Video Card Pecking Order

[DraconisRex]

I'm on the last upgrade cycle on my ASUS P4P800 motherboard. This means I'm stuck with an AGP card because I'm not PCI-Express compliant. Also, since the last go-around when I bought my ATI 9600, video technology has kind of passed me by and I'm getting overwhelmed with the choices and it seems that some early revision processors like the X850 are more powerful than what I thought might be the later chips like the X1600.

With all that said, what I'm really interested in some help in navigating the pecking order. Perhaps a link, or someone with knowledge could give me a rough-order so I can make a rational decision instead of blindly buying.

Also, though I think it should go without saying, NVIDA and ATI chipsets are the only ones I'm interested in purchasing.

[Hivetyrant]

At the momment, in all honesty, it really comes down to which comapny you like more.

At the momment, ATI leads the benchmark scores withtheir new line of X1900 series, but something tells me that it wont be long before NVidia come up with something to take over, and then, once again, ATI will have a comeback and so on and so forth.

I just bought the X1900XTX which is the best single card on the market and could not be happier, but with great power comes great debt

If you give us a picture of your price range, we could make some suggestions for you, though you said you had AGP, and if your PC is getting old, a top of the line AGP card may not be able to be used how it should.

[The Kiwi]

I wouldn't have any answer, had I not visited places like Adrian's Rojak Pot, and the Tom's Hardware VGA roundup articles.

Your 9600 was never quite mid-level, falling between basic budget stuff and the 9600 Pro that represented an excellent bang for the buck compromise for its day, in the lower one-third of the mid-level range. A 9500 Pro is faster than a 9600 Pro, and a 9700 Pro was the apex of Radeon cards for awhile. A far newer Geforce 6200, in 128 Bit form, is in about the same speed class as the 9600's, but adds SM 3, and more game system features, so it's technically superior.

The Radeon 9500 Pro is the least speedy card that ATI proposed as adequate for Oblivion, unlike the hugely exaggerated claims suggested by nVidia.

Only the top two FX cards ever were in the same general class as the Radeon 9500 and 9700, but they had SM 2 problems (which accounts for some Oblivion gaming tweaks that are needed). The FX 5900 Ultra and 5950 Ultra were pretty fast, but had to slow down to deal with SM 2. I have a 5900, not the Ultra. A vanilla 5900 or Ultra 5700 would probably not be objectionable in Oblivion, but really don't have a large speed margin (until a scene include SM 2, which your card covers without slowing down), over the Radeon 9600's.

No other GPU maker has been competitive in 3D since nVidia bought out 3dFX, just ATI and nVidia. But both tend to litter the landscape with sub-model letter groupings like LE, SE, GS, GT, Pro, Ultra, XL, XT, and I probably left some out. Avoid any LE's or SE's as a general rule (there may be some few specific exceptions, but in general these are low value for the price cards). Be careful of XT's from nVidia, since rather than a "plus" version, like ATI uses XT for, it is likely to be almost an LE, crippled version, instead.

In today's market, the vanilla Geforce 6600 has been roughly the equivalent of your old card, neither bare bottom budget, nor quite mid-level. The newest NV member of the class is the 7600. The 6600GT held the spot in the middle of the middle class for biggest bang for the buck for a rather long time, and is still a decent card. ATI left a longer time gap than usual between their last Radeon 9xxx's and their initial X-series, giving nVidia's Geforce 6xxx's a pretty open field to establish themselves in.

The Radeon 9800's were good cards, but lacked some features found in the newer Geforce cards, like SM 3. I will be using a 9800 XT to play Oblivion when my spare PC is ready to go. When it's in an ATI card's name, the XT's are better than the Pro's. The nVidia letter codes put GT's in between the Vanilla cards, and the Ultra models on the top, speedwise. Incidentally, even the X800 and X850 lack the full panoply of gaming goodies that nVidia was offering, although they did catch up in speed. It took the ATI's X-1xxx's to surpass the Geforce 6xxx's, but before those were out, the Geforce 7xxx's had started to appear.

These have been interesting times the past three years, for 3D GPU's, at least.

Off the top of my head, subject to confirmation, starting with the 128-Bit Geforce 6200 as the least capable card anyone has that will more or less play Oblivion, then comes the FX 5900 Vanilla, the Geforce 7300, followed by the X700 Pro, and then the Radeon 9500 Pro, and the 5900 Ultra, 5950 Ultra, Radeon 9700 Pro, Radeon 9800, Geforce 6600, Radeon X1600, Radeon 9800 Pro, Geforce 7600, Geforce 6600 GT, Radeon 9800 XT, Geforce 6800 Vanilla, X800, X800 GTO, X800 XL, and Geforce 6800 GS, X850 XT, 6800 GT, X1800, Geforce 7800 GT, X1800 XT, Geforce 7800 GTX, X1900 XT. The Geforce 7900's are a bit new to be sure about, I think the fastest is in the X1900 XT's general speed territory.




[ 03-26-2006, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: The Kiwi ]

[TheCrimsomBlade]

Remember speed isn't everything, performance and
reliability is what you should look for as well as
the price. All of the cards can be found at Newegg.com
with some of the lowest prices and they have links
to each componet they sell.
The X800XT AGP and the X1300 can be picked up for
around $100.00 to $180.00.
All single core Video cards are droping in price fast
because of the newer PCI crossfire Duel cards on one
Mother Board and now the even newer (thanks to nVidia)
Twin Cards that have 2 cards married together with one
board connector giving you the ability to run 4 Video
cards on one computer, but these are not what you
want of course, they are just the main reason the very
good mid line and top line single cards have or should
I say are droping in price almost daily.

My son got the game Oblivion yesterday and has a 9800 pro
(the 9800 Pro is only $129.00 at New Egg or was on saterday)
on his computer and after installing the newest drivers the
game plays fine.
He did order a new Radeon X850 Pro from New Egg for
$279.00 Because his Mother Board is just over a year old and
has AGP slot and he has a Duel core AMD Athlon 64 processor so
his computer can and really needs one of the top end AGP cards.

As Hivetyrant said "If you give us a picture of your price range,
we could make some suggestions for you, though you said you had AGP,
and if your PC is getting old, a top of the line AGP card may not be
able to be used how it should."

But let us know what your systen is and weather its really worth a
high end AGP upgrade. Then we can give you a better Idea of where to go!

TCB

[ 03-26-2006, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: TheCrimsomBlade ]

[DraconisRex]

Kiwi, that was a very helpful post and kept me from making a huge error vis the suffix information you provided.

[The Kiwi]

Originally posted by DraconisRex: Kiwi, that was a very helpful post and kept me from making a huge error vis the suffix information you provided.

So far, I've never been pushing any video, since most typically what I do with PC's doesn't require great speed. I don't have copies of Coolbits or Rivatuner. I have read in forums at various OC sites, that the 6800SE cards from one or two brands were fairly easily unlocked or perhaos bios-flashed to a higher class level, and/or cranked up to greater speeds. The odds of being successful aren't ever 100% on that sort of thing, so it's a gamble.

P.S. Added in Edit: is there a FAQ on site to remind me which smilies are converted to graphics? It's been quite some time since I had a game to pique my interest, so I've been gone from here for awhile!




[ 03-27-2006, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: The Kiwi ]

[The Kiwi]

Not only is Oblivion the first game I've ever played that had a recommendation beyond the scope of my current video card, it's the first time I ever even took time to consider the hardware. I have nearly always had one PC on hand that was no further out of date than about three years (often involving a system BUILT only half as long ago, since I NEVER try to stay in the forefront of technology, since it's far less expensive to build with year-old {design} parts).

I don't play console style games. I don't play shooting games. I prefer turn- based multi- member parties, as in Might & Magic, NWN, Wizardry, etc. Those games traditionally don't push the hardware envelope. I never noticed any problem with Morrowind about performance, and might never have checked the requirements. I did quit playing MW early on, though. I couldn't get used to the controls.

At present, with the (other) PC here in this room, the quality settings are set to "Low", but in the starter dungeon, it's pretty dark, anyway. I'll finish installing Win2000 on the PC in my bedroom in a couple of days, and it will have a much faster VGA, that adds SM 2 capability that my FX 5900 lacks.

This game-driven hardware upgrade situation is a new one for CRPG's.


:|

[shamrock_uk]

Might I pick your brains Kiwi as to which of the Geforce 7600GT and the 256MB 7900GT you would buy?

I can have the 7600GT or pay an extra £150 for the 7900GT and want to max out Morrowind if poss.

This extensive review here is equally glowing about both.

[shamrock_uk]

Might I pick your brains Kiwi as to which of the Geforce 7600GT and the 256MB 7900GT you would buy?

I can have the 7600GT or pay an extra £150 for the 7900GT and want to max out Morrowind if poss.

This extensive review here is equally glowing about both.

[The Kiwi]

The 7900GT is within one model level of the fastest, most powerful nVidia GPU that there is. As such, only ATI's X1900XT is faster than the two top 7900's. On the other hand, the 7600 GT is not as fast as a 6800GS, and that 6800GS is sitting on the top of the performance per dollar heap. So I'd get it before a 7600, if we made the assumption that I personally would eat day-old bread with pinto beans for the next month to pay for it. Like I pointed out, the bleeding edge of technology is now and almost always has been too expensive to fit into the budget amounts I can allocate to my PC's.