Video Card shopping...need your advice

#1 I just bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Local electronics/computer store had them on sale for $150. Sure, it's not top of the line, but I can play FarCry with all the graphics options set to "Ultra High" at 1280x1024 resolution, and the game feels like I get around 50-60fps. Sure, it sometimes dips to around 20 fps when there's a LOT of stuff on screen, but that's pretty rare. And looking at the recent benchmarks that have come out for Doom 3, I should be fine for that game, too.

The 6800 series is suppose to the best Nvidia card, and the X800 series for ATI. At this point, however, I couldn't justify spending more than $199 on a video card.

#2 I'll second the 9800 pro recommendation, I've heard that it's a great card. The x800s are supposed to be awesome, but I think they're still beyond your (and most people's) price range.

I have a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. It's a decent card, and probably really cheap now, but it actually performs worse than a 9500 pro, so don't let the fact that it's name is 100 "more" mislead you into thinking it's a better card.

www.tomshardware.com/ usually has a lot of information on different video cards, including how well they run various games. Pay special attention to the conditions they run the tests in, however, because a lot of times they needlessly crank up AA and AF, so that has an effect the results, especially if you aren't the kind of person that alters all the video card's settings.

I'm not familiar with the nVidia line at the moment, but I'm sure they have some quality stuff, too.

>> Drew

EDIT: url mistake...

#3 1) ATI

3) ATI Radieon (sp?) 9800

It's probably too expensive, but it'll last longer.

#4 ATI 9800 Pro is good, but as for the x800s it looks like they really underperformed compared to the NVIDIA cards in that price range when you look at the id DOOM 3 benchmarks.

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQy

#5 Well guys, thanks for the input. I went ahead and went with the nVidia e-GeForce 6800 and all I can say is holy f****** s***!!! That card is unbelievable! I'm not an expert on video cards by no means but for some reason (I don't even know the reason) I have always prefered nVidia. It is such a nice feeling to able to turn all the features to the max and still have great FPS. The ATI could very well be a better card for all I know but I do have to say that I am very, very happy with 6800.

Thanks for all the advice!!

#6 Yes, the 6800 does outperform by a large margin the ATI x800s in the id DOOM 3 benchmarks I linked to. I have always preferred NVIDIA as well because I have had bad experiences with ATI drivers in the past as a software QA Tester.

#7 I just upgraded to an ATI x800 pro

My only gripe with Nvidia cards is that their color accuracy is nowhere near as good as some of the other VPUs like Matrox, 3dlabs and ATI. For games it doesn't matter but for much of the graphics work I do color accuracy is very important.

From my experience with a variety of video cards Nvidia cards seem to sacrifice accuracy for speed. Which isn't always a big deal, its just something that I need.

#8 Hm. I wonder how many 6800 cards that benchmark will sell :)

#9 Just my 2

#10 Hmmm.....

Everyone touting Doom 3 as a reason to buy a 6800 should at least realise that the speed boost on nvidia hardware is down to the nvidia superior opengl drivers. Having been able to use and compare both cards. Opengl games performed slightly better on 6800 then x800 but, the reverse was true of DX stuff!

I wonder why no reviewers of the cards have mentioned this. Especially as more DX games than Opengl games are being made these days. In fact the Doom 3 engine is one of the only comercial engines to still use OpenGL.

hmmmmm....carmack worship has blinded them me thinks....:o}

#11 If we are going to talk D3D vs OpenGL, I just have to say that OpenGL will always be the better choice since it's cross platform. Also OpenGL has a nice, clean and easy API which D3D really don't have.

I think it's strange that so many people are using D3D, maybe it's just me but the last thing I would do is to create software for windows only.

// Alexander Bussman

#12 Erh, Doom3 being one of the only commercial engine to use OpenGL ? You might want to check your facts a little :
Q3 (OGL only), Unreal, renderware, Virtools all support OpenGL, and that makes up most of the PC engine space (PC here includes Mac)
And there is more.
Indie engines, but still commercial :
Torque (OGL only, but TSE will have both), Cipher (OGL only)
As with the big time players, there is also a lot of OGL in the indie space..

Also, d3d is only starting to really make a dent in OpenGL's stronghold in the scientific/non-game visualization domain

Believe what you want, but Carmack is only a minor reason why people use OpenGL : it helped that he was so vocal about it, but it's by no means the most important factor here :)

#13 Alexander, that kind of statement is also ridiculous :
D3D 9 has a very clean API, matter of fact, since DX 7, D3D hasn't been the mess people try to say it is...
it's not about making a choice and only using that, be it a graphics API, an OS, or any other tool : it's about choosing the right tool for the job, and both do it conveniently

#14 Nicolas,

Maybe D3D 9 is cleaner then the version I was forced to use a while ago (I think it was D3D 8), I'm not sure.
The definition of "clean API" may vary from people to people too.
But still, the biggest problem with D3D is that it's not portable (people have to agree with me on that point atleast).

And as you said, it's about choosing the right tool for the job (that's why I will never again use D3D).

// Alexander Bussman

#15 @Matt, you are right. When I was doing 2D web graphics for a living I always used Matrox. NVIDIA for games.

@Josh, Doom 3 as a reason to buy a 6800? I would never spend over $150 on a graphics card, but I am one of six people I know who has completely upgraded his PC in anticipation of Doom 3. One of them bought an x800 so there are gamers out there who would spend that much on an upgrade for a specific game. Of course I know a few people who bought X-Box when it came out just for Halo.

@Peter, I didn't know about D3D vs. OpenGL performance issue. I would prefer OpenGL performance though because I have a lot of games and apps that use it. I thought the NVIDIA performance boost in Doom 3 was because of driver tuning made specifically for the game.

#16 Appart from a couple of engines, I believe D3D is generaly more popular, allthough GL is a lot quicker for instant gratification, its also quite messy when you get to CG shaders. D3D pretty much created the need for shaders and GL kind of tagged along with card manufacturers throing together extensions that aren't compatible with one another.

I'd still get a Geforce card for GL as I'm a 3d artist, and most 3d apps don't perform as well in D3D, not to mention ATI having lousy Pro GL drivers. D3D gets the latest tricks first most of the time, and GL's support for the same features are often a quick fix afterthought.

#17 Uh oh, a can 'o worms has been opened. :)

#18 Hey now, we were discussing the merits of video cards, not graphics APIs. :)

#19 I perfer Nvidia cards, to me they perform better and are more stable then ATI on my computer. If you want a good card, get the 6800, but don't base it on tam's hardware. I've heard stories of how they "tweak" nvidia cards to go farther, but reguardless NVidia has been around longer and has better cards IMO.

#20 They both are very fast cards. Nvidia does have the upper hand in opengl games. Supposedly ati is rewriting there ogl drivers from the ground up so it can compete with nvidia in opengl(probably just because they get spanked in Doom3).

On a side note, ati has been around longer than nvidia. August 1985 ATI, January 1993 Nvidia. ;)