004, 2:33 am

Question for you guys, is it worth getting 256mg cards? I heard that not many games really take advantage of the extra memory.

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » November 19, 2004, 4:03 am

Does anyone know of a good OC'ing utility for Nvidia cards? I just picked up an FX5700LE because it was dirt cheap and an upgrade to my GF3, and was wondering what kind of OC'ing software was out there so I could boost it up a bit (as I noticed that there is a considerable improvement in speed when OCing this card).

Neost · Post by **Neost** » November 19, 2004, 11:44 am

I have a 5700le Optima (PNY) that has 250mhz core and 500mhz memory. I tried rivatuner for OC'ing and it sucked balls.

The next one on the list was Powerstrip and it works fine. OC'ing is very simple. You have a slide for core and a slider for memory. You set them where you want them and apply.

An article I read purported to take a 5700le core to 320 and the memory to about 510 and it was stable. That has not been my experience. I'm able to get about 275 on the core and not touch the memory. Anything more than that seems to introduce instabliities.

With the 5700le overclocked as above, I can run EQ2 on my P41.8ghz w/512mb ram with some detail turned on. At least I don't have amorphous blobs running across the screen anymore.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » November 19, 2004, 12:16 pm

The PCI Express bus is basically 16x AGP, that sounds pretty cool until you read further and see that nothing is pushing near the upper limits of 8x AGP yet.

It's nice, but not curently worth paying extra for, or upgrading other components to get into.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » November 19, 2004, 12:21 pm

Sionistic wrote:Question for you guys, is it worth getting 256mg cards? I heard that not many games really take advantage of the extra memory.

EQ2 and Half Life 2 supposedly take full advantage of 256mb video RAM. As graphics get more detailed and models use more polygons/vertices, the need for caching will only increase hence the need for more vRAM.

I can say from experience that my 256mb GeForce 5700LE with 256mb vRAm kicks ass at EQ2.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » November 19, 2004, 12:23 pm

Neost wrote:I have a 5700le Optima (PNY) that has 250mhz core and 500mhz memory. I tried rivatuner for OC'ing and it sucked balls.

The next one on the list was Powerstrip and it works fine. OC'ing is very simple. You have a slide for core and a slider for memory. You set them where you want them and apply.

An article I read purported to take a 5700le core to 320 and the memory to about 510 and it was stable. That has not been my experience. I'm able to get about 275 on the core and not touch the memory. Anything more than that seems to introduce instabliities.

With the 5700le overclocked as above, I can run EQ2 on my P41.8ghz w/512mb ram with some detail turned on. At least I don't have amorphous blobs running across the screen anymore.

Neost, why not use coolbits2? it's the simplest OC utility available for nvidias, all it is is a registry patch that unlocks the native nvidia oc sliders in the display control panel.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 19, 2004, 1:30 pm

Update on the performance of my nVidia 6800GT 256 OC card: Tubular

My computer has been extremely stable and that's with a dual monitor/projector setup with less common resolutions and timings. EQ2 performance was excellent. WoW sucks and you shouldn't play it but that performed excellent as well.

PS: you should have at least a 2.4GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM before getting a card like this if you want to take advantage of it fully. If you're trying to stick this card into a weak system you're writing checks your computer can't cash.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » November 19, 2004, 1:32 pm

omg I missed the memo

teh ATI bigot went nVidia?! <gasp>

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 19, 2004, 2:03 pm

Tenuvil wrote:omg I missed the memo

teh ATI bigot went nVidia?! <gasp>

I go with the best high performance/value at the time I need a card! ATi dominated nVidia for so long you just assumed I was an ATi fanboi : )

PS: X800 XT is still the best card but valuewise it's not worth 200.00 over the 6800GT.

ATi Rulez! Athon sucks! Intel Rulez! Game Cube Sucks! X-Box Rulez!

Kilmoll the Sexy · Post by **Kilmoll the Sexy** » November 19, 2004, 2:08 pm

The only thing using PCI express is fucking Intel. You can't get a good PCI express card right now as they are so limited.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » November 20, 2004, 2:17 pm

ok, Im looking for a good value card and I cant go above 240ish bills.
Ive been looking at the radeon 9800 pro 256. Ive seen one site that has it for $190 but it says powercolor, and I cant find pro in the description. Is it the same card? http://www.z-buy.com/product.asp?item=VG-ATR980P

Found it off pricewatch here http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=37&a=5522&f=1
What confuses me is that I see (what I beleive to be) a card of similar power at this site for $239
http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product ... EF5HV7D4N1

This one has sapphire on it, and I honestly have no idea what that means.

Then when it comes to the nvidia side, I dont really know much either.
I guess the FX5900 128 is decent for the price but I'm not sure.

Need help please!

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » November 20, 2004, 7:36 pm

Sionistic wrote: This one has sapphire on it, and I honestly have no idea what that means.

You mean other than it's manufactured by Sapphire?

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » November 20, 2004, 8:13 pm

So that means manufacturer, gotcha, how much does that impact the product itself?

Foler · Post by **Foler** » November 20, 2004, 8:24 pm

I found the geforce 6800 to have a fuckton of problems with OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of games so I mainly like the geforce fx series, I currently have a fx 5900 256mb

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » November 20, 2004, 8:32 pm

ATI and nVidia both produce the graphics chips (GPU) and sell these in bulk to board manufacturers that the design a board that will provide transport from the GPU to the video RAM and the motherboard. It seems nVidia does a lot more of this, only "real" nVidia graphics cards I've used were reference boards provided directly by nVidia through back channels for review, testing, etc.

What this means in terms of performance depends on the particular board; I've seen some manufacturers turn out cards that not only had sub-par performance but won't even operate with the "reference" drivers from the chip manufacturers, others manage to squeeze a little more performance out of the chip than others.

It's hard to say these days if price is a measure of quality though.. and it's more likely for ATI to make a conservative board with slightly better quality components and slightly lower performance, while the third party guys tend to use cheaper RAM to hit price points, and try to tweak out the cards to give better benchmarks but are likely to have a shorter life span too. It's all a bit of a crap shoot unless the board you're looking at has been around 12+ months and you can check google for problems on the manufacture/chip combo.

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » November 21, 2004, 11:55 am

On black friday, CompUSA is selling the 6800 vanilla for only $200 (300 - 70 instant -30 main in).

Not a bad deal at all for this card....but you do have to venture out on Black Friday....

If you're thinking of paying over $200 for a 9800pro, don't. Just wait until the 6600gt is more agp mainstream available, and buy that. It will also drive the 9800 price down....just give it time.

murr · Post by **murr** » November 21, 2004, 2:36 pm

The 6800 GT and 6600 GT look like the best buys to me - I'm going to be picking one of the two up for christmas, not sure which.
Valuewise the 6600GT is pretty nuts. Looking at some of the benchmarks on anandtech it pretty much blows away the 9800 pro in all but a few select cases (in HL2 there isn't a significant difference), and the 5900's can't hold a candle it to it. And it's only $200.

VeeshanVault

Video cards help

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