Video Cards - Tips? Suggestions?

Sorry to burst your bubble .... so I don't know where you were trying to go with that

yeah, i really dont know much about hardware, but i have an nvidia card thats been good to me so i thought i'd force my biased opinion on everyone by supporting facts that i really knew nothing of. ill go stand in the corner now....


btw: does the GFX really only have a 128 bit memory bus ??? or is that just cards <= GF4

Nvidia is horrible for tv-out. You want something, "BUILT" by ATI, not "powered" by ATI.

Originally posted by Perspective
btw: does the GFX really only have a 128 bit memory bus ??? or is that just cards <= GF4

Yeah

That's kinda the one thing that made the GFX a flop. Lots of hype leading up to the release of the card, and when it finally got finished it barely could hold it's own against the 6 month old 9700 Pro.

GFX has some pretty wicked image quality, but it's just slower than the 9700/9800 when pushed hard.

>>And I don't know where novacain is getting this "the nVida FX is nearly Dx10 compatible" crap, but it's false information.

I just read the reviews.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...800pro-02.html

BMJ, u got me all paranoid now!

I have a 3dfx 3500 16mb on one comp orig price $340.00 1999
&
GEforce MX420 64mb on the second one orig price $99.00 2002

but they both perform the same(quake3) .
i havent done any benchmark though.

Now iam beginning to think 3dfx is the better card

16 != 64. power of suggestion?

They may produce the same frame rate but will not produce the same graphics quality. That is the old 3DFx will not draw as detailed the same screen.

This is also true of the GForce4 MX cards which are crippled because they lack the nReal engine (one of the major differences between GF3 and GF4)

To put it another way, compare a car and a motor bike, will both get from A -> B at the same speed.
In the car you get climate control, cumfy seats ect.
In a limo you get even more.

Originally posted by novacain
>>And I don't know where novacain is getting this "the nVida FX is nearly Dx10 compatible" crap, but it's false information.

I just read the reviews.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...800pro-02.html

Hmmmz, that's odd. I'll have to ask around to see if it's valid, but last time I checked the GeForce FX isn't even completely DX9 compatible. It's lacking like 1 or 2 things that make it fully compatible.

I don't know that I entirely trust Tom's. They do have some good things, but some of their information can be a little mis-leading.



Oh, and SAMSAM, novacain speaks da truth I can make games run just as fast on my VooDoo 5 5500 AGP as I can on my Ti 4200 but that generally means:
On the VooDoo: 800x600 res. 2x AntiAliasing + edge aliasing. All other settings generally tweaked towards performance and not quality.
On Ti 4200: 1280x768 res. 4x AntiAliasing. 8x Anistopic filtering. Texture sharpening. All other setting generally tweaked for quality.

Like that the VooDoo might actually out-perform the Ti 4200 in FPS, but as you can see in these two screen shots the quality isn't even close.

VooDoo 5500 screen shot

Ti 4200 screen shot

as you can see in these two screen shots the quality isn't even close.

Do you think you could point out the differences? There must be something wrong with my eyes because they look the same to me. *scratching head* ?

hehe, yeah. General texture quality (look at the road), shine on the cars, overall image quality, and lighting.

I wish I had a better shot for the VooDoo because there's a lot of graphical glitches such as non-textured areas. These screenys proabably aren't the best comparison (I was trying to find the best looking voodoo shot instead of crappiest) but when I play the game there is a really obvious difference.