Video card help.
 

HI there subsim fans" I am thinking of getting an ati radeon hd 2600xt 512mb pcie video card from best buy (my local store) and i was woundering what all of you think about ati and there new porducts. From what i have heard it has a core clock of 800mhz and a memory speed of 1400mhz with pixel shader 4.0 ect..ect..ect,
What i am asking is...Is it worth the money $229.00 + tax us.
Please tell me what your thoughts are. :oops:

Does it have DX10 capability? I understand it is just as good if not equal to the Nvidia 8800.

Thank you for your fast reply!, and yes it has full dx 10 suport.

Truth to tell, I was eyeballing them also. I still have an AGP set up and these cards come in AGP. Best thing to do is search out reviews on the web. I like my ATI card (X1300) and the first I have owned. Personally, I would go for the Nvidia 8800 series if you can. A lot here have them and with much success.

The 2600 is kind of a dog last I checked. Careful that you don't waste your money. Both ATI and NVidia are making sub par boards in anything other than their higher end line.

If you want to see how it stacks up right now, it is not looking even useful for Oblivion that was made last year!

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=854&chart=296

-S

PS. If you do go for a better board and want to play one of the new games coming out like Crysis, I'd suggest going ATI over NVidia. ATI boards seem to be pulling 2x the FPS in these newer games, probably due to the greatly increased number of vertex shaders over the NVidia offerings. THis is just something to keep in mind if you spend the extra cash on a higher end rev of one of these boards.

Thank you for the info and link, The card that i was interested in has 512mb onboard video ram, all i saw on that web site was 256, does it make a differance in performance to have more ram?.. also The memory clock says 1100 where this card is 1400mhz. (Thank you for your replys) :hmm:

Not really. ALl it does is effect the texture size you can load on a card. Most games these days use 256 MB textures. If you have 512 MB (And if the game supports it), they just look a little crisper. Matter of fact, it is even hard to spot the difference most times even when looking for it.

Perf wise is effected mainly by the GPU Mhz of the card, and a little lower down the list, is how fast the RAM is (How fast the GPU can read and write textures to it). Size of the RAM should have no real difference.

-S

Thank you for your replys.:up:

Here is a question I have but it isn't technical...just searching for an opinion. I want to build a new computer for myself but I DON'T WANT WINDOWS VISTA!!!!! So is DX10 really worth putting up with Vista? Someone needs to find a way to get XP to support DX10. I bet it could be done.

Just a warning about ATI cards (and yes I do have one myself). There have been numerous problems reported with the latest Catalyst drivers, to the extent that many people revert back to older ones, this seems to be a perennial problem too.

Also, be warned, some more modern games and sims do not display well on ATI cards, as a result of the driver difficulties, a prominent example of this being the FPS combat sim, Armed Assault (aka ARMA, the Op Flashpoint semi-official sequel). This game features dramatic lighting and lens flare effects which, to be honest, make the game nearly unplayable on ATI cards, so if that's a potential piece of software you want to run, I'd very seriously recommend avoiding ATI. Take a look on the ARMA (Bohemia Interactive) forums if you want more info on this. I know NVidia cards are not without issues too, but I'm just commenting on what has been a real pain in the ass for me, having an ATI card (I won't be buying another).

:D Chock

Personly i think it can be done,..And will be done.. and in the comming months or maby weeks, hang in there pal.:know:

I play ArmA all the time, and I am running the latest Catalyst. I don't have any issues. What are they claiming? That ArmA video I shared was set to max detail was even done on my x1900 XTX.

Another deal - check out the Crysis thread in the Other games section. The guy has 2x 8800 GTX's running in SLI, and I get 2x the FPS he does on my older x1900 XTX when running at the same detail! That is pretty sad.

Anyway - link me so I can see what they are cliaming if you have it. Maybe I have an issue I don't know about? I'd be curious to find out.

-S

This card the hd 2600xt with 800mhz core clock and 1400mhz memory clock with pixel shader 4.0 and 512mb onboard ddr3, also full dx 10 suport seems to be a pretty good buy at $229.00 us., I can't find a better buy for that price....at least right now. :up:

Get a 8800GT those start at 250 usd and will beat the pants off the 2600 any day.