What do you guys think of this video card?

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

the FX5900XT which is a very good deal indeed!

[Lucern]

Don't know about the newer cards, but the Geforce MX series makes me sad. I know they can't just say "This card is vastly, VASTLY slower than a Geforce without this MX label", but it would save consumers some trouble.

I had the card that you have a year and a half ago, and upgraded to a Geforce 4 MX (by a gift). Before I opened it, I checked it's performance on a few sites, and found that it was only marginally faster than the Geforce 2 MX that I had! I got a Geforce 4 Ti (a great card a year and a half ago) and was amazed by its performance. You're going to be very pleased whichever way you go I'm sure, because these cards are much faster than mine.

Knowing what card you have, I'm happy for you and your upgrade. However, knowing how very old the card is, I hope you have a reasonably new computer to put it in. There's a limit to what the card can do in a given environment, but given the research you've done, I'm sure you meet the requirements.

By the way my modest card and rig (P4 1.6 ghz) plays NWN, CIV III, and Rise of Nations just fine (and more recently The Sims 2 and IL2 Sturmovik). Morrowind had almost no graphics settings if I recall correctly, and it would pause every 20 steps or so outdoors. Annoying but playable. Yours will do fine I bet.

[Felix The Assassin]

I think it will send the signal to the monitor, just as adeqautely as any other video card to include the one you have does.

[frudi_x]

i wouldn't recommend the 5700 if you plan to use it for any significant amount of time. it's usually not that much faster than the old Geforce4 Ti series, except for the DirectX 9 support (that does it very little good, as it's not fast enough to run most DX9 games at decent frame rates).
don't get me wrong, it will run most of the games on your list easily (not sure about Rome:TW and Kotor 2 performance), so if you're sure you won't be playing anything more (graphicly) demanding in the not-so-near future, you will be very pleased with this card.
but in my mind, it does not justify it's price, considering that a 5900XT can be found for under $200 (USD) and has twice the processing power and twice the memory bandwith. this isn't the norm in computer technology - paying 30% more to get 100% higher performance; usually it's the other way around [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Memnoch]

So you guys all reckon I should get an FX5900? is the XT version ok?

[Link]

Check out Tom's Hardware site for a comparison of Video Cards. If the XT performs better than the normal 5900, I would know what to do

EDIT: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-03.html

Check out that review (it's a bit old, but the card is represented). Cheers, mate [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 09-21-2004, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: Link ]

[frudi_x]

the 5900XT is just like the regular 5900, except it's clocked a bit slower. otherwise the architecture is identical, both have 4 rendering pipelines with 2 texture units per pipeline and a 256-bit memory controller (compared to 4 pipelines with just a single texture unit and 128-bit memory on the 5700 series). end result is, the 5900XT will be 50-100% faster than the 5700 in practically all situations. considering the small difference in price, it makes a lot of sense to go for the 5900XT.
oh, just to clarify one thing - the 'XT' means different things for ATI and nVidia cards! ATI use it to mark their high end cards (the fastest in the family) while nVidia use it for clocked down versions of their cards. basicly, the 9800XT is the fastest in the 9800 family while the 5900XT is the slowest in the 5900 family. and both leave the 5700 in the dust [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 09-21-2004, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: frudi_x ]

[Memnoch]

OK, what about this one then?

-----------
WinFast A350XT TDH is powered by nVIDIA's GeForce FX 5900XT GPU, which using the advanced 0.13 micro process technology for higher levels of integration and higher operating clock speeds. The GeForce FX 5900XT is the fastest memory and the first GPU to delivery cinematic effects beyond your imagination for desktop users. Support Hardware monitor, bundled WinFastDVD, WinFox II software, Cult 3D , Coloreal Embedded , Coloreal Visual , Coloreal Bright , Gun Metal and Big Mutha Truckers games.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT GPU
CineFX II Engine
Intellisample Technology HCT
High-Precision Graphics
nView Multi-display Technology
Digital Vibrance Control (DVC)
Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
AGP 8X
0.13 Micron Process Technology
400MHz RAMDACs
Graphics Core: 256-bit
Engine clock 390 MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Vertices/sec. 292 million
Pixels per Clock (peak): 8
Textures per Pixel: 16(Maximum in a single rendering pass with 8 textures applied per clock.)
RAMDACs 400MHz
Architected for Cg
Microsoft® DirectX®9.0 Optimizations and Support
New 64-phase Video Scaler
OpenGL®1.5 Optimizations and Support
Video Mixing Renderer (VMR)
High-performance, high-precision 3D rendering engine
On-board DVI support up to 1600x1200 resolution
On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
Vivid NTSC/PAL TV-out support with flicker filter
Software Bundle

* WinFastDVD
* WinFox II
* Cult 3D
* Coloreal Embedded
* Coloreal Visual
* Coloreal Bright
* Gun Metal
* Big Mutha Truckers

-----------




This one's just a touch over $300 AUD (about $220-230 USD). Is it worth it?

[frudi_x]

nice choice [img]smile.gif[/img] . i was actually going to buy this very card a couple months ago, but then got a good deal on a used Radeon 9800 so i went for that.
i've seen them for less (about $200 USD), but it's still well worth it's price, specially compared to the 5700 series. the 300W power suply shouldn't be a problem, as that's what nVidia recommends for it.

[Ronn_Bman]

I don't know Mario, based on the games you play I think that is overkill.

I have a GeForce 4400ti, and I'm able to play both Doom3 and FarCry. Both run smooth and look great. You could probably get a ti series card for half of what you are proposing to spend. Yes they are older, but if they do the job, what does it matter? Especially when you can save big money.

The cards you are looking at now will come down in price and then because you spent less this time you can get them later with the money you've saved (plus a bit). I love having the biggest and the best, and when I bought this card it was pretty close to top of the line. The trouble was I bought it because I thought a problem I was having with NWN was do to the stock video card on my new machine. It turned out it had nothing to do with that, but I'd already spent the kind of money you're talking about.

I've had it over two years and it is still keeping up with what I'm doing. That is great, but I could have waited until Doom3 and FarCry came out and bought it for a song.

Good Luck!