What to buy??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wapper
  • Start date Start date
W

Wapper

Hello everybody!

I'm upgrading my whole setup, but I can't figure out what videocard to get.
I'm not spending too much on it (due to rapid development), still I want as
much "bang for the buck" as I can get.

My two alternatives are:

1: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb "Fireblade Edition"@ §215 (Norway)
2: Gainward GeForce FX5600 256Mb DDR (Not Ultra)@ The same price.

I know the Radeon is faster right now, but I have always been intriqued by
Nvidia's driver updates and I'm thinking that the 5600 might be faster when
the 50-driver is released. What do you guys think?

K
 
I know the Radeon is faster right now, but I have always been intriqued by
Nvidia's driver updates and I'm thinking that the 5600 might be faster when
the 50-driver is released. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...
I think you should buy a card that is proven to be fast now rather
than a card that might catch up in the future (and I wouldn't put any
money on that happening).
 
Wapper said:
Hello everybody!

I'm upgrading my whole setup, but I can't figure out what videocard to
get. I'm not spending too much on it (due to rapid development), still I
want as much "bang for the buck" as I can get.

My two alternatives are:

1: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb "Fireblade Edition"@ §215 (Norway)
2: Gainward GeForce FX5600 256Mb DDR (Not Ultra)@ The same price.

I know the Radeon is faster right now, but I have always been intriqued by
Nvidia's driver updates and I'm thinking that the 5600 might be faster
when the 50-driver is released. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...


I'm also intrigued by nVidias driver updates. How DO they manage to double
frame rates across two driver releases? Either the old drivers were
appalling and the change in image rendering is a coincidence, or... well...
not.

I'd rather a well-performing card that performs well becuase of it's
architecture and feature set, rather than one that performs well after image
quality is silently reduced and features silently replaced.

The best bang for the buck now is the Radeon if you use AA and/or AF. The
best bang for the buck with Pixel shaders (DX9 type games such as HL2) is
the Radeon. If anybody can convince me otherwise they can HAVE my 9800 Pro
for free. I'll even ship it. :-P

Ben
 
Get the Radeon.

Nvidia has recently been caught cheating to score higher on benchmarks,
notably by reducing image quality to get higher scores in 3DMark 2003. Not
long ago one of the key developers of Half-Life 2 released benchmarks
showing the Radeons doubling the performance of the FX cards, and there are
indications that Doom 3 will also give the edge to ATI.

The Radeon is faster now because it has a better gpu and full DX9 support.
That won't change in future. A 9600 will ALWAYS be faster than a 5600, and
it offers higher image quality, too.
 
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