Which video card would u get

[Treebeard]

looking for opinions. cant decide which one,
card will be for gaming not capturing and so forth.

Geforce4 Ti4800 128mb ddr
or
ATI 9700 128mb ddr

opinions, experiences, share them w/ me

[freak_in_cage_10k]

GO FOR THE RADEON!!!!

i am a huge fan of Nvidia but the radeon is LITERALLY MUCH better than the Ti4800!!!!!

Nvidia have been VERY cheeky by calling their card the 4800, it suggests that it out performs the 4600 right? WRONG!!! the 4800 is NOTHING MORE than a Ti4200 (slowest of all the GeForce 4 Ti's) with 8x AGP & a few other small tweaks!!!!!!

It sucks and it designed to con ppl into thinking they are getting a v gd card cheap!!!! It gets whipped by the ati in all benchmarks, and as the ati has been out for a while it should have good driver support!

the only disadvantage with it is that is prob runs quite hot, but perfectly stable!!!

[Faustus]

The ATI will be faster, the nVidia has a better long term track record for drivers.

I currently own a GeForce 4 4400 and its a great card, but the ATIs are faster for sure. Right now the best video card bargain I think is the ATI 9500 Pro.

[Craig Tucker]

I have owned 3 ATI AIW cards and would not hesitate to get another.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

i agree man, but i cant help wondering who was dumb enough to vote for the Ti4800!!!!

[Faustus]

I'm not suggesting that anything is wrong withATI, they make great cards, heck until not to long ago most macs came with them. But I did have a big driver issue with some games on my Original Radeon that I picked up for my PC a while back. I think in general nVidia has a better PC driver track record but thats just me.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

yeah dude, your right, Ati have always had a bad driver track record, but i figured that the 9700 has been around for quite a while so they should have had time to fix all the buggs in the drivers etc

[rallynavvie]

I'd actually get the Ti4600 instead of the 4800. They're right about it being a reworked 4200 architecture on an 8x AGP platform. However the Ti series is not the crap of the GeForce4 chipset, the MX is. That's what most of the new FX are based off of. They've got the GeForceFX chipset but GeForce4 MX architecture. I got a 5600 for my parent's PC and I think my 4400 is still better. The 5900 is the good FX card, but they're pretty expensive right now. I don't think anything runs at 8x AGP yet so it's not like you need to get in on that market now.

I have nothing against ATI, I have lots of experience of those from all the Macs I work with. The G3s I've got are exclusively ATI VGA cards. I wouldn't have a preference either way for them since I like both the GeForce and the ATI GPUs.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

yeah, thats true man, although he specifically requested opinions on those 2 cards only!

the best thing for you to do (Treebeard) would be to find a large graphics card test, take note of the performane order, work out your budget, and buy the best possible card for your money!

i expect toms hardware guide (do google search) will have some extensive tests

[Faustus]

Good point, anandtech.com is also another good site to check

[Northstar]

Well from my limited knowledge and not personal experience.....

The ATI will out perform any card on the market to date, no if no buts its blazing fast from what ive read.

I myself own a GF4 TI4200 and have no complaints with it, very stable and fast enough for me coupled with my AthlonXP 2400.

I suppose it all depends on what you want, if you want to pay a lot more dosh then get the ATI.

Then theres the ATI driver issues mentioned here and i have read about, unstable, crashes in games and so on, i dont know if they have been sorted.

Now the all important bit.... framerate, i suppose part of that depends on your cpu too, if you have a fast cpu then get the GF4, if your getting 80fps or 100fps do you think 20fps matters?

AFAIK the human eye cant see past 60fps anyway (so i heard), how you measure such a thing is beyond me lol

[freak_in_cage_10k]

North:

By "The Ati will outperform any card on the market" i assume u in fact meant "the Ati 9800 Pro", becuse the only ati which has been mensioned up until now, the 7500, is nothing LIKE that good!!!

If you were referring to the 9800 pro, you may be interested to know the Nvidia fx 5900 Ultra is just as good as it, with MUCH better performance in doom 3 benchmarks.

there isn;t much point in upgrading the card if you are only getting the ti4800, it will strugle to run games this time next year.

a year ago, ati drivers were a big problem, however, they have mostly been sorted out now and is no longer a concern. however, let it be said that if you combined the performance of the nividia drivers with the ati hardware you would have a VERY fast card indeed!

yes, framerate does depend on your cpu as well as card, you need a good balance to play a decent game, but usually the major factor determinging games performance is the graphics card! so, if you have a fast cpu you may as well make the most of it and get a decent card too!!!!!!! So, in short, you should never even consider buying the ti4800, unless u found it much cheaper of course!!!!

With regards to getting either 80 or 100fps, that is a HUGE difference!!!! 25%!!!!! Ok, so if you were playing a game when you were exceeding 80fps you would stuggle to see the difference, but what happens when you play a more demanding game!!! lets say you atchieve 30fps on doom 3, increasing that to 37.5 would make a big difference!!!!

In your example, if you wanted to increase your games performance you would notice a much larger increase in fps with an improvment in graphics performance than you would processor upgrade

So, in short, driver probs are small with ati, if the extra performance isn;t required now it will be in the future, if you MUST get one of those 2 then get the ati, although you would be better off checking out some review websites first!

[HideOut]

THe ati, common the 4800 is a POS. Over priced, underpowerd. The 9700 is cheaper every day with the 9800 out. The Catylist (spelling?) program has been underway a year now and even nVidia's drivers arnt progressing as good. No comparison.

Hide