Best Video card at this point of Vista developement

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I am presently running vista ultimate on a amd Athlon 64 x2 with aNvidia
Geforce 7300 gs microsoft drivers as I had some troubles with Nvidia driver
installing and am going to wait till driver is out of bata before trying
again. Performance index is only 3.2 on business and gaming graphics same
machine using RC2 and Nvidia driver result was 3.4. I have the task of
upgrading serveral machines to Vista shortly and am tring to get a idea of
the best cards to use on slighly less powerful machines but must have dual
monitor support vga/dvi vga/vga or dvi/dvi. Not lookng for company loyalty
responces. Thanks
 
What do you mean by "best"? For gaming? Dual displays?

I'm using an ATI X1800 GTO card, get 5.7 for business and gaming graphics.
Does alright but nothing exceptional. Has dual DVI, came with 2 VGA
adapters as well. I'm using it with a 20" WS LCD and a 19" CRT.

Clint
 
joymac said:
I am presently running vista ultimate on a amd Athlon 64 x2 with
aNvidia Geforce 7300 gs microsoft drivers as I had some troubles with
Nvidia driver installing and am going to wait till driver is out of
bata before trying again. Performance index is only 3.2 on business
and gaming graphics same machine using RC2 and Nvidia driver result
was 3.4. I have the task of upgrading serveral machines to Vista
shortly and am tring to get a idea of the best cards to use on
slighly less powerful machines but must have dual monitor support
vga/dvi vga/vga or dvi/dvi. Not lookng for company loyalty responces.
Thanks
Click to expand...

To be honest any mid range card will do the trick - I think ones that
_don't_ offer dual monitor support of some kind are the exception these days
once you step out of budget territory.

I'd say that ATI have got slightly more mature drivers at the moment and for
a business type machine I'd look at the radeon x1300 and x1600 type cards,
to support dual monitors very nicely indeed and not use and abuse system
resources too much to support the video.

If you want gaming then the sky is the limit of course, but you probably
won't be entirely happy with a new purchase in this area at the moment.
ATI's more mature drivers suggest the x1900 series, but this isn't a DirectX
10 ready part. Only Nvidia are shipping those (8800 series) at the moment
and as you've discovered their drivers are not very good at all (I'm not
convinced that ATI's vista drivers are actually all they could possibly be
at the moment, but they're much more stable and mature than the Nvidia
ones).

Just my opinion of course and I hope it is of some use. I await what will no
doubt be large flame posts questioning my eyesight, parentage, ability to
operate a computer, etc. from fanboyz of both camps.
rob
 
Thanks for the information it gets expensive trying to purchace different
cards for testing as these will be in a business envirorment stability is
most inportant but much easier to recomend if it also has high scores.
 
The brand of the card has more to do with stability than the actual chipset.
I have had very good luck with Gigabyte cards using either ATI or NVidia
chipsets. The ATI seem to have a crisper display. With ATI you can buy ATI
branded cards direct from ATI which have support from the chipset
manufacturer. As far as I know there are no NVidia branded cards.

As far as ATI vs. NVidia, currently the drivers that are built into the RTM
release are the most stable for both. I'd give a slight nod to ATI but some
people have had problems with the sleep function on some motherboards.
Changing to an NVidia card often fixes this. By the time Vista is publicly
available this will probably change. In the past I have have found that
overall ATI drivers (without installing the Catalyst Control Center) are the
most stable but this changes as new drivers are released. I usually install
the drivers that came with the card and never change them unless there are
problems. Note - this is for business use. For gaming it's a whole different
story.
 
/joymac/ said:
I am presently running vista ultimate on a amd Athlon 64 x2 with aNvidia
Geforce 7300 gs microsoft drivers as I had some troubles with Nvidia driver
installing and am going to wait till driver is out of beta before trying
again. Performance index is only 3.2 on business and gaming graphics same
machine using RC2 and Nvidia driver result was 3.4. I have the task of
upgrading serveral machines to Vista shortly and am tring to get a idea of
the best cards to use on slighly less powerful machines but must have dual
monitor support vga/dvi vga/vga or dvi/dvi. Not looking for company loyalty
responses.
Click to expand...

With PCI-E video adapters overtaking AGP, it makes sense to spend the
minimum necessary on outdated technology.

I can only say that here an MSI NVidia 5200 128Mb card does just fine -
using a 22" widescreen LCD fed via VGA. Aero is fully functional, and
video seems as peppy with Vista Ultimate RC2 as it did under XP for
typical word processing, accounting and Net surfing. No games tested.
 
joymac said:
Mainly for business Also should include that the cards I will be looking
for
are AGP. This is going to be a recomended product so stability is
importannt
as well if I can give a report that it has an index of ?? that much better
thanks for the info.
Click to expand...

Last April I bought the Asus A9550GE/TD AGP 8X 128 DDR Video Card w/TV-Out &
DVI to upgrade an old underpowered P-III 800MHz box with AGP 6X slot and it
has performed well - no problems-does Aero. It gets a Graphics Index of 2.9
and Gaming of 3.2 not impressive but should do business apps OK. I bought it
for ~$60 with free shipping from here:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=324507
 
Without question, the "best" video card out today is the nVidia 8800 GTX. I
have two XFX 8800 GTX XXXs in SLI mode. There's nothing that can touch these
cards.
 
Unless you have pockets for Nvidia G8xxx series with Direct-X 10,

Recomendations are Nvidia 76xx and up. ATI 18xx and up.
Higher end of mid-line DirectX 9c cards.
256M video ram

On the machines we have trialed so far, graphics is the number one
bottleneck. All current machines, aftermarket video cards (ie not onboard).
 
Ahhh, heck! This new HP MedCen Pav w/XPproSP2 that my sis gave me as an XMas
gift was a step up from the IBM Aptiva W98SE which I enjoyed. After a month
of exploring XP and MedCen I thought 'can life get better?' . Right. Now I am
not only upgrading to Vista Premium, but my new (old?) nVidia 6150 is trash
for the new 19" LCD-W/S? Rats! How much for one of these 8800 jobs?
Thanks tons for your assistance.
 
LOL

don't worry about nVidia 8800 Mark. they cost from $350 to $900 and unless
you are a gamer you don't really need those. go for an ATI Radeon x series
with a minimum of 256 MB vram on board (under $100) and you'll be fine (for
aero and dvd's).
 
I have the GeForce 5200, however i can not get the video card software to
install. I did get a driver from their site that works but as far as getting
aero to work i am at a loss. I welcome any help. thanks!
 
I have a GeForce 5500 and I got the old drivers to install but still no aero!
I am
just going to get a new video card! I think that both our cards will not
run right
with Vista.
 
--
freeway29


Jamesfive5 said:
I have a GeForce 5500 and I got the old drivers to install but still no aero!
I am
just going to get a new video card! I think that both our cards will not
run right
with Vista.
Click to expand...
 
-D said:
I have the GeForce 5200, however i can not get the video card software to
install. I did get a driver from their site that works but as far as getting
aero to work i am at a loss. I welcome any help. thanks!
Click to expand...
For Nvidia, they only support Geforce 6x and up and Quadro for vista.
Here is a link for x86
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_97.46_supported.html

I am sure x64 is the same. I upgraded an old machine to a 6200 agp card for
less than $50 and it works fine.
 
My Albatron FX5200 (128MB) is working fine using the default driver. All
features appear to be enabled, including Aero and flip-3D. Scrolling in
flip-3D is a bit sluggish, but it's quite usable. I downloaded the latest
beta from nVidia and was disappointed when the installer told me my card
wasn't "yet" supported. The only reason I need it is so I can put one of my
two monitors back into portrait mode. Using the Tablet applet to switch to
portrait mode was a temporary disaster - both screens went blank (except for
the screen displayed by Alt+Ctrl+Del - which was at least in portrait mode!).
My solution was to uninstall the driver in Safe Mode, then reinstall. I tried
several times with the same effect. The default driver also doesn't let me
use different resolutions for each monitor. Otherwise, I'm happy with my
FX5200. Vista gives my graphics a score of 2.0.

To answer the original posting, from the nVidia side - given that a cheap
FX5200 works adequately for non-gaming use - I think anything in the 6000 and
above series of boards will do very nicely.
 
Have you actually downloaded the drivers for Vista from Nvidia?

If you need an AGP card, then the best AGP card you can get really is the
Nvidia 7800GS, I don't think they've released any more powerful AGP cards
than that. That's the card I run and it's excellent. You might be able to get
it relatively cheap if you search.
 
joymac said:
I am presently running vista ultimate on a amd Athlon 64 x2 with aNvidia
Geforce 7300 gs microsoft drivers as I had some troubles with Nvidia driver
installing and am going to wait till driver is out of bata before trying
again. Performance index is only 3.2 on business and gaming graphics same
machine using RC2 and Nvidia driver result was 3.4. I have the task of
upgrading serveral machines to Vista shortly and am tring to get a idea of
the best cards to use on slighly less powerful machines but must have dual
monitor support vga/dvi vga/vga or dvi/dvi. Not lookng for company loyalty
responces. Thanks
Click to expand...
 
Hey, Ive built six or seven PC's for friends and family, and every time I've
had to deal with ATI cards I could not get the dual monitors selection to
work! ATI would only let me choose one or the other, TV or monitor. I
recently built this PC that I'm writing with now an ECS RS-482m with built in
ATI graphics with a seperate connecter to the motherboard for TV out, and I
still couldn't get it to work, I did the support thing back and forth to ATI
and AMD with e-mails, and finally just went out and bought an nVidia PCI
express card and viola, dual monitors. The folks at ATI act as if they've
never heard of this before, or am I the only person that hooks his PC up to
the TV so I can watch internet movies on the TV? Hmm. Anyways, thats my
2cents worth.
 
Strange my 6800GT gets a 5.9/5.2 and its a pretty old card. In a Opty 170
nforce4 board...
 
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