Graphic card question

[jonsey22]

Question to you guys would there be a good performance leap from a system with a geforce 4 ti4600 128mb to a Geforce fx 5600 ultra 256mb?


Im looking for the cheapest possible graphic card that will give me better performance and graphic quality than the geforce 4 ti4600 128mb, any suggestions on cards? :-)

[McBeck]

Well the best bang for the buck should be the 6600GT

However, some indication from people who have tried both suggest that the ATI cards gives you better quality than Nvidia. Quality meaning that the game looks better. This has nothing to do with speed mind you...

[Duli]

Originally Posted by jonsey22

Question to you guys would there be a good performance leap from a system with a geforce 4 ti4600 128mb to a Geforce fx 5600 ultra 256mb?


Im looking for the cheapest possible graphic card that will give me better performance and graphic quality than the geforce 4 ti4600 128mb, any suggestions on cards? :-)

Nope, FX5600 Ultra is slower than ti4600.

[gws226]

I would try to advoid the 5600. It wasn't a particulary good card even when new.....

[big_feef]

I got a GF 5600 Ultra 256MB card when my GF 4600 Ti 128MB card blew about two years ago iirc. Fortunately, I got it as a quick fix for about $200. I say fortunately because the card is crap... it's not even faster than the 4600 Ti, even with being newer, double the memory and DX 9 combatibility.

Thankfully, I had upgraded that to a GF 5950 Ultra 256MB within a few weeks and relegated that card to auxillary status on my old computer back then.

If you're buying a new card on the cheap, get a Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB; that is still a killer card for the price. If you're willing to spend $250-$300, get a Radeon X800 XL 256MB: the absolute best card in it's price range hands down. $350-$400 gets you a Radeon X850 XTP 256MB card, which I can say is just awesome, having received one free last week... three weeks after upgrading my GF 5950 Ultra to a X800 XL for $250.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by jonsey22

Question to you guys would there be a good performance leap from a system with a geforce 4 ti4600 128mb to a Geforce fx 5600 ultra 256mb?


Im looking for the cheapest possible graphic card that will give me better performance and graphic quality than the geforce 4 ti4600 128mb, any suggestions on cards? :-)

No, no and no. Never buy a card with 256MB of RAM. You're just being taken. The only exception to this is if you're using, say, a 6800GT at HIGH resolutions. (I haven't looked at 7xxx cards, but 256MB of RAM would likely be useful for those, too.) Older cards (such as 5600) definitely won't benefit from more RAM.

Unless you picked up your Ti4600 second hand -- and they're still going for like $60+ on Ebay -- you probably paid a lot for it new. You'll want to do the same again. I spent $150 on a 6600GT some time ago. It's considered a mid level card, but it plays SH3 fine and it's a reasonable price. They're even cheaper now. Just do _not_ buy any XFX cards. Too many DoA reports. (I received two 6600GTs from XFX, DoA.)

I don't own any ATI cards, so I don't know which equivalent cards you'd look at for ATI.

[oRGy]

My vanilla GF 6600 works ok, but the framerate still drags surprisingly in port. Not unplayable or anything, just a bit juddery.

Just goes to show you...

Also GF cards seem to still have an issue with anti-aliasing - the sun glare is disabled, which looks like crap. Then again, so does the game without AA. So you're sort of in between the devil and the deep blue sea, as Ella Fitzgerald might say.

[GregDude]

Definately not the 5600. My Geforce3 outperforms the 5600 in some games. No joke. As mentioned, the 6600 is where reasonable performance starts for modern games.

[Godalmighty83]

i would go with a ATI card, they seem less buggy in SH3 compared to nvidia. although the opposite seems to be true in doom 3.

[big_feef]

Originally Posted by Godalmighty83

i would go with a ATI card, they seem less buggy in SH3 compared to nvidia. although the opposite seems to be true in doom 3.

ATI cards are less buggy for games it would seem. I am in the enviable position of having a GF 6800 GT (my brothers), an ATI X800 XL (bought by me) and an ATI X850 XT PE (free from my company ) in my possession... er, well to test out on my rig if I want. All the cards have 16 pixel pipelines and 256MB GDDR3 memory.

In my initial comparisons, and I will only compare the 6800 GT and X800 XL to be fair, I noticed off the bat that the ATI card has much better visual quality in games. SH3, The sims 2, Dungeon Siege 2, Guild Wars, KotOR 2, Rome: Total War, and Panzers: Phase Two are the games I'm currently playing a lot; and they all look better on the ATI card. Also, certain games - SH3, DS2, RTW and Guild Wars - all suffer from graphical glitches with the NVidia card on normal non-OCed operation without AA and AF turned on and at 1024x768x75; and it only gets worse when you do turn up the AA and AF. The NVidia card does outperform the ATI card slightly fps-wise when AA and AF are turned off in all of the above mentioned games; even with the graphical glitches. The ATI card does have some graphical issues, but they're all very minor when compared to the NVidia card.

Now turning up the AA to 4x and the AF to 16x and I saw the NVidia card start to struggle through games with horrible fps... while the ATI card just seems to breeze through them with decent fps. SH3 for example: with AA and AF off, the NVidia card was giving me an average of 92fps, while the ATI card was giving me a 89fps average. With AA to 4x and AF to 16x, the NVidia card was giving me an average of 37fps while the ATI card was still chugging out a 62fps average. This was indicative of all the above-mentioned games except for KotOR 2, which had the ATI card only getting 51fps on average while the NVidia card was doing 54.

I then overclocked both cards to +20% of their factory settings and started to do my tests again. Unfortunately, even with an extra PCI fan, 2 120mm slot fans and a 120mm side fan, the NVidia card was running way too hot and was rebooting my system. So, I started again with them OCed at 10% factory settings and didn't have the NVidia card crashing my system. This time, the ATI card outperformed the NVidia card on all settings, AA and AF on or off and in all the games. I've been able to overclock the ATI card to almost +30% of the factory default with only a small increase in gpu and ambient temperature... really amazing card.

My verdict: the ATI card is the better buy. As I mentoned earlier, I think the X800 XL is the best video card for it's price hands down. I am not an ATI fanoby, quite the opposite; the X800 XL was my first ATI buy since ever, but I was just getting fed up of not being able to play some of my older games with my NVidia card... or not getting good performance on my newer ones.

My tests were ran using the same computer, just with the different video cards. The NVidia drivers used were the official ForceWare 77.77 while the official Catalyst 5.8 drivers were used for the ATI card. The NVidia card was an eVGA GeForce 6800GT 256MB, and the ATI card was an ATI X800 XL 256MB; both bought from Newegg.com.