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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: takemehomegrandma on May 30, 2003, 11:41:41 AM

Title: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: takemehomegrandma on May 30, 2003, 11:41:41 AM
Hi. I am upgrading my PC at the moment. I am looking for a quality, high performance 3D gfx card. I want "the best". I have read various tests and it seems like the ATI 9800 pro is beating the GeForce 5800 ultra hands down in almost every aspect, including one of the most important ones; NOISE! I have decided to go the ATI route.

But what brand would you recommend? Hercules? Sapphire?

The 9800 seems to be quite difficult to find in stock though, and that is a problem because I want it *now* ;-). This is one of the reasons I am not interested in upcoming cards like the GF5900 and 9800 with 256 MB DDR2 memory (the price of the latter is another ;-)).

I found a brand called "powercolor" in stock, but I have never heard of that one, and they had a somewhat dodgy website that gave bad impression ...
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: Karlos on May 30, 2003, 12:05:14 PM
Well, there's high-performance, and there's high-performance...

If money is not an issue :-) you could go for one of these (http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vp990/index.htm)...

I think you can get it for under $1000 :-)

-edit-

Incidentally, it wipes the floor with anything either nVidia or ATI have yet come up with (I have seen for myself)...
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: on May 30, 2003, 12:41:46 PM
Quote

Karlos wrote:
Well, there's high-performance, and there's high-performance...

If money is not an issue :-) you could go for one of these (http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vp990/index.htm)...

I think you can get it for under $1000 :-)

-edit-

Incidentally, it wipes the floor with anything either nVidia or ATI have yet come up with (I have seen for myself)...


Didn't NVidia buy 3DLabs after they bought 3DFX?
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: Karlos on May 30, 2003, 12:50:27 PM
Dunno. They belong to Creative IIRC. Maybe nVidia bought them too?

-edit-

If they did, how come their cards suck in comparison?
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: JoannaK on May 30, 2003, 01:00:05 PM
One thing about those High end Nvidias is that they do get part of their high marks by cheating on performance tests. There have been quite a big cheats on their drivers to et better benchmark numbers out from 3dMark and (apparently) other softwares used to comparing Gfx cards.  

See this (http://www.futuremark.com/companyinfo/3dmark03_audit_report.pdf) pdf file about findings of Futuremark people.


Quote
What Is the Performance Difference Due to These Cheats?
A test system with GeForceFX 5900 Ultra and the 44.03 drivers gets 5806 3DMarks with
3DMark03 build 320.
The new build 330 of 3DMark03 in which 44.03 drivers cannot identify 3DMark03 or the tests in
that build gets 4679 3DMarks – a 24.1% drop.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: mikeymike on May 30, 2003, 01:40:23 PM
I thought the recent customer-orientated ATI high range cards were quite noisy as well?

I'd never buy ATI because of their lack of attention to drivers on all their offerings.  From my experience you have to hope that they're paying particular attention to your card.  From reinstalling a friend's PC recently with an old ATI chipset in, my past experiences are confirmed once again.

I think it's a bad time to buy high range anything regarding x86 hardware.

I'm currently using a GeForce 4 Ti4200, pretty quiet.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: takemehomegrandma on May 30, 2003, 01:52:45 PM
Quote

Karlos wrote:
Well, there's high-performance, and there's high-performance...

If money is not an issue :-) you could go for one of these (http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vp990/index.htm)...

I think you can get it for under $1000 :-)

-edit-

Incidentally, it wipes the floor with anything either nVidia or ATI have yet come up with (I have seen for myself)...


That one looks cool, but it's
1) More of a workstation card than a gamers card (I want the latter)
2) DirectX 8.1
3) A little too expensive  :-P
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: bloodline on May 30, 2003, 01:56:09 PM
Quote
Didn't NVidia buy 3DLabs after they bought 3DFX?


No, 3DLabs are now owned by Creative
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: takemehomegrandma on May 30, 2003, 03:02:30 PM
Quote
I thought the recent customer-orientated ATI high range cards were quite noisy as well?


They have a fan too, but the noise level is not even close to the latest nvidia cards. The noise from geforce fx is often compared to a vacuum cleaner, and you might actually find it difficult to stay in the same room as the computer for a longer period of time.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: mikeymike on May 30, 2003, 03:42:45 PM
The GeForce FX really is a waste of space :-)
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: mikeymike on May 30, 2003, 03:44:03 PM
ATI has cheated on benchmark tests as many times as NVIDIA has, if not more.

And anyway, ATI's drivers are currently being investigated by FutureMark after some inconsistencies found as well, which ATI have admitted already :-)

ATI optimising for benchmark tests URL (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/30880.html)
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: Fot on May 30, 2003, 03:44:47 PM
Hi, I recently purchased a Powercolor 9500 Evil Commando X with 128MB. It's cheap and based on the ATi 9500 reference design. Was able to convert (http://duhvoodooman.com/9500mod/9500mod_1.htm) to a 9700 (enable the locked 4 pipelines) using the software mod. The DirectX9 ATi Radeon
demos (http://mirror.ati.com/developer/demos.html) are amazing. The NVidia
Dawn (http://www.rage3d.com/articles/atidawning/) demo is great to show off.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: KennyR on May 30, 2003, 03:53:39 PM
I got an ATI 9000. It may not be the fastest card on the market but has no fan at all and is hardly the slowest either. And the best thing is I don't have to use it with a crap OS. ;-)
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: Karlos on May 31, 2003, 01:07:17 AM
Quote

takemehomegrandma wrote:
That one looks cool, but it's
1) More of a workstation card than a gamers card (I want the latter)
2) DirectX 8.1
3) A little too expensive  :-P


True, it is a workstation card but, OpenGL compilant stuff runs very nicely indeed - including games ;-)

It's fully OGL2 compliant too, so shaders and the like are no problem. As for DX8, there probably are shader-centric drivers available - 3DLabs are very good in that respect.

As for cost, well heh, you got a point there...
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: downix on May 31, 2003, 01:16:03 AM
I like the PowerVR-based cards myself, but try findind one of the new
ones.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: Aegis on May 31, 2003, 02:01:58 AM
The most powerful consumer (i.e gaming) card available at the moment is either the ATI Radeon 9800 or the nVidia GeForce FX 5900 (just released) - both are pretty level performance wise but the nVidia is marginally faster at higher resolutions. I'd go for the nVidia 'cause their driver support rocks.

My current "weapon of choice" is an Albatron GeForce 4 Ti4680 Turbo (actually an AGP x8 Ti4200) - It's overclocked to faster than Ti4600 specs and soft-modded into a Quadro4 980 XGL - works great with LightWave!

How to turn your GeForce 2,3 or 4 into a Quadro (http://www.darksunworld.com/LightWave3D/SoftQuadroGuide.zip)
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: meerschaum on May 31, 2003, 02:05:33 AM
right now the graphics card world is a bit strange....

you got the Radeon 9800 with again ATI's natoriously buggy drivers...their still buggy/unstable although not nearly as bad as they used to be...(alot of people will deny this and say it works fine for what they do..but the sad fact is the cards buggy with straight OpenGL tasks, in Lightwave for example if you run Blade.lws and make a preview it'll be slower then a geforce3 or even a 2ultra)

you got the FX cards from Nvidia...their very hot...their very buggy in the driver department aswell...but you can count on the drivers getting better... because nvidia cares about its drivers unlike ati

you have the GeForce4 TI series cards... great price, good performance in all modern games, and the drivers are solid as a rock...

I myself right now...things bieng what they are I'd go with a GeForce4 ... its cheaper... it'll do the same job just as well with what we have 'NOW" and by the time it wont you'll be able to get something more stable and higher performing then the either ATI or Nvidia's current 'top-end' offerings...

It really depends what you do though... if you play alot of games every day and dont care about real OpenGL support or possible driver issues with certin chipsets.... you can get a Radeon 9800 and have fun... "right now" I could say the same for the FX but Nvidia bieng who they are they will undoubtedly change this with future drivers..if you want decent/good performance at a price that will leave ya with some cash for the future I'd snag a Ti4400/4600 or 4800 GeForce4 ... their the best bang for the buck right now and their a good 'all around' card not just gaming... and not just windows... their pretty solid 3D performers for application 3D... etc etc etc..
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: jeffimix on May 31, 2003, 05:12:47 AM
I find my NVIDIA GeForce2 MX (tm) with 32Mb of VRAM is pretty nice. 4X GAGP with DVI interface (??). It's quiet too. Of course my favorite game right now 'runs best in 256 color mode' and runs on both OS/2 and windows 95. So I'm not exactly a power gamer (tried Morrow-Wind once, skippy to the point of basically unplayable) I've heard good things about Matrox cards, which everyone seems to be ignoring here.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: pVC on May 31, 2003, 10:09:44 AM
And this is related to Amiga... how?
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: on May 31, 2003, 10:32:12 AM
Quote

pVC wrote:
And this is related to Amiga... how?


AmigaOne has an AGP slot, so does Pegasos.  That makes it an Amiga hardware discussion.
Title: Re: Looking for a quality, high performance gfx card
Post by: on May 31, 2003, 10:43:25 AM
Quote

Aegis wrote:
The most powerful consumer (i.e gaming) card available at the moment is either the ATI Radeon 9800 or the nVidia GeForce FX 5900 (just released) - both are pretty level performance wise but the nVidia is marginally faster at higher resolutions. I'd go for the nVidia 'cause their driver support rocks.

My current "weapon of choice" is an Albatron GeForce 4 Ti4680 Turbo (actually an AGP x8 Ti4200) - It's overclocked to faster than Ti4600 specs and soft-modded into a Quadro4 980 XGL - works great with LightWave!

How to turn your GeForce 2,3 or 4 into a Quadro (http://www.darksunworld.com/LightWave3D/SoftQuadroGuide.zip)


Anyone know how to do this with the Linux NVidia drivers?