View Full Version : The Best Hardware Accelerator on the Market?
ResurgencE
21-12-03, 07:09
Looking to soup up my cpu with the fastest components available on the market.
Could anyone possibly suggest a good graphics card? Has to be the fastest, most stable on the market. And believe me when i say money is not an issue.
Im rolling in nc.
:D
TheDuckMan
21-12-03, 07:49
My GeForce FX has produced amazing graphics on games like Splinter Cell and Max Payne. It has improved NC a bit aswell. Its stable, has its own cooling fan so it never heats up and burns. Never rly have ever had any problems with it. I'm running a Dell Demension 4400 with 512 (soon to me 712 after Xmas) and it runs smooooth. I would reccommend it.
BTW its a Geforce FX 5200 ULTA
ResurgencE
21-12-03, 07:52
Thanks Duck.
The PC magazines i was leafing through all claimed that the ATI Radeon far outperforms the Geforce, but that the Geforce was a more stable product on the whole.
What about the new Hercules with 256 MB ram? Any good?
The reigning champ ATM
Radeon 9800XT (extreme edition)
It will set you back alot but give you amazing FPS in next gen games like halflife 2 and doom3 (Believe me I have played em!)
But you wont see any improvments in neocron, since alot of software thats not programmed for direct X 9 seems to suck on radeons.
I get about 60FPS in cron with a radeon 9800pro
(thats the same FPS i got with a geforce 2 ti, welfare card)
rubaduckythug
21-12-03, 08:27
i have heard a lot but do not know for myself as i have never owned a radion product but i have heard much talk about radion cards having issues with certain games and them having problems with developer support with games, since nivida i believe nearly dominates the market in mass, also i notice that radion cards seem to be priced a lto higher to nivida. Im guessing you could compare the two with an anlogy like this, AMD = Nividia, while Radion = Intel o_O :p price wise atleast :cool:
im usin same as duck, and i get great fps and stuffs
shodanjr_gr
21-12-03, 08:47
N-Vidias are a waste of money.
End of question.
The Geforce FX line is the worst type of GFX cards that N-Vidia ever made. Even the top models are out-performed by those of ATIs and they cost more....
If you want value for money get an ATI 9600 Pro or XT.
If you want uber performance get an ATI 9800 XT.
.-
I've used NC with nVidia-based GF4 Ti4x00 cards, Matrox G400 series, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, and an ATI 9800XT.
The Radeons do a better job with texture filtering and AA, I find. I also use AA/AF to get rid of the jaggy lines on diagonals and clean up textures.
The GF4 cards hold their own, but the AA is a major performance hit. If you don't use AA, it's not a problem.
The Matrox G400 ran NC, but not too well. Wouldn't recommend it. :-)
Right now, there's good bang for the buck in the ATI 9800 non-pro and I believe one of the new nVidia GeForce FX cards (5700 Pro?). Really depends on what games you play, how much AA/AF you want, and what level of DirectX is in use in the games you play.
ResurgencE
21-12-03, 10:58
Thank you all, for your valued responses.
Ill prolly be opting for enabling AA in-game, so i'd like the highest-end card possible. It seems its a toss-up between the ATI 9800XT and the top-of-the-line Geforce.
The 9800XT sports 256 DDR, if im not mistaken? And im still a tad anxious about the bug reports on the ATI.
I have a Buit By ATI 9800XT. It has 256MB of memory. I believe all the other vendors' 9800XTs also have 256MB of memory.
Matthew.v.smith
21-12-03, 11:49
Well.
Resurgence i use a 80 quid Radeon 9600 Excalibur and get a max fps of about 71 in Neocron and i can ramp nearly every other game up too full with little fps lag:D
For example Unreal 2 1200x900 and all details on full is super smoove and only a bit laggy when u get a load of monsters on screen shooting stuff at u but u hardly notice :P
Aaaand SOF2 runs sweet on max res with nearly everything on full :)
and what else?? hmmm well bloodrayne is cool with everything on full and this card takes into account all the new features of the game so u can have cloth physics and shiny clothes and stuff.
Matty!:angel:
Deanus_willis
21-12-03, 13:10
i use a ATI Radeon 9700 pro and i never fall below 35 fps even in an op fight. although my friends seem to think i just know how to build a computer :)
either way, radeons do suffer from some driver bugs such as buffer problems. This can cause large polygons to fill the screen and sometimes worse graphicaly glitches. But on the other hand i do run the game in 1600x1200 with AA and i never jerk around like i know some people do. GO FOR ATI. geforce kinda sucks atm for a higher price.
Hope you make the right choice :)
9700 pro, only game i had problems with was nc with the big texture thing, but it would appear that was Nc's problem not the card, coz they fixed it with the last patch =)
personally i would go for 9800xt
Deanus_willis
21-12-03, 13:16
hehe, you say they fixed it but its worse than ever. Just happens less often. Gab mine is the worst, but i find if i turn off vegitation it stops. Maybe its just me. Oh i do have a 1Mb BB connection. so thats why my FPS doesn't drop in op fights, not the card. for a fair view on things.
not happened to me :confused:
am going through an nc quiet period though so havent played for about a week
Deanus_willis
21-12-03, 13:22
its not so common but when it happens its worse. i had to relog because i was blind. could only see my hud. still happens in Plaza 1 too. But maybe on 99% of computers its fixed. or i need new drivers, but im carful with drivers because generally they screw my computer.
Man my computer sounds crap now :lol:
Psyco Groupie
21-12-03, 14:24
ive got the old style 9800 pro - i have to say it owns .. ive recently got a wee bit faster cpu and nc fooken flies!
the ati bug reports are about modern games crashing on atis latest driver - simple fix .. dont update drivers yet :)
get a 9800xt you wont be disapointed, if you do have any problems with it - just ask for help / search the net and theres always an answer from someone!
hf
Using a Radeon 9000 Pro in this comp, but I have a 9800 XT 256MB in my new one (which I can't use properly until Christmas :p). Only ever had issues with Neocron really, and they're fixed now. Also a good point is that the new Catalyst drivers for ATi cards have a feature to restart the GFX without restarting the system. And of course, the performance. Ran Battlefield 1942 with AA on, everything whacked up to the max and FPS was a solid 100, couldn't get it to drop at all. Personally I get the impression that NVidia have just become complacent and lost the drive to take their cards as far as possible. But that's just my humble opinion. :p
Hey I got a gf ti4600. Is it worth upgrading this card now or is it better waiting for the next generation of cards?
TheDuckMan
21-12-03, 18:31
i would wait, these cards have been out for a while and I'm pretty sure there is another line of cards that will be coming out soon. I guess it depends on how many times you can afford to keep upgrading. My parents are both school teachers so, heh, I really cant upgrade everytime something new comes out.
Originally posted by Mirco
Hey I got a gf ti4600. Is it worth upgrading this card now or is it better waiting for the next generation of cards? Just ask a simple question... Are you currently happy with the performance you get in games? If you are, then you don't need a better card, if you aren't then get a new one.
I would wait. The Geforce 4 Ti line of cards was actually very good, and they still perform well, only the highest-end Geforce FX and Radeon cards can beat them. Of course they're only DX 8.1 generation, but that doesn't really matter much.. yet.
Hey I got a gf ti4600. Is it worth upgrading this card now or is it better waiting for the next generation of cards?
Bought my Ti4600 in April, 2002 as an upgrade to a GF2 Ultra. Pretty nice.
Bought my Radeon 9700 Pro in September, 2002. Made the GF4 Ti4600 look like the bilinearly filtered crap it was. :-)
If you use AntiAliasing and Anisotropic filtering, chuck the GF4 Ti4600. If you don't use any of that stuff, count your blessings and wait until April or so. The new cards/cores should be released in mid to late march at CeBit. How long until they hit production products is anyone's guess.
Originally posted by IceStorm
Bought my Ti4600 in April, 2002 as an upgrade to a GF2 Ultra. Pretty nice.
heh - thats the same as me.
I tend to upgrade when games that actually use the new hardware features start shipping (the chip feature sets are usualy about a year in advance of shipping software that properly uses them) and the old gen cards just dont cut it any more.
I went from ATI Rage Pro to Nvidia TNT 2 when Battlezone appeared, to GF 2 Ultra when I started playing Unreal Tournament, to Ti4600 when Morrowind came out.
The only game to tax the 4600 so far has been Deus Ex 2, but since the game was a huge disappointment I'm not gonna use it as my "upgrade trigger", I think - I'm not exactly gonna be playing it for weeks at a time.
If Unreal 2 MultiPlayer is good I might change up early, since the 4600 is only *just* good enough for U2 in decent resolutions, but I will more likely wait for the new core & feature set iterations as IceStorm mentioned above.
On the issue of which brand ...
I've used loads over the years, including the current top dogs from each manufacturer - I still like Nvidia best, even when they are a hop behind ATI in the release schedules.
It's a mixture of things, but mostly down to the full package balance (drivers/support/updates/additional features) rather than solely outright hardware performance.
ATI used to be infamous for shitty drivers delivered way too late. They've definitely got better but I still always have way more driver problems and display issues using ATIs than I do Nvidia.
If Nvidia's next hop falls too far behind ATI then I might go with ATI, but the minor performance differences in real-world usage aren't big enough to outweigh the overall "package" benefits so far.
Matrox have always delivered great product, but it's very definitely geared more towards productivity and non-gaming tasks.
Go for the latest 9800 pro :)
The new geforces are a bit..umm...shit. Nvidia went downhill after they got busted for cheating on benchmark results.
its already said but ill back it up the 9800 XT is the best, but at what price, if you willing to spend that much on a peice of hardware that is only marginally better than even the next card down in ati's range then go for it, but i can think of a 100+ better things to do with £350+ although i have to admit it will be future proof for around 8-12 months before you start noticeing dated features about the card in comparison to its competition, i wont be upgradeing untill mid 04 if i do at all im going off pc's tbh they have fucked up my eyes and i spend way to much time on them, and when i think you could give £350 to some guy in a 3rd world country and he could feed his family for a year or buy 20 lbs of crack cocaine lol, i think we are getting a little out of perspective, i know this is turning into a rant but im going there so dont try and stop me :p ive been thinking about the past and what my parents genreation did for our country, i mean you only have to look at the population 80 years ago to see 15% of the population were living well and only 2% had the "real" money, then in the 50's + 60's we had a revolution of sorts we said fuck you to the elite "turned on, tuned in and dropped out" they made this country a better place for it, my grandad at my age was working a 60 hour week and a 66 hour week if he worked on sundays as well, if thats not being a slave to the system i dont know what is, since then we have come a long way but i can see the world and the "leaders" encroaching upon our god give right to FREEDOM of speech and a right to make our voices heard to our leaders, tony blair blatantly ignored us and went to war and i had kids in my school supporting them not because they thought it was a good idea it was because they thought it was "cool" i cant judge them each person is entitled to their own opinion but it desterbed me greatly to see how anyone could think war was a exciteing prospect, now dont get me wrong saddam had to be taken out or delt with but did it have to done in such a manner??? no, we could of offered him all the U.N aid he needed to rebuild the country and i dont just mean give him billions of dollars to spend how he sees fit, i mean getting our people in there to reconstruct the place and bring them into the U.N, i doubt very much if saddem is a tyranical spawn of satan "evil" man, if he was there would of been far higher state of anarchy in his country in my opinion, of course everyone and anyone with a clue knows it was about saddams oil, we let bush and supported him in takeing this natural comoditiy away from the people of the land, and these are the biggest polluteors on the planet per sqaure mile of land compared to any other country!!!! now im not a genius and im writeing this maybe as outlet for my frustration but that just seems totally wrong.........
anyway fuck knows how i managed to turn a gfx card thread into this but nvm, me is logging off to go drink some alchahol with freinds and talk about gurilla warfare lolz!
For the best preformance get the ATI.
Their "optimizations" in their drivers are a little questionable. I wouldn't trust them. Plus, after the HL2 fiasco I would question how well they are really going to preform on upcoming games.
If you're buying now then I reckon NVidia aren't going to beat the 9800XT any time soon. But if youwait for HL2 and Doom 3 to come out then you might give NVidia enough time to get their act together. At that point, even if they aren't really challenging ATi, the price on the ATi cards will be forced down a little.
Originally posted by AfterDark
For the best preformance get the ATI.
Their "optimizations" in their drivers are a little questionable. I wouldn't trust them. Plus, after the HL2 fiasco I would question how well they are really going to preform on upcoming games.
I assume you mean the Nvidia optimizations ??
I like both the high end cards on the market at the moment, but I know what I get with ATI as they are very open about their drivers. Nvidia are not so open, and they have this thing about "application detection" that opimises the drivers settings for a particular 3d application/game, so other than a slight IQ difference your ok if you run one of the few games/apps that have been optimised for. If not then you will suffer a performace decrease compared to the optimized apps, but if you got a high end card it will still rock. Just a shame Nvidia have chosen to go down the route they are with their drivers.
I think all they are doing is trying to save face as without the drivers application detection, they would not be able to compete with ATI and the the new 3dmark patch (anti cheat code) proves that.
Only time will tell if Nvidia put more optimisations into their drivers to circumvent the ones that have been found out and blocked in 3dmark.
For more information on this do a google search and type Nvidia cheating 3dmark.
As for a new graphics card then the radeon 9800xt out performs the 5950U in almost every game/application but both are nice cards. Just go with which ever one suits your budget more, or the one you are most happy purchasing.
Originally posted by Scikar
If you're buying now then I reckon NVidia aren't going to beat the 9800XT any time soon. But if youwait for HL2 and Doom 3 to come out then you might give NVidia enough time to get their act together. At that point, even if they aren't really challenging ATi, the price on the ATi cards will be forced down a little.
That's exactly what I'm waiting for with my upgrade These 2 are next gen games, if you get a graphics card that runs them great, it should last you for quite a while.
I'm pretty sure id will be licensing their doom3 engine for other games, so I'm going to get whatever card works best for doom3.
My current ti4600 is 20 months old, it still seems fine for most games, and I've never had graphics glitches with it. I'm hoping my next card will last just as long.
Nvidia have released 2 new gfx cards to compete with radeons XTs.
The FX5700 -v- The Radeon 9600XT
The FX5950 -v- The Radeon 9800XT
Nvidia have done a good job on both these cards and each havign its strengths and weakness's is a very close call.
Mostly people will stay loyal to brands they've gotten in the past but other than the 2 I mentioned nVidia cards arent as good as their ATI counterparts.
Originally posted by BiTeMe
I assume you mean the Nvidia optimizations ??
Interestingly enough (now that Nvidia are going way overboard to prove that they are now squeaky clean and will be in the future) ATI have been shown to be cheating too, with several major game engine developer teams (Epic/Unreal & Bungie/Halo are the ones I remember) saying that there is some distinctly fishy stuff going on with their engines on ATI platforms.
(Sacrificing image quality/complexity when the rendering gets taxing).
I remember eyebrows were raised when ATI leapt on Nvidia's 3DMark weaseling so vociferously ... ATI weren't exactly viewed as angels either.
I guess all we've learnt is that they are just as bad as each other, and that marketing droids are evil incarnate. :(
On highest settings in Neocron I get a nice 70ish FPS in cities and most zones, in OP fights it goes down to about 40-60, which is still excellent. I play other games as well, Planetside (amazing FPSes there as well), Deus Ex 2: Invisible War which takes advantage of the hardware, and made it look really really sharp with great fps, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (excellent as well, not slow downs), BF 1942, Max Payne 2, Unreal 2 all look great as well. SWG gets good FPS as well, and its a game that tends to hog up FPS.
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