choosing a video card....

Gamespider · Post by **Gamespider** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:14 pm

I am planning yo buy the Geforce fx 5200 GPU to kick up my RF performance. Is it a good buy?

Post by **AndyCR** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:51 pm

it depends on the manufacturer, memory it has, slot it takes, ect... stay away from pci slot video cards if you can...

the 5200 isnt bad, i almost picked it up, are you planning on the ultra or non-ultra?

for rf development, ive heard its perfect, ask GD1, i believe he has one... if you're planning for the future, i would go with the 5600, or a radeon 9500 or 9600...

prices:

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getp ... force+5200 - $36.00 oem
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 1c3grabb3r - $43.00 retail (retail normally has a better warantee and has manuals, cables, etc. whereas oem dosen't)

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/ ... /index.htm - review of one vendor's version of the card, they all have the same gpu (processor) so the performance shouldnt vary that much from vendor to vendor within a givin card (one guy's version of the geforce fx 5200, another guy's version of the geforce fx 5200)

radeon 9600xt: (would last you longer and play more games smoothly, but is more expensive... i own the radeon 9600pro, and i LOVE it, and the xt from what i hear is identical, except the clock speed on the xt is 100mhz faster)

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getp ... adeon+9600

Review: http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/ ... /index.htm - again, different variety maybve, but compareable performance, its like two vendor's brands of ice cream sanwhiches

i believe i heard bad things about the geforce fx 5600 series, and its more expensive than the radeon 9600xt, so i didnt include pricing on it. remember, ALWAYS READ AT LEAST TWO REVIEWS ON A CARD YOUR INTERESTED IN BEFORE YOU BUY. good ones can be found on http://www.tomshardware.com and http://www.anandtech.com

also, if you're going to buy an agp card, BE SURE YOU HAVE AN AGP SLOT FIRST. some oems like dell dont include them, and older pc's (the oldest ive found that had one was a ~800 mhz pentium 3 machine, but i havent looked very hard) don't have them either.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:02 pm

I got a 5700 xle fro $80 at newegg, it's the cheapest that
does Pixel shader 2.0, which you need for Nvidia's poly cruncher part of Melody, which works pretty well, the rest of Melody crashes.

GD1 · Post by **GD1** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:40 am

yep, i have one.

It's a really good card, usually with 128MB's of RAM. but for RF it will not help your performance much, any boost will be pretty insignificant. I can't even run the tech demo on this computer. RF primarily depends on the processor, since it lacks Hardware Transfer and Lighting, so all the GPU does is give RF dedicated space to store textures. so if you have a processor lower than 1.0 GHz RF is gonna run slow no matter what you do.

I actually recently got my hands on a new computer with a 2.4 GHz processor and an ATI Xpress 200M integrated graphics chip. I am completely shocked at it's performance. I can run Pariah, Far Cry, Area 51, Project: Snowblind, Need for Speed Underground 2, and a bunch of other stuff with everything turned on and it still runs over 30fps and in most cases around 60fps. integrated graphics is usually crappy, but im really impressed by this chip, it reminds me of the "Noisy Crickett" from Men In Black, small but powerful.

if you wanna get a new card i would definitly recomend the GeForceFX 5200. It's a great card, but it wont do much for RF until we get Hardware T&L, which may not be long from now. If you wanna run the really high-end nexgen games though, you should get something bigger, like at least a 5700 or a 6800 if you can afford it. but the 5200 is a great card and it'll still run Half-Life 2, as well as MeLODy, with very few crashes.

Gamespider · Post by **Gamespider** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:28 am

Geforce 6800 is certainly out of my budget.....

And I dont really know what is pixel shader 2.0....although I know that Geforce 4 ti 4200 supports it, and that it is much cheaper than fx5700(might be wrong on that). The only thing preventing me from buying is that it has only 128mb vid memory.

Post by **AndyCR** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:50 pm

in your pricerange, by my estimation, 128 is pretty much what you're going to get... besides, you dont need 256 unless you're running games with incredibly high texture sized, and thats unlikely... few cards out now are 256mb...

Gamespider · Post by **Gamespider** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:27 am

@ AndyCR
Geforce fx 5200 has 256mb vid memory, and it is somewhere around 75 dollars. That is about 3300 INR in India. I was aiming for something below $ 100.....

Post by **AndyCR** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:37 pm

ah. but do you really need that much memory? it's great if you do, but its unlikely... its balancing cost with need... what will it be used for? for reference, that's about 333 512x512 (large) textures, or about 1,333 256x256 (medium) textures.

it really dosent matter either way, if you can afford the 256 then go with that since more cant hurt but less can, but if your budget is VERY tight, it's best to balance cost and need.

psychopath · Post by **psychopath** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:11 pm

I got a Sapphire/ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB a little while ago for about $150 CAD, which is quite cheap. It supports GL2.0 and DX9 fully, and renders at incredible framerate. In my engine, Iv'e got it loading 2048x2048 DDS textures without any noticable lag or load time.

Basicly, if your looking for a cheap, discontinued card that still does everything, its worth it.

-psychopath

TippingRock · Post by **TippingRock** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:10 pm

http://www.fatwallet.com

check out the "hot deals" forums here- I've picked up some excellent deals recently.

For example:

ATI 9600 (non-pro) for $43 shipped
XFX 5700LE for $35 after rebate (it unfortunately had only 64-bit memory, but it overclocks like a champ!)

Either of these cards can be modded or overclocked to run the latest and greatest at acceptable framerates with medium settings. It's a great time for bargain hunters (and I'm not a fan of the 5200, it's really scraping the bottom of the DX 9 barrel.)

Also check http://www.techbargains.com or http://www.xpbargains.com for deals.

Happy hunting!

TippingRock · Post by **TippingRock** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:30 pm

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... ts-04.html

Here's a roundup of the mid-range graphics cards from awhile back- good comparison for AGP card shoppers looking for bargain performance specs.

TippingRock · Post by **TippingRock** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:48 pm

Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600XT Video Card 128MB $79.99, Aug 24
xPCgear.com has the Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600XT Video Card 128-bit 128MB AGP8x DVI for a low $79.99 shipped free. Tax in CA.

http://www.xpcgear.com/gvr96x128d.html

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choosing a video card....

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