*another* Graphics Card Help

[Emberghost]

how can nobody have an opinion?

[MattClary]

My opinion is to not use ATI cards for professional 3D apps. I don't know anything about Cinema 4D, but for LightWave, I wouldn't touch an ATI card. Personally, if I were on a budget, I'd get a GF 4 TI 4800. You can get that for less than $200 and it will perform well. If you want the latest Direct X 9 stuff, I'd go with something like an FX 5600.

You wanted an opinion. ;)

[lukx]

I had Ati RADEON 9700 PRO and it was a big mistake. Stick to nvidia.

[elvis]

Originally posted by Emberghost
how can nobody have an opinion?

we've all posted our opinions a number of times. use the forum search tool to find them.

[Emberghost]

Thank you for your opinions that is exactly what i was looking for, I think I will stick with the fx 5600 256 mb......found it for 160$ somewhere ...here (http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_viewitem.asp?idproduct=1103&showit=1)

Another question though, I have an old motherboard that I use for my crappy mx so I will need to upgrade that as well. What mobo would you guys recomend for a P4 2ghz it has to be 8x compliant.

Again thanks for your opinions :D

[lukx]

ASUS for ever... P4C800 my best choice.

[Jayce]

I have to agree with Lukx that Asus makes some of the best mother boards. But if you are looking for a good board for a relatively low cost I would recommend the Abit SR7-8X (I am really happy with mine). It has some nice features AGP 8X, ATA 133, USB 2.0 to name a few.
It uses SIS648 and 963 controll chips.

anyway that's my two cents.

[3Dfx_Sage]

Albatron PX865P-series for me. And an Albatron LCD monitor... and Albatron video card..... :p

[marc]

9500 out preforms 9600. the 9700 PRO is the best card on the market today. Do not mistake 9700 pro with 9700.

[marc]

always go for nforce2 chipset. do save money on motherboard. that is the most important bit of your system. at the moment i prefer gigabyte for my socket a motherboards.

[3Dfx_Sage]

no, the 9600 is going to be faster than the 9500. The 9600's advantage is that it is on a .13 micron process and so can be easily overclocked to over 500MHz at which it will compete with the 9700 Pro even. Also, the 9700 Pro is not the fastest card; the 9800 Pro is, and that will change in september. The R360 and RV360 (really tweaked out versions of the 9800 and 9600, respectively) will be announced in a few weeks and should be available by september.

[marc]

to be honest the benchmark test i've seen show different but mabey i'm wrong.

[marc]

u know the 256mb card. could anyone post that to the uk for me? where do u find deals like that?

[Emberghost]

I always go to www.pricewatch.com

[GregHess]

If you use www.pricewatch.com or www.streetprices.com make sure to also use www.resellerratings.com BEFORE YOU BUY.

You can avoid alot of hassle by checking out the online companies before you purchase your goods. Failure to do this could result in extremely delayed shipments, bad or faulty hardware, or even loss of funds.

I can't stress enough... www.resellerratings.com

If the company's not listed, find out why.

[MattClary]

Someone recommended the nforce2 chipset. It would be a real trick to get that working with a P4! :) Abit or Asus make good boards. I just got an Intel board that I'm real happy with, but probably not the best board if you intend to overclock. I recommend going with the 865 or 875 chipset. The prices are pretty good and this gives you maximum upgradability. Actually, you need to make sure those boards will support the 2ghz P4, just occured to me they may not... If they don't, I would seriously reconsider replacing the motherboard, I think it would be a bad investment.

[Emberghost]

I sort of have to replace it, because my mobo right now only supports 4x agp and the fx 5600 256 mb is *8x agp*

So I wouldnt get the full performance out of the card.....

[elvis]

Originally posted by Emberghost
I sort of have to replace it, because my mobo right now only supports 4x agp and the fx 5600 256 mb is *8x agp*

So I wouldnt get the full performance out of the card.....

search the forums to find comments on this. the LAST reason you'd want to upgrade a motherboard is to jump from AGP4X to 8X. you're looking at bugger all performance difference for a lot of money.

invest your cash in something more intelligent like a better CPU, or more RAM.

[MattClary]

Emberghost, Elvis clarified the point I was making. You won't see a difference in performance, at least not enought to justify the expense. If you do this, I think you will be really disappointed. Don't buy into the marketing hype.

[Archertech]

Sup guys..
MattClary i wanted to know why u said ATI is not good for 3d apps ? is it because it'll crash easy?

[GregHess]

Mainly because ATI doesn't have the best track record when it comes to 3d app compatibility...especially with their gaming line.

[Archertech]

that i'm not so sure about..because i know that Gefore FX 5900 etc is more in the gaming line than ATI 9800..
like..hmm i don't really understand which is better if i use Maya 5.0...i'm using it for filming, making pixs etc

anyone know why? and which is better?

[imashination]

For cinema 4d and gaming, the radeon 9600, 9700 and 9800 (pros) are great cards. I use one in production every day and have no problems with it. unreal etc also fly along nicely.

Dont bother changing you motherboard the difference between x4 and x8 will only increase the speed at which texture are uploaded to the gfx card, and that happens soooooo often.....

On the other hand, the nvidia cards support dual planes, speeding up the changes you make in c4d in high polygon scenes.

On a side note, the 9800pro card coupled with an athlon 3000 gives a cinebench opengl score of 2,700, the highest yet recorded. The 9700 pro gets over 2,000, the geforce 4200 gets about 1700 while an mx4 gets 1200.

In real world numbers, you can throw around several million polygons in realtime.

[Archertech]

so what you're saying is..
there is no "bestest" graphics card..
their all good...

[MattClary]

If you want the fastest gaming card, go with ATI. If you want the best card for use with pro apps, get an Nvidia or 3D Labs card. If you want to guarantee you get a little of both worlds, go with Nvidia cards. If you want DX9 support, go with ATI or one of the FX Nvidias. If you want DX9 support and pro app goodness, go with an Nvidia FX 5600 or greater. It's not that they are all good, they are just good at different things. Lots of variables to consider.

[3Dfx_Sage]

unless you *must* have a new graphics card right now, wait just a few months ;)

[MattClary]

Yeah, I don't think now is the best time to buy a video card.

[Archertech]

true true..
but i need it....since i'm taking classes in Maya

[3Dfx_Sage]

Are you aware of softquadro? A lot of people in your situation use softquadro to turn their GeForces into Quadro's. I originally bought a GeForce4 for my home PC but then realized that I needed a proffesional card. I'm using softquadro at the moment until a new card comes out that I feel is going to be worth the money to upgrade to. There are a lot of threads on softquadro here and on guru3d.com

[Emberghost]

But my problem is I do not want a tottaly proffesional card. Because at the moment I am 15 and still learning the ins-and-outs of cinema 4d. But I also do games and stuff as well. Percentage wise Im probbably 65% cg and 35% games. Hopefully I can buy my new fx 5600 256 mb tommorrow finally. Thank you for all of your guys' input. It really helps me and others looking in this thread :D

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