Indeed, I agree with Hongfei. Avoid the FX 5600 until you can be sure that you're not getting a lamer.
Actually, I would go so far as to say get yourself the TI4200.
The Radeon has good hardware, but ATI is still struggling with driver issues. NVidia has a very solid driver set, and if you install the official release, you will rarely have any issues.
Yes, I know that I am actually counseling buying last-gen hardware. But the GF 4 Ti is a solid product, with solid drivers. It is not tainted by the unreliability of ATI drivers, not by the cheating methods NVidia is using to improve its benchmark scores under 3DMark03. And let's not get started on who is cheating more or who started it all, that is not the subject.
You can trust the GF4, and in my book that rates more than having the Latest and Greatest.
As for the R9600 or the FX, I say it is too early. For one, the drivers are not good enough, for the other, the hardware is not good enough. Yes, I actually said that.
I fully expect both to improve, though. So you can also annoy yourself with the following question : given NVidia's near-spotless record with drivers, do you prefer buying good hardware now, expecting ATI to deliver good drivers in some undetermined future, or wait for the good harware from NVidia, trusting them to deliver quality drivers with it ?
Avoid the issues entirely, I say. The GF4 is a very good performer for the money, it will work well and not make itself noticed when its not needed.
Since 1999 I have had GeForce cards in my PCs. I update the drivers every six months or so, and I have never had any issues with any games that were related to video drivers.
As said before, for Office, images and Internet, any old card will do.
So buy the Ti4200 now, and save a eighty bucks for next year, when the fight between the R9600 and the FX-whatever will be more clearly defined.
I, for one, am waiting to find out if I can continue buying NVidia. I have the GF2 GTI, a vanilla-GF3 and the GF4 Ti4400. They are all great cards, and I have been very happy with all of them.
But I am watching the benchmarking scene closely, and I am keeping up-to-date on the hardware. The R9600 is very interesting: ATI has already made itself a reputation of being the Porsche (refined administration of great force) in the graphics industry, whereas NVidia is very much the Corvette (brute application of overpowering force).
Right now, ATI can boast of having taught NVidia how to administer its RAM more efficiently and gain bandwidth. NVidia, however, can smirk at ATIs drivers and their issues.
The fact remains that having a great card is not much use if the drivers are buggy. Although ATI is making a great effort, I still do not trust them enough to fork over the money and bet my PC's stability on them.
But I am willing to change if they can convince me.
Pascal.
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