Wanted: beginners guide to graphics cards

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ben C
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Ben C

Hi

Doom 3 and the forthcoming Half Life 2 have put me back in the market for a
new high-end graphics card.

It's very confusing though, as a lot of graphics cards seem to have the same
names but different specs and costs. Last time I was in the market, I
thought I was buying a high-end card and it turned out to just be an
overpriced mid-range card. I read the magazine reviews, but I can never be
sure if a card I am buying is the same card as one I have read a review for.
For example, there is more than one type of nVidia GeForce 6600 card, and
with varying levels of RAM come varying levels of performance. Why do the
manufacturers have different versions of the same products?!?!?!?!

Anyway, does anyone know of a beginner's guide to understanding graphics
cards and the terminology they use?

Ben
 
Hi

Doom 3 and the forthcoming Half Life 2 have put me back in the market for a
new high-end graphics card.

It's very confusing though, as a lot of graphics cards seem to have the same
names but different specs and costs. Last time I was in the market, I
thought I was buying a high-end card and it turned out to just be an
overpriced mid-range card. I read the magazine reviews, but I can never be
sure if a card I am buying is the same card as one I have read a review for.
For example, there is more than one type of nVidia GeForce 6600 card, and
with varying levels of RAM come varying levels of performance. Why do the
manufacturers have different versions of the same products?!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

To maximize profit of course.

Suppose they get a good deal on some high-spec memory chips,
might make it worthwhile to crank out some higher-spec
cards. On the other hand if they have a good deal on volume
of a GPU they might want to make low-end cards which sell at
higher volumes... not necessarily one of these two scenarios
but it can be a parts opportunity as well as a market
segment they seek.
Anyway, does anyone know of a beginner's guide to understanding graphics
cards and the terminology they use?
Click to expand...


Determine the spec on the specific card.
Primarily focus on:

Memory bus width
GPU clock speed
Amount of memory
Memory bus speed
"expected" memory make/spec'd speed (if you desire to
overclock)

Even a beginners' guide will quickly become dated, new
cards, variations of them, are coming out and old cards
vanishing all the time. More appropriate might be
benchmarks of contemporary cards at the type of games you
like to play, if not the specific game titles.

Right now the high end cards I'd suggest would be Geforce
6800 series.
 
Determine the spec on the specific card.
Primarily focus on:

Memory bus width
GPU clock speed
Amount of memory
Memory bus speed
"expected" memory make/spec'd speed (if you desire to
overclock)
Click to expand...


Note that the above is in the context of comparing same
family of cards, GPU clock speed would be compared to
another card with same GPU, not different GPU.
 
Ben C:
It's very confusing though, as a lot of graphics cards seem to have
the same names but different specs and costs.
Click to expand...

One thing is to ignore the manufacturer's name for the card, some names
are deceptive, instead look at the GPU listed for the card...

these are only examples, there are many more:
Geforce 6600
Geforce 6800
Geforce FX5900
Geforce FX5950
Geforce FX5700

Radeon X800
Radeon X600
Radeon 9800
Radeon 9600

These may be followed by designators such as GT, SE, PRO, LE, XT which
will designate particular versions that are either higher performance or
lower performance than the standard chip. In general, designators like
GT and PRO mean higher performance; while designators such as SE, LE and
XT mean lower performance. Keep in mind that this is the graphic
processor's name, not the manufacturer's name.
I read the magazine reviews,
but I can never be sure if a card I am buying is the same card as one
I have read a review for. For example, there is more than one type of
nVidia GeForce 6600 card, and with varying levels of RAM come varying
levels of performance. Why do the manufacturers have different
versions of the same products?!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

In the end there is no substitute for self education. I had been out of
the graphics card market for about 3 years until I recently got back
into playing games and decided to upgrade. I felt overwhelmed with all
the new choices, but after a week of research I felt confident enough to
make an intelligent decision.

Finally, you can take a shortcut and just tell us what your budget for a
new card is, what your current system is and we can tell you some
recommendations.

I like this site for reviews.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/graphics-cards-2004.html
 
Hi

Doom 3 and the forthcoming Half Life 2 have put me back in the market for a
new high-end graphics card.

It's very confusing though, as a lot of graphics cards seem to have the same
names but different specs and costs. Last time I was in the market, I
thought I was buying a high-end card and it turned out to just be an
overpriced mid-range card. I read the magazine reviews, but I can never be
sure if a card I am buying is the same card as one I have read a review for.
For example, there is more than one type of nVidia GeForce 6600 card, and
with varying levels of RAM come varying levels of performance. Why do the
manufacturers have different versions of the same products?!?!?!?!

Anyway, does anyone know of a beginner's guide to understanding graphics
cards and the terminology they use?

Ben
Click to expand...

For Nvidia read this group,

alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia

HTH :)



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Ben C said:
Hi

Doom 3 and the forthcoming Half Life 2 have put me back in the market for a
new high-end graphics card.

It's very confusing though, as a lot of graphics cards seem to have the same
names but different specs and costs. Last time I was in the market, I
thought I was buying a high-end card and it turned out to just be an
overpriced mid-range card. I read the magazine reviews, but I can never be
sure if a card I am buying is the same card as one I have read a review for.
For example, there is more than one type of nVidia GeForce 6600 card, and
with varying levels of RAM come varying levels of performance. Why do the
manufacturers have different versions of the same products?!?!?!?!

Anyway, does anyone know of a beginner's guide to understanding graphics
cards and the terminology they use?
Click to expand...

While not exactly the information you are looking for, you might nonetheless find it
useful to compare the cards featured in this article:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html

Another good resource, which lists the specific properties of each model and submodel,
can be found here:
http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/

Jon
 
Finally, you can take a shortcut and just tell us what your budget for a
new card is, what your current system is and we can tell you some
recommendations.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions so far. My PC has:
- 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4
- 512MB of DDR RAM
- 40+75GB hard disks
- Running Windows XP, fully patched
- Present graphics card: nVidia GeForce FX 5200

I'm aware that there's little point spending a fortune on a really top-end
graphics card as my chip speed will be a limiting factor. I live in the
United Kingdom and I'm looking to spend no more than £250 on a new card.
What would you recommend?

Thanks!
 
Ben C said:
Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions so far. My PC has:
- 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4
- 512MB of DDR RAM
- 40+75GB hard disks
- Running Windows XP, fully patched
- Present graphics card: nVidia GeForce FX 5200

I'm aware that there's little point spending a fortune on a really top-end
graphics card as my chip speed will be a limiting factor. I live in the
United Kingdom and I'm looking to spend no more than £250 on a new card.
What would you recommend?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Personally I'd either stump up the extra £40 - £50 for a 6800GT or settle
for a £160 ATI 9800Pro and pay the extra for another 512 stick of RAM.
There seems to be a big gap in between these with little for the price you
want to pay.

Shaun.
 
Ben C:
- 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4
- 512MB of DDR RAM
- Present graphics card: nVidia GeForce FX 5200
I'm looking to spend no more than £250
on a new card. What would you recommend?
Click to expand...

Radeon 9800, it is a very fast card and anything faster will not give you
any additional performance because of your CPU.
 
Mac Cool said:
Ben C:

Radeon 9800, it is a very fast card and anything faster will not give you
any additional performance because of your CPU.
Click to expand...
The Radeon 9800 seems well regarded, but I'm still lost when it comes to
picking a specific card. 9800s vary in price from £84 to £300+ and I'm not
so technically minded that I can understand the difference between them. Is
a cheap Radeon 9800 going to be rubbish? What should I be looking for as a
minimum requirement to get a decent frame rate on Doom 3?
 
Shawk said:
Personally I'd either stump up the extra £40 - £50 for a 6800GT or settle
for a £160 ATI 9800Pro and pay the extra for another 512 stick of RAM.
There seems to be a big gap in between these with little for the price you
want to pay.
Click to expand...

The 6800GTs seem to vary in price quite a lot. I'm not sure what the
differences mean, mainly because I lack enough technical understanding.
Froogle gives a few examples:
dabs.com sells a 6800GT 128MB AGP DVI-I VO for £228 (inc VAT)
dabs.com sells a 6800GT 256MB AGP 2xDVI-I VO for £308 (inc VAT)
Microdirect sells a Galaxy GF 6800GT 256MB DDR 8x AGP TV Out + DVI Retail
for £293 (inc VAT)

Given the spec of my PC (2.0 GHz, 512MB DDR RAM, Win XP), should I be
looking for a GPU with 256MB RAM, or will 128MB be sufficient? What does
DVI-I VO mean?

Thanks for any help you can give...

B
 
The Radeon 9800 seems well regarded, but I'm still lost when it comes to
picking a specific card. 9800s vary in price from £84 to £300+ and I'm not
so technically minded that I can understand the difference between them. Is
a cheap Radeon 9800 going to be rubbish? What should I be looking for as a
minimum requirement to get a decent frame rate on Doom 3?
Click to expand...

Actually the prices shouldnt vary that much. You do seem some
variation and buzz about certain makes because so and so may use
better memory for overclocking the card etc but you wont see huge
differences. If you do like the ones you listed its because --

a) one has more memory than the other. Obviously if one has 128 mem
and another has 256 memory - then the price tends to be very
different.

b) They arent really the same card at all. For instance ATI put out
lots of variations on the 9800.

The 9800 XT is the fastest.
The 9800 Pro is generally the next one.
Then you get the 9800.
After that you get stuff like the 9800 SE etc.

The 9800 and above are decent. However some say the 9800 SE which is
generally kind of wimpy can be softmodded to sometimes equal a 9800
but its a gamble.

Try to get the 9800 Pro 128 megs. If you can get the 256 meg one at a
price close to the 128 meg then get that one. Otherwise if you can get
an XT at a close price to the Pro than get that one.
 
Ben C:
The Radeon 9800 seems well regarded, but I'm still lost when it comes
to picking a specific card. 9800s vary in price from £84 to £300+
and I'm not so technically minded that I can understand the
difference between them.
Click to expand...

With the information I gave and a little research you should understand
the difference between the cards. You have to learn to be specific... a
£84 '9800' and £300 '9800' are not the same thing.

Microdirect has two 9800 cards at two very different prices. Notice the
different designations: one card is a 9800se, the second card is a
9800Pro AIW. Like I wrote before, the 'se' designates an lower
performance card while 'pro' designates a high performance card, the
'AIW' designates that the second card is an All In Wonder card (you can
google for the meaning).

Neither Microdirect or Dabs has a regular 9800 card so I can't just
choose a card for you. But here are some alternative choices that would
be good matches for your system:

Medium Performance:
------------------
FX5900XT 128MB £127.99 inc VAT
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/components/graphicscards/productView.htm
?quicklinx=2ZZ9

More alternatives:
ATI Radeon 9800 or 9600XT


High Performance:
------------------
GeForce 6800GT 128MB £227.98 inc VAT
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/components/graphicscards/productView.htm
?quicklinx=39TP

Radeon X800 Pro 256MB £321.98 inc VAT
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/components/graphicscards/productView.htm
?quicklinx=37T2
 
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