Which Graphics Card?..

[Dr34DN0ught]

Some of these cards have such little performance differences, that if you want to buy a new one, you have to be REAL careful. Which one of these would you guys choose?

[Dr34DN0ught]

Come on, I need a good advice on which card to buy!!

[Dr34DN0ught]

Thank you SO much for advice

[Kitty Kitty]

Personally, I live by the rule of... "Buy the newest Geforce card you can afford, made by a good card producer." (that last bit can sometimes be tricky.

I do not care for ATI cards anymore. Been burned 3 times over, so they're done in my book.

I've personally had really good luck with Guilmont and Diamond (in the past), as well as Hercules.. but each generation of cards changes the game a bit.

The reasons I go with Geforce are basically 1, they continually make and release new drivers that are universal to all cards that use their chip, and they have the best chance of being properly supported by the majority of games with the lowest occourance of "weird" issues.

But... that's me. Which is why this thread is hard to answer.. people tend to argue a lot about stuff like this, so nothing someone says is going to hold weight indefinitely, since someone else will just say the oposite anyway.

-Kitty

[Dr34DN0ught]

Actually, nVidia's got the speed and ATI's got the power. Just think what'd happen if you combined the high-speeds of the GeForce FX cards with the ultra-high performance of the Radeons?

There are three basic facts about video cards (as John Carmack says) ;

Performance, quality and flexibility.

The cards of the current generation have enough flexibility, and support great qualities (with the help of the anti-aliasing and the antisotropic filtering techniques), so the only difference between them is their PERFORMANCES.

A high-speed clock speed? Infernal RAM-core speeds? None of these matter.

The only thing that matters is the FPS number...

[Kitty Kitty]

Not remotely true.

It depends entirely on what you're using it for.

Also, you can take two different video cards (of a comparable level)... run them in two identical test systems using identical software, and you'll get flip-flops in the numbers.

That is to say, Half life may run at 75 FPS on one and 63 FPS on the other, but then Everquest will run 42 FPS on the first and 58 on the other, etc.

Point being, a LOT of which card is "best" depends on what software you're going to (primarily) be running, and for me, a big key is support and reliability.

The last 3 cards I ever bought by ATI all fried within 2 months, and I wasn't using ANY overclocking and they were all using plenty of cooling. So personally, I don't buy them anymore. I won't say they make crappy cards... they do have some impressive performance with a lot of applications. But I personally have rotten luck with them, so I don't buy them anymore.

-Kitty

[systems]

I'd say that whatever you go for now, make sure it's from the Radeon range, not GeForce.

Why? I guess a summary of my feelings about them can be found here and here.

Their drivers are optimised purely for speed and drop the visual quality whether you set it to or not!. If you take screenshots with a Radeon and a GeForce card in 3DMark (for example), the Radeon shot always looks like the "reference" shot whereas the GeForce shot is obviously of reduced quality.

After the stunts they pulled in May/June this year I'll not touch nVidia again, and even my friends who have had nVidia cards since they bought out 3Dfx are ditching them (we're all going for Radeon 9800 cards for the Half-Life 2 release).

ATI, on the other hand, learnt from their "Quack3D" incident and have produced better quality drivers time after time.

[Dr34DN0ught]

The last 3 cards I ever bought by ATI all fried within 2 months

Whoa!!
How the HELL did you manage to fry them, if you didn't overclock them ?? !!!!!

I know that the cooler systems on some Radeons are weak (that's why I have a much better fan installed)
but I never thought that the card would burn!!

[Dr34DN0ught]

we're all going for Radeon 9800 cards for the Half-Life 2 release

These guys are working like a chain.

First, one develops a game, then the other one begins to sell the proper graphics card for the game. Do you think that (e.g.) Radeon 10000 isn't ready yet? Well, for your information, even Radeon 15000 could be ready!!

You may ask, 'So, if they're ready, why are they not selling them yet?'

Just imagine, you are a perfectionist, who always wants the high-end hardware for their computer. There are these cards on the shelves: R20000 R19000 R18000 R17000 R16000 ...... R7500

Of course, you're going to go for the highest one, right? So, how the hell are the card producers going to sell the other cards?

But, nevertheless, you can't wait till ever to buy a graphics card; for nearly every three months there's a new one. One must have;
1) a good timing
2) a good choice, (based on advice or technological knowledge)

For example, we have the future's technology today in hand; anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, but none of the current cards could give you, say, 90 fps on their highest levels in a game like, err, UT2003.

"If you're going to play Doom (95), don't buy a Radeon card."