Which video card should I buy?

[Evil Incarnate]

Im thinking of buying a new videocard cuz the one I have doesnt work correctly with the Doom ports (smoke textures are all messed up) and its a lil slow for other games like Painkiller. I wanted to know which card is better based on my configuration.

PT880 Neo motherboard
768 MB PC2700
120 GB WD hard drive

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-128-185&depa=0

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-268&depa=0

[Evil Incarnate]

Almost forgot, Im using WinXP Pro if that makes a difference

[Evil Incarnate]

Please delete this post :)

[Tyberious]

I believe you should get the Geforce and here is why.

First off let me just say both cards are about the same speed with a few things to factor into. I did research on benchmarks and they are pretty much neck and neck.

first off the Geforce overclocks more then the 9800 Pro.

second it may be cheaper depending on the manufactor (always go with the cheaper of the two which might be sapphire).

third, I found out that the Geforce FX 5900 XT can run without cooling (even without passive colling playing games like far cry) at speeds between 375 to 430Mhz (mine ran at 430Mhz stock) and it played games at fast speeds without any type fo artifacts of any kind.

and forth if you have room in your case (the Geforce card is longer then the ATI card) I think the beefy cards with all those cool color PCB and heatsink with those crazy lights look awesome with a case that has a case window.


overall go with the cheapest and if you can't fit the larger Geforce card then go with the ATI.

warning about ati cards (I have nothing but ati cards adn one Geforce fx 5900 XT by BFGtech)

They have driver problems.

they do not work in most poards (I noticed this is problem in some jetway boards)

they can not be agp overclocked (you know the graphics port that you plug your graphics card into, if you overclock taht port you can either fry your card or it will give you serious problems if you don't lock down the AGP frequency and voltage).

DO NTO VOLT YOUR AGP SLOT! If you do the only go to 1.7 maximum, any higher can kill your card, leave it at stock, it will not help overclock your card.



by the way the ati card is a bit faster then the geforce cards.


Hopefully I did a good job pointing out the differences between the cards. If anyone has anythign to add then please post it, hopefully I didn't leave anything out.

[Evil Incarnate]

Thanks for your help Tyberious :) I decided to go with the GeForce instead of the 9800. It was about $20 cheaper, and it has stock speeds of 450/780. I did notice some problems with drivers on my 9600Pro, but maybe thats just my luck. I dont plan to overclock anything as I dont want to fry something, but not only that, I have no idea what I'd be doing. All my AGP settings in the bios are at their defaults (believe they are set to Auto). Better safe than sorry I say, especially with something this expensive. I also have Fast Write capability, but Im not sure I should use it or not with the new card (Didnt have any effect on 9600).

Btw, what does the bios setting for AGP Aperature Size do exactly?

[eX_Do0mY]

AGP Aperture Size sets aside an amount of RAM when the Video Card uses when it runs out of VRAM.

[Evil Incarnate]

Ah, ok thanks ;)

[Tyberious]

if you have problems in your games then disable fast writes. Otherwise leave it as it is.

[eX_Do0mY]

I got my fast writes enabled. I couldn't tell any difference.

[Tyberious]

if there is no problem with fastwrites and side band addressing or the agp speed (ex: 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x) then don't change them. If there is then I would advise you to change one setting at a time to see if that fixes anything, otherwise leave it alone.

[Evil Incarnate]

Got my new card (GeForceFX 5900XT) last week and have been busy testing it out with all my other games. I must say it runs great with everything, most notably Doomsday and Painkiller at 1280x1024, AA 2xQ, AF 8x :D Not gonna overclock since it works great and I'd prolly fry it, and the speed is already at 450/780.