Good value graphics card

[Evo]

Hi folks - i'm after a good value graphics card for the usual 3-d games things. I'm not after the latest and greatest, just whatever is currently at that price/performance sweet-spot. So what is it?

TIA :)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Evo,

The "sweet-spot" right now is the GeforceFX 5900XT with 128Mb of RAM and the Radeon 9800Pro with 128Mb of RAM. They are both the best bang for the buck.

If you want to save a little money then drop down to the Radeon 9600XT. (But you should find the GeForceFX 5900XT for just about the same price, and the 5900XT out performs the 9600XT.)

Take Care,

Richard

[Evo]

Thanks Richard - an impressively quick reply! How much does the manufacturer matter? There seem to be quite a few FX5900XT cards from a variety of different companies (and at quite a range of prices).

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Evo,

The MSI FX5900XT-VTD128 has a very good cooling solution:

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/14-127-119-02.JPG

(I moderate the MSI Taiwan Headquarter's VGA Forums and the users have been very happy with the card.)

Both ASUS and Gainward have good versions of the GeForceFX 5900XT too.

If you want to get the 9800Pro, then the ATI Radeon 9800Pro is the way to go:

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/14-102-286-09.JPG

Take Care,

Richard

[goates]

I've got an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, and it works great. The drivers haven't given me any trouble at all.

Far Cry looks beautiful and is the first game to really take advantage of the DirectX9 abilities of the card. The 9800 Pro (and FX5900XT too I think) can handle many of the newer games much better than the 9600 series.

It does seem to be a little pricier than the FX5900XT cards right now though. I just read that the new generation of latest and greatest cards from both nVidia and ATI will be released in the middle of the month, so you may want to wait and see if the prices drop appreciably.

goates

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

goates,

The 9800Pro does have the extra horsepower over the 9600XT, but the 9600XT is still a good card. I see the 9800Pro 128Mb dropping another $30 to $40 in the near future, but the 5900XT is already a bargain. It is priced at the level of the GeforceFX 5700 Ultra and outperforms the 5700 Ultra. nVidia cannot drop the price of the 5900XT any more or it will completely kill the 5700 Ultra.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Ever since ATI came out with the Radeon 9700Pro they have made and effort to get rid of their one weak spot, the lack of Driver Releases. So far they have done a great job with Drivers. (Which up to now was the sole domain of nVidia.)

[Evo]

OK... more questions!

I was asking on behalf of a friend who has just got himself a new PC; it came with integrated graphics, and after some investigation it turns out that it's one of these crippled motherboards with no AGP slot. So much for that as a games machine... :ugh:

Anyway, he's got another slightly older machine, an IBM NetVista 6350 (searching on the website shows that it's a P4-1.6GHz, Intel 845 chipset, upgraded to 1152Mb SDRAM and a nVidia GeForce 2 MX440 in a 32-bit AGP 4X (1.5v) slot). Does a brand new graphics card makes sense on a two-year-old PC? It is currently his main PC, and is OK but not great with modern games.

Thanks again. I've never been a hardware person, and I'm always about a year behind on these things :O

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Evo,

There are two versions of the i845 Chipset. One used PC-133 SDRAM (SDR) and the other Used PC-2100 SDRAM (DDR). Which on does he have, SDR or DDR?

If it is the SDR then it is not worth upgrading since that Chipset was such a poor performer. (The PIV needs a huge memory bandwidth in order to operate at its full potential, pairing it with SDR cripples the memory bandwidth for the PIV and chokes it.)

Take Care,

Richard

[Evo]

Thanks again Richard - it's SDRAM, so that's a no-no as well :(

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Evo,

For your friend's old machine I would try to find an old 4X AGP GeForce4 Ti4200 w/64Mb. If you could find one, it would be really cheap and give that old comp a good boost in gaming performance.

No reason to spend the extra money on a current generation card for that computer. ;)

Take Care,

Richard

[Evo]

Good call, Richard. We've just added the suggested card, it's cheap (well, £50) and is a decent improvement over the old one. That'll keep him going for a bit :ok:

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Evo,

That is great news! ;)

Take Care,

Richard