GameBanshee Forums

I am in the processing of shopping for a VC to upgrade my cpu, thanks to Morrowind. I noticed, when searching it appears that NVidia's Geforce and Radeon are the top two out there...any other suggestions?

Also, I've seen quite a few NVidia Geforce 4...however it appears that there are many different setups for the Geforce 4 card. For example I saw one called a "PNY/VERTO/GeForce 4/Ti 4600/128mb" and another was "Gainward Geforce 4 TI 4200 64mb Ultra/650 TV".

Being that the manufacturer's name on the box are different...is there a difference in the video cards themselves?

Thanks for your feedback and help.

You may have to dig a little bit into these threads, but you can look here for some advice and technical discussion on video cards.

New Video card: Advice required

help me choose please

Choosing a video card mostly depends on the tasks that you mostly do on your computer.

If you want to play graphic intensive games such as Unreal Tournament 2003 or Morrowind, then you should probably choose a GeForce4 Ti series card or an ATI Radeon card in the 9000 series. These cards usually run in the range of $200-400.

If you want to play non-graphic intensive games like the Infinity Engine games or strategy games, then maybe you should choose a GeForce 2 or 3 or a lower ATI Radeon card. These cards usually run in the range of $<100 to $200.

The difference in the manufactures is usually architectural. Some manufactures deviate from the blueprint that the Nvidia and ATI provide them, like overclocking them or adding extra features. There's also a difference between what kind of extra software the manufactures include and stuff like that. But usually the architectural design of the video cards themselves aren't too radically different.

The links that HighLordDave provided are very comprehensive and informative. I suggest that you read through them first.

Check out the graphics card? thread for some more discussion about video boards. There is some in depth information about the various GeForce cards and even some stuff on the Radeons. Hope this helps.

Ok, I am putting a new system together in the very near future (yay! ) My first question, hence posting here, is graphics cards. I have checked the links given to previous discussions, though some are a little out of date now.

I was wondering, forget the cost, should I go for:

NVidia Ti4400 or 4600 or
Radeon 9500 or 9700 ?

Big question I know, sorry - I am just asking for direct opinions please I always leaned towards the NVidia...but the system I am looking at offers a Radeon 9500, but this is changeable/upgradeable...I heard that the 9500 is Direct X9 ready, whereas the NVidia's are not (but assume driver updates will sort this).

Any thoughts/opinions greatly appreciated - thank you

BTW, this new pc is to last me a bit and gameswise I play NWN, IWD, BG series etc etc - and would like to try Morrowind without the glitches.

If you are budget-minded, go with the GeForce cards because right now they are cheaper than Radeon cards, and the games you mentioned (NWN, IWD, BG, Morrowind, etc) should run very well on a GeForce 4 Ti 4400 or 4600.

As for the Radeon cards, are these the Pro-version or the non-Pro version? The difference between the Radeon 9700 Pro and the regular 9700 isn't that much great, and I own a Radeon 9700 regular version and have no problem with those graphic-intensive games as the Unreal Tournament 2003/Quake 3. As for DirectX 9 compatibilty, that factor shouldn't come into play so much because none of the games right now use DX9 features. But since you've mentioned that this PC is gonna last you a while, then you should plan for the future and get the card that'll remain non-obsolete the longest. So the Radeon 9700, whether regular or Pro, should last maybe another year and a half.

One more thing is technical support. Traditionally Nvidia had the better support, and the newest ATI drivers that supposedly is the first to support DirectX9 gave me some pretty big problems on my machine. So Nvidia has the better driver supports.

So some things to consider are:
1) types of game you play
2) amount of money you have
3) how long do you want the graphic card to last you
4) driver support.

IMO, I'd recommend the Radeon 9700, but I could also easily recommend the GeForce4 Ti 4600.

Well I would say Ti4400 or 4600 purely due to the more stable drivers, or buy a 4200 for the time being and upgrade when another, better card comes out. (be it Radeon or Nvidia)

The new Nvidia cards should be out in the new year sometime, worth the wait I feel...I am happy with my 4200 though

@Yshania:
Unless you get a deal on the GeForce4 Ti 4400 or 4600, I'd save a little bit of cash and get a 128 MB Ti 4200. The types of games you cite (the Infinity Engine games) use 2-D graphics and you won't see a tremendous amount of improvement if you get the Ti 4400 or 4600. I'm not sure about Morrowind, but I've run Neverwinter Nights on my Ti 4200 and haven't had any problems with graphics. However, I've noticed that the prices on the Ti 4600s have dropped under $250 (USD) for OEM cards, so you may want to shell out a few extra bucks for a higher-end card.

I hear the Radeon 9000 and 9700s look good, but ATI's shaky driver support may be a good enough reason to avoid them. Another mark (in my opinion) against the Radeon 9700 series is that they support the 8X AGP bus, but there aren't a lot of 8X motherboards out there. I think it's a waste of money to get an 8X AGP card only to put it in a 4X AGP slot; that's like buying a Porsche but never driving it over 80 mph.

What it boils down to, though is this: what can you get the best price on? Whichever card you get will be obsolete in 90 days, and it will be less expensive, too. Find the best deal out there, pull the trigger on the purchase and don't look back in six weeks to see what bigger, faster and better system is available.

Thanks for your opinions guys To give you an idea of the overall picture, I had budgeted £1000 for a pc that will do me fine for 18 months - 2 years before necessitating any kind of real upgrade. I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or any other peripheral - just the box.

I have seen two pcs on offer (just the box ) with the following specs:

pc 1 - £1000

VIA KT400
Athlon XP 2800
Radeon 9500 128MB 8x AGP Graphics
512MB DDR
120gb 7200 HD
48x CD-RW
16x DVD
Firewire
6 channel sound
4x USB
Connect Plus (?)
Full size casing

pc 2 - £800

As above but with the following differences:

Athlon XP 2600
GeForce 4 128mb 8x AGP (I assume this is the Ti4600?)
256MB DDR

Here's what I would do:

Get the second one; drop the DVD drive and double the memory up to 512 MB. If you want to watch DVDs that much, use the money you'd save over the first computer to buy a new TV and DVD player.

For future proofing get yourself the Radeon card. It is the only one which is hardware DX9 compliant, although, as pointed out, no games currently use this. But, Doom 3 anyone?

ATI's new Catalyst version 3 drivers are excellent. Shame about the version 3 betas which were dire.

Personally I would not buy any of the Nvidia cards you list, it's too much money for last generation technology. Nvidia appear to be having all sorts of problems getting their new NV30 chipset to market. It was promised by Christmas just gone but guess what.... Preliminary indications are also that it will not be all that much better than the Radeon - they may have clocked the memory to ridiculous levels but at the moment it only has 128bit memory where as the Radeon provides much more bandwidth at 256 bit.

Further to my previous post, I would suggest dropping the 2800. If you buy a 2600 you will get only a very very slight performance reduction, but a fair old cash saving. The difference would probably fund a Radeon 9700 pro. You can even buy a 2400 and unlock it to run on a 166 bus, most of them will clock up to at least a 2600 and some to a 2700. However, you need to be careful because if you make a mess of unlocking and bust the chip you have just lost your warranty.

I can't stress this enough, if you are buying a high end graphics card, get a decent power supply, 450W true power - something by Enermax or Sparkle. Make sure you have plenty of case fans too - those high end cards draw a lot of juice and produce a lot of heat.

Cooling for your chip is also important the Thermaltake SLK 800 is about the best solution but it is expensive and you need to buy a fan seperately.

Originally posted by Silver Knight
For future proofing get yourself the Radeon card.

Heh, future proofing graphics cards...that is quite amusing. I don't see a reason to buy graphics cards for a game that hasn't come out yet in the vague hope it will play it correctly, better to buy a cheap card for now and buy a card later to run Doom 3 (or whatever).

True the new Nvidia card is having problems, however I think it is best to wait and see what happens than shell out loads of moola and then have the whole scene change again.

Sound advice otherwise. Enermax are great!

Originally posted by Mr Sleep
Heh, future proofing graphics cards...that is quite amusing. I

Yeah, I guess I walked right into that one.

I don't think there's any question that the Radeon 9700 is the best card you can get at the moment. And at UK prices it is only about £50 more than the Ti4800. Did Nvidia really think that putting a 4600 on an 8x bus and rebranding it would fool anyone?
Probably, yes.

If you want a cheaper card I would suggest a Ti 4200. You can get a modded one, from PNY I think, which goes like the clappers and is much cheaper, about half the price of the 4600/4800.

I didn't think the 2800 processor was available in the UK as yet, even specialist overclocking suppliers don't seem to have have them.

Originally posted by Silver Knight
I don't think there's any question that the Radeon 9700 is the best card you can get at the moment.

True, my only issue would be drivers since ATI were notorious for a while with their poor drivers, where as I have never had any problem with Nvidia drivers (except using unsupported ones )

Well the 4200 as a stop gap is what I am doing, a lot of things are changing in hardwarem, like a new chip from AMD and I am just waiting to see what happens with that before I commit any real money.

Originally posted by Mr Sleep
ATI were notorious for a while with their poor drivers

new chip from AMD and I am just waiting to see what happens with that before I commit any real money.

ATI's driver support is improving tremendously. My hoary old Radeon 8500 is soldiering on thanks to the Catalyst drivers and a bit of overclocking. I will soon by buying a 9700 though

I don't think I will be buying AMD's Barton chip, as far as I am aware all they have done is increase the size of the L2 cache, which will make it better but probably not by enough to justify the expenditure. I am awaiting the Clawhammer processors although that will require a new motherboard and I have only just ironed out the kinks in this one!

Originally posted by Silver Knight
I am awaiting the Clawhammer processors although that will require a new motherboard and I have only just ironed out the kinks in this one!

Clawhammer, that is it. By then hopefully AGP8x will have been implimented a little more productively program wise and everything will be bug free...here is hoping

There's always hope, if not expectation

Originally posted by Silver Knight
There's always hope, if not expectation

Heh, there is never fulfilment of that hope or expectation

You guys, with the hope! Hah, you make me laugh....