Which? Graphic Cards
 

Ok ok im sure you all have discussed this a million times but the time has come for myself to get a new graphic card coz my GeForce2 just doesnt cut the mustard any more.

My system looks like this:

Pentium 4 1.9Ghz
512 SD Ram
40 Gig Hard drive
GeForce 2 Mx400 64Mb
576k/s Broadband connection

Now im looking for a good card to be bought from the UK (as im in the south of england) and top of the range so to speak.

IF anyone can give some input into which are the ones to consider and which to avoid, taking my system into consideration then please help.

(Links and prices would be hlepful too) :)

Cheers,

Rico

Radeon 9700 Pro - awesome! bigzooka:

Better yet, get yourself a Radeon 9500 (150USD) (128MB NOT pro) and use a program called riva tuner to mod it into a 9700 Pro.

You can find riva tuner at guru3d.com, as well as info on how it works.

Ok cheers for your input. I take it the GeForce4 is not worth it?

One other question, i see the Radeon 9700 and 9500 have 128 MB of DDR graphics memory. My PC uses 512 SD Ram, are they compatible? (will the card run fine?)

Yes, the card is sompatoble with sdram, as the card has it's own processor, and the radeon 9700 pro has better stats than the GeForce 4, plus it can be cheaply aquired through the software mod biggrin:

9500 has 64mb ddr not 128 sorry.

rico the 9500 has three different types a 64 MB, a 128MB, and a 128 MB pro i will find a link for you

Sounds good to me matey thanks.

Do you have it? Or know anyone that does? Sounds odd that it can be achieved for a much lower price.

A bit off topic, was searching for soem cards on ebay and found a monster of a machine for $3.5k

Get a load of this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=31508

Well, i got my card from bananapc.com but they have pulled it from their stock anyway here is a link on another site:

http://pcpart4less.com/product/vcrdn00024.html

Yes i realize it is odd, but ifyou think about it, it makes thing easier for the manufactureer to make only one card and sell a different driver with the card to underclock it

Damn. That is one crazy system. The only thing lacking is the sound card. While the card is good, 7.1 surround card are available for a mere $50 and the quality on my card is AWESOME

Thanks for your help matey.

While searching i found the 9700 for £232 online: http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?rev_id=95&cat_id=64

Would help if i gave the right link :D

https://www.chillblast.com/?=productsde ... &PGSID=310

1. Is it the 9700 Pro?
2. Sorry, don't know the conversion of pounds to us dollars!

Ok i got it. That is about the standard price of a 9700. The 9500 is eaqual to 98 Pounds

Its about $370. Prices of goods are different, for the UK thats the lowest price there is i think. (It is the 9700 pro as well)

Here is a pic I took using my Radeon 9700 Pro - don't laugh but it is football oOo:

[img]http://www.soccergaming.tv/attachment.php?s=65e3f3318724ec712369c0ac69c0eeb1& postid=492747[/img]

You can get a RADEON 9700 Pro for about 300 bucks.

Really? Can you get the core clock and the memory clock both up to 9700pro specs? That is very cool to know if you can. I can get my ti4200 64mb up to near ti4600 memory speeds, but the core clock just cant go that far.

Anyone that isnt overclocking their vids is selling themselves short. No real risk, easy to do, nothing but goodtimes. cool:

Ewwww....., Ahhhhhhh,....., Ohhhhhhh.......

The 9800 pro is coming soon....

Check out this site, the second article down.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/

the core clock rates are actually slightly higher, but some of the other stats are slightly lower, like memory bandwidth, but not much

So that card is coming out tomorrow?

If so the 9700 prices should fall a bit

go to pricewatch.com to check for prices on 9700 pro or 9500 pro

Just get the 9700 pro when 9800 comes out (sould be lower prices). The 9500 isnt worth it, cuz it dosnt have the 256bit memory bus width, which doubles memory bandwidth,,, which helpls a lot, especially AA+AF.

I think I read that there is a 9900 coming out in April also.

that is some sweet hardware? 3 thousand bucks for red x's? eek:

thats a ripoff

ATI needs to be bitch slapped for having th most confusing naming structure ever. You would thing that if they were going to use numbers, that the higher numbers would be better. Oh no, not ATI. Sneaky bastards.

nvidia does it too, but at least they are consistent. At least they put the mx or a ti on the name to give you a clue.

I wonder how many peeps have a 9700 and think they have a 9700 pro. Or how many think that a 9000 is superior to a 8500?

the 8500 is actually superior to the 9000 biggrin:

i agree pest. at least nvidia has increasing numbers for a newer card and a mx ti followed by a number to help. they should start slapping a better than stick on there, so like if a geforce FX came out it should have a sticker that says "better than geforce 4 ti...."

that is some sweet hardware? 3 thousand bucks for red x's? eek:[/quote:869b2]

The sale has ended now, the pics used to show up and the machine looked really really good, oh well.

that system was crazzy and the geForce 4 is over rated just read an article on it so. they said that all things concidered the 9700 is better then geForce 4 so go with that

i heard that the ATI cards can have some problems with UT2003 but i dunno if they were resolved or not.

also, someone said something about a GF4 Ti4200 being easily overclocked to 4600 stats. How can that be done, i have a Ti4200 with 128mb ram and really don't get the performance i expected.

[quote="Jumpin Jack Flash":e13f5]i heard that the ATI cards can have some problems with UT2003 but i dunno if they were resolved or not.

also, someone said something about a GF4 Ti4200 being easily overclocked to 4600 stats. How can that be done, i have a Ti4200 with 128mb ram and really don't get the performance i expected.[/quote:e13f5]

Games like UT2003, Americas Army, No One Lives Forever, and a few others were built strictly to use the power of the GeForce technoligy, which is why they can move so fluently. They might have patched UT2003 to work with other cards just as well, check for updates @ [url="http://www.fileplanet.com"]http://www.fileplanet.com[/url]

I wouldn't overclock a videocard, EVER. It's alot harder, and alot more unstable compared to a CPU. If you have water-cooling and heatsinks for the RAM chips on the card, then you can try.

if you are into overclocking your ATI go to http://www.rage3d.com

[quote="Bazooka_Joe":f7f1a]
I wouldn't overclock a videocard, EVER. It's alot harder, and alot more unstable compared to a CPU. If you have water-cooling and heatsinks for the RAM chips on the card, then you can try.[/quote:f7f1a]

Huh??? Video cards are much easier with none of the risk. The worst thing that happens is you start getting artifacts on the screen. Then you just back it down. CPUs will ruin Operating systems, destroy themselves or your mobo.

To the guy that asked, I use riva tuner. I got the core speed up to 275 and the memroy speed up to 583. With the 128 card you should be able to get about the same on the core speed but not as much on the memory speed. The 128mb cards dont have as overclockable memory as the 64mb cards. When I said close to 4600 speeds, I was talking about the memory speed, the core is still materially slower. I got an extra 500 pts on my 3d mark scores.

[quote=pest]Huh??? Video cards are much easier with none of the risk. The worst thing that happens is you start getting artifacts on the screen. Then you just back it down. CPUs will ruin Operating systems, destroy themselves or your mobo.

To the guy that asked, I use riva tuner. I got the core speed up to 275 and the memroy speed up to 583. With the 128 card you should be able to get about the same on the core speed but not as much on the memory speed. The 128mb cards dont have as overclockable memory as the 64mb cards. When I said close to 4600 speeds, I was talking about the memory speed, the core is still materially slower. I got an extra 500 pts on my 3d mark scores.[/quote:bf1f0]

Not nesscessarily. Particles and distorment are the start, but without optimum cooling, your actually burning the filaments in the GPU. This is real bad for the card. If you have a recent video card (I'd say GF4 or RADEON series), the card should by default just turn off, hence you crash or freeze. But older cards are not all guranteed to do this.

ATI's Drivers are for what i have read arnt that good Catlyst Drivers they put out are few in between to fix certain things. NIVIDIA has put out thier Drivers more constant to whats going with thier VID's. Thats not to say that
ATI hasnt made a Nastier Card then NVIDIA right now its up to the person to do the resetrach to see whats good for the $$$$$$$$$ you have to spend to play a game that will knock your socks off when you look at the
Graphics.

i think which everone you buy you wont be making a mistake

[quote="Bazooka_Joe":388c6]
Not nesscessarily. Particles and distorment are the start, but without optimum cooling, your actually burning the filaments in the GPU. This is real bad for the card. If you have a recent video card (I'd say GF4 or RADEON series), the card should by default just turn off, hence you crash or freeze. But older cards are not all guranteed to do this.[/quote:388c6]

Baby steps are the second rule for overclocking. The first rule is dont overclock if you cant afford to replace the hardware if anything goes wrong. With cpu oc'ing, more can go wrong and you could lose more, including any data on your hardrrive.