R. 9500 Pro...R. 9600 Pro....Ti 4200....or GeForce FX 5600

[Digitalcandy]

Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB = ~$170
Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB = ~$170
GeForce FX 5600 128MB = ~$140
GeForce Ti 4200 128MB = ~$115


Of the 4 video cards which would you go with? My budget is limited to no more than $200. Main use for the card in order of priority are;

1. Internet
2. Adobe photoshop, (mainly for resizing and cleaning up .jpg)
3. MS office apps
4. gaming


I'm leaning towards the 9500 Pro becuase I've read that it's hardware is almost identical to the 9700 Pro. Even though it's one of the older cards on that list it is probably the fastest. However the price on the Ti 4200s are very tempting.

 

[SilverTongue]

All four of these cards will handle the first three items on your list nicely. What it comes down to is gaming performance. The best tradeoff between price and performance would have to be the GeForce FX 5600. But if you want the best (without selling your first born for one of the newest cards out there) then, IMO you should grab the Radeon 9600 Pro.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. -Ozzy Osbourne

 

[cdogg]

If you want the best card out of these four for gaming, it's a close call between the 9500 Pro and the 9600 Pro. It really comes down to the type of games you want to play. Newer games that rely on vertex and pixel shading run faster on the 9500 Pro.

The 9600 Pro has a faster clock speed for both memory and chip core. However, it also has only half the pixel pipelines (4) and vertex shaders (2) of the 9500 Pro. So in many DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 games, the 9500 Pro will dominate.

In average and low resolutions on basic games, the 9600 Pro whips its competition. So now you can see why the price is so similar...

Here are a few benchmarks for you to look at:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030416/radeon_9600-07.html#unreal_tournament_2003

~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[GEHongfei]

http://www.hardocp.com/

It's a good site to refer to for benchmarks.

The 9500 Pro will probably get you the most bang for your buck. The 9600 Pro is good as well, given that it is basically a hardware update of the 9500 Pro (however with less pipes).

The 5600...make sure you get the newest revision of the 5600 Ultra...otherwise you will hurt in the performance dept. compared to the ATi cards. The higher clock speed afforded by the newer flip chip design is good.

Hongfei
Techinical Marketing Engineer
GE Silicones

 

[pmonett]

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.

 

[cdogg]

pmonett,
Everyone knows ATI had problems back in the day of the Radeon 7000 through Radeon 8500. However, I have yet to hear of any major problems with the 9000, 9500, 9700, or 9800. Have you? If so, could you point me to the site(s) that mention it - I would be interested in reading about it.

I agree about the FX and the 9600. Drivers may not be as stable.




~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[GEHongfei]

As far as driver stability, I think ATi has really picked up their game as of lately. With the Catalyst series of drivers, I'd say they are just about on par with nVidia. The problem with NVs current generation of cards is that they implemented 16 bit and 32 bit precision. However, DX9 specs call for 24 bit precision. ATi's cards match the 24bits for DX9 games. But what this means is that NV either has to choose the 16bit path or 32bit path. With 32bits, they have realised that their solution isn't fast enough, and with 16, it is a noticable visual difference...this may have been a reason behind some of the cheating they have been doing in drivers recently.

Hongfei
Techinical Marketing Engineer
GE Silicones

 

[Treeking]

Go with the 9500Pro. Not only does it overall outperform the other cards, it can be overclocked to near 9700 speeds without heating up. The visual quality and stability is unbeatable. If they will sell you the 4200 for $50.00 (tax,etc. included) buy it for now. Later on buy the NEW ATI cards with DDRII etc.

 

[cdogg]

Hongfei,
Good point. However, it isn't exactly right to say that "[blue]DX9 specs call for 24 bit precision[/blue]". I know I'm getting a bit technical on this, but I wanted to clear it up.

ATI cards use 24-bit floating-point precision 100% of the time when using the ARB2 code path (OpenGL = Architecture Review Board). GeForce cards boast 32-bit floating-point precision, which is much more accurate and detailed. However, they also have the ability to use 16-bit precision. Depending on the rendering instructions and detail settings, NV cards may choose the 16-bit or 32-bit path at any point in time.

So far, this is practically what you've said. However, there is nothing in the DX9 spec that states you have to use 24-bit floating precision. However, 24-bit floating precision 100% of the time is going to be more efficient and better looking overall than a card that uses both 16-bit and 32-bit interchangeably.

I hope that makes sense. Here's a complete article for those of you who are interested:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/column/20030219/3dmark2003-01.html

~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[pmonett]

cdogg :
In response to your query, I only had to go over the video forum to find two issues with the R9000 Pro :
javascriptpenindex(450,350,'

http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/refinfo.cfm?w=450&h=350')

and
javascriptpenindex(450,350,'

http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/refinfo.cfm?w=450&h=350')

So you see, there still seems to be some issues with the 9000, and the 9700 is not immune :
javascriptpenindex(450,350,'

http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/refinfo.cfm?w=450&h=350')

Of course, I can also find issues with GF4 cards :
javascriptpenindex(450,350,'

http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/refinfo.cfm?w=450&h=350')

and
javascriptpenindex(450,350,'

http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/refinfo.cfm?w=450&h=350')

Hardware issues ? Driver issues ? I don't know, I didn't read all the posts. All I know is that I have not had one single problem with NVidia cards, and that seems to me to be a good reason to stick with them.
Although I will wait for a newer version of the FX, prefereably a high-performance model with passive cooling, before I fork over for a new card. I am always on the look for more performance, but I'm not a millionaire either, so I want my purchase to count.

 

[pmonett]

Blast it, bad links for the threads.
Here they are again :

R9000 : thread749-568972, thread749-569817
R9700 : thread749-492176
GF 4 : thread749-564557

 

[cdogg]

There's no question that occasionally people have problems with something. With the tens of thousands of different harware combinations possible, nothing is unbreakable.

However, most experts will agree that ATI's older line of cards (pre-9000) had way too many occurrences of known issues. Many of those same experts also feel that ATI has vindicated themselves with their latest releases, especially with the 9500 Pro and the 9700 Pro.

Like Hongfei was pointing out, they've come back pretty much to the point where ATI is actually preferred. ATI's current drivers and architecture is just more efficient overall than any Nvidia card on the market today.

I still root for Nvidia (I've always been a huge fan), but I have to admit when I see a better card. This is just ATI's time. Before you know it, we'll be saying the same thing about Nvidia.




~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[Digitalcandy]

great feedback guys. Thanks for making my decision much more informed but not much easier to make. hahaha.

I'm leaning towards the Ti 4200 merely because of how I will be using it. I've been using a VooDoo 3 3000 32MB card the last 4 years so the Ti 4200 will be a massive step up from what I'm used to seeing. The most "advanced" game I play is Need For Speed, Porsche Unleashed which came out in '99 I think. Also this card will be going into a computer that has the following hardware;

Win98 SE
PII 400
256MB RAM
Abit BH6 Mobo

So I don't want to be the kind of person that drives a $2000 car with a $5000 stereo system in it. Hahaha.

 

[GEHongfei]

LOL, good point =) The Ti4200 will be a good match for your system. I hope you have fun with it.

Hongfei
Techinical Marketing Engineer
GE Silicones

 

[Treeking]

Digitalcandy:
With those system specs, the 4200 is the only way to go. ONE THING though is the AGP slot voltage for the video card. From this link:

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/abitbh6/2.shtml

Note the voltage is 3.3v. Make sure the card you get is BACKWARD compatible so it will work.

All the other cards would need a bigger power supply ( to work properly) than is in your system. Any reason why you want to upgrade to begin with?

 

[Digitalcandy]

great advice about the voltage. I didn't think about that.

I'm getting a new card because my Voodoo is not working anymore.

Put a friends AGP card, (old Nvidia), into my computer and it worked fine. Put the Voodoo back in and nothing. Card must have gone poopoo on itself.

 

[edemiere]

In such an old motherboard where you have to worry about voltages and compatibility (I have seen LX and BX board's that won't work with newer video cards), you might consider looking into a GF3 TI200, great card, very overclockable, or even a Geforce2 GTS which was a decent card.

I only mention these because you list gaming as your LAST priority and these are inexpensive cards that will surely get the job done.

I am using a TNT2 in my AMD Duron 800 system and it still gets the job done nicely.

Good luck!

 

[Digitalcandy]

By the way, which maker of the Ti 4200 is considered the best? On Pricewatch.com I've seen the following makers for the card;

Albatron
BFG Asylum
Palit
Jaton
Asmart
PowerColor
Chaintech
Gainward
MSI
Asus
Prolink
Abit

Those are just makers that listed on the first 3 pages. I'm sure there are more.

 

[cdogg]

Out of those, I would only go with:
Asus
MSI
Chaintech
Gainward

Also look for:
Hercules
Leadtek
Gigabyte


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[Treeking]

performance/quality/compatibilty(actually, outside of the Asus they're about even):

Gainward
LeadTek
MSI
Asus (sometimes hard to configure/compatibility)

You might consider getting a 64MB PCI videocard also. Link:

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PMX440SG1N-64MTV

I think this will work......................