Video Card recommendation

[iSeriesCodePoet]

My video card decided to go kaput lat night, so now I am forced to buy a new one. I am looking at the ATI 9500 PRO 128 MB. The 9700 is out of my price range. Is this a good card? What about the 8500? I was thinking about getting a 64 MB All-in-Wonder in the 8500 version. Does anyone have expirience with these two cards. Are they a good card. I am looking for all around performance, not specificly gaming performance. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[ski]

Check these 2 articles for reviews of the 9500 and 8500:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021024/index.html

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20010814/index.html

 

[smah]

I'm running an 8500 (not LE, not AIW) on my home system. It's got a pretty good bang for the buck. If you use this, make sure you get the latest drivers from ATI.

 

[LANmass]

To elaborate on smah's comment, MAKE SURE you get the latest drivers!
I stopped using ATI's hardware (at AIW 7500) because their drivers always seemed to have bugs.
I switched to nVidia exclusively (I run a small OEM business) about 1 1/2 yrs ago and have yet to encounter a driver problem.
I know that ATI has since switched to a unified driver architecture like nVidia has had for years, and I believe they are doing a better job now, but they left such a bad taste in my mouth, I can't justify switching back.
I highly recommend nVidia products.

 

[PCLine]

ATI still haven't got it right.

They have allowed their cards to be made by a multitude of people so you have to watch out for "Built by ATI" or the "Powered by ATI" logos and make sure you pick the right company to download from ~ sure the driver will work, but if you haven't matched it correctly it won't work to its full potential.

When you see the file names ATI give their drivers you know that they are not a customer friendly bunch, lol.

wme-radeon-7-81-021218a-007192c-efg.exe

:-D

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

So would you recommend a nVidea them? I know nothing about them. Currently I have a P2 350. Soon to be upgraded to a AMD system (gotta wait for those taxes). iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[pmonett]

As a serious nVidia fan, I have been hooked to their cards since the TNT2.
I bought that one, the GeForce 2 GTS, the GeForce 3, and the GeForce 4 TI 4400 (never buy an MX card in the 4 series !!).
I have never, ever encountered a problem between my apps and the various drivers for these cards. The unified architecture works wonders, you don't have anything to worry about when you upgrade, you can just install the latest official driver and it WILL work.
So, I can only recommend that you get yourself a GF4 TI, of the 4200 or 4400 type. Mark that, TI - not MX.
If this is still out of your price range, you can happily settle for a GF3 (TI whatever), if its for gaming the game developers have just barely caught up with the GF 3 series (and only about shaders), so no worries about that.
I must admit that, if I had to go buy a new card today, I would be seriously considering the Radeon 9700. Yet, given the few remarks here on driver issues, I guess all is still not perfect.
So go for a GF3 or GF4 TI. You should be able to find one in your budget and you will certainly be happy with the performance and ease of use.
One more thing to mention, nVidia has a certain knack in improving the performance of a card with driver versions that follow the release of the card. The gains to be had can get up to 20-25% (in total, not per driver release, unfortunately ;-)). So you invest now and you can have a nice surprise some time down the road.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Thanks for the all the good info so far. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Well, I got a ATI 9000. It was in my price range. Thanks for all the suggestions. The reason I took ATI over nVidea is becuase ATI has hardware DVD decoder. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[lasche]

hey pmonett!
why do you speak badly of the MX? I have no idea what it means, but I've been looking at upgrading some things, and I have that card. What is your gripe with that card (64 MB GeForce4 MX)? Could you please explain the diferences?

 

[cdogg]

lasche,
It depends on the type of 3D performance you need. The GF4 MX cards are pretty identical to GeForce2 cards, since they don't have programmable shaders. As a matter of fact, GeForce3 cards are more advanced than GF4 MX's. Without programmable shaders, your card cannot take full advantage of DirectX 8.1 or DirectX 9 coding. In other words, you won't see the amount of detail that the developer intended.

Also, GeForce4 Ti cards have much higher benchmarks at higher resolutions. The GeForce Ti 4200 isn't that much (less than $110 last time I checked) though it's the slowest of the GF4 Ti line of cards. ~cdogg

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

 

[pmonett]

My reasons for dissing the MX range in the GeForce 4 is that I find that the historical value of it is not honestly represented.
Understand that I am not saying the card is not good, I'm saying it does not live up to its name.
Reason : nVidia first introduced the MX moniker with the GeForce 2. At the time, the GTS and Ultra were quite expensive, like the 4 TI is now. nVidia wanted, and rightly so, a card that would do as an entry-level card based on the GF2 platform. What they did is they took the core GF2 and cut out half the processing pipelines, effectively dividing performance by two, but not affecting any other of the characteristics of the chip. A GF2 MX 400 was still a GF2 card, just downsized and less expensive.
So you had the option, pay full price and get the full performance, or pay much less and get less performance.
Now, you are tempted to reply that it is the same with the GeForce 4 line and the MX and TI versions, but you are unfortunately wrong.
TI is a moniker that came with the GeForce 3. The GF3 started as vanilla GF3, and evolved into TI200 and TI500. The TI200 was slightly less performing than the vanilla 3, and the TI500 was better and, of course more expensive. None of them had any differences in the core technology. As for the GeForce 2, all different versions could do the same things, just at (slightly) different speeds.
Enter the GeForce 4, straightaway declined in MX and TI versions. The TI versions, as per GF3, have the same technical specifications and vary slightly in performance. The MX versions, however, are NOT scaled-down versions of the TI core. Not only do the MX versions have less processing pipelines, they also lack DX8 support and a few other things.
That means that if you buy a GF4 MX, you are NOT getting 4TI technology with lesser power. It is not the same product at all. All MX versions have their merits and possibilities, but they are not little-brother versions of TI cards and will not be able to perform the same things but just slower.
That is why I do not like this. I cannot accept that nVidia tries to make people believe that GF4 MX are actually GF4 technology. They are not.
Aside from that, I have no problems with the MX versions of the GF4. They are a valuable upgrade for someone coming from GF2 territory and will give better performance for the same games.
Contrary to the GF2 MX/GTS versions though, a GF4 MX will never be able to play the same modern games a 4TI can, since they lack DX8 compatibility.

They should have called it something else.

 

[paparazi]

The MX's have always been the CUT DOWN versions of the Nvidia chip range! since the GF2, they lack many of the features of there big brothers but lets keep this in contect, they are cheap and have adequate performance, even in the latest games.
"you get what you pay for" simple as that.
Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[lasche]

thanks guys - very informative as always.
Lucas

 

[paparazi]

Although this thread has come to a conclusion as far as the thread author is concerned, I thought it was worth mentioning how cheap the geforce 4 4600's have become in the last few weeks.
Because of the immenant release of the FX (Nvidia's new flagship) the outgoing top of the range Geforce 4 4600 has plumitted to an incredible low price! it was if you remember just $20-$30 cheaper than ATI's 9700Pro a couple of months ago and NOW around it's around 40% cheaper! thats about $100.
What makes this card even more attractive is the newly released 8X AGP versions which are just as cheap as the 4X ones.
Martin
Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[GulfBreeze]

PC Mag recently compared some of these cards and chipsets, although this lot may be above and beyond the level of detail offered in that article. Still, might be worth a look if you missed it.

 

[lostsoul33]

I recently purchased an Nvidia G-Force 4 128 mb DDR Ti4200 for my Athlon system and it works wonderfully.I upgraded from a G-Force 2 64 mb that I had been using for 2 years.You can purchase the G-Force 4 at Wal-Mart for $178.99.

 

[cdogg]

You can also find it retail-boxed online for as low as $140 (that's including shipping).

Check here:

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/4913-1.htm

~cdogg

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