Video Card

[Soulicro]

Wow, I didnt expect for there to be so many replies. Seriously, thank you everybody for helping me out. Its really appreciated.

So, this is what you people are saying... nVidia can give better performance, but at the cost of using more system resources while ATI gives almost the same performance while using less system resources? Uhm, there Im guessing there wont be that big of a different and both of them kick ass, wouldnt ATI be a no brainer then?

Except, one thing:

The primary thing you have to worry about is DirectX 9c.
Nvidia is ready for it, ATi is not

Whattya mean not ready?

 

[FreeDoM]

Pick ATI. However, there isn't a huge difference in benchmarks between AGP 8x and PCX 16x on an Intel system. If money is no object, ATI Pci Express, Athlon 64 FX (Make sure the motherboard supports pcx). You're going to need a different PSU than the average system uses, superb cooling, Serial ATA hdd and DDR 400 Dual Channel memory. Fx chips support it, the regular 757 and 939 Athlon 64's don't. That would be a good system. The chip itself goes for 900$, i'm sure the video card is the same. Also, I don't think the motherboard with pcx is out.. yet for Athlon 64, it might be soon though.

 

[Soulicro]

This are the settings I have at the moment...

Processor: Pentium 4 540 with HT Technology (3.20 GHz, 800 FSB)
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
RAM: 2GB dual channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533 MHz
Video card: 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon™ X800 XT
Hard Drive: 74GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (10000 RPM)

Bout the hard drive... would it be better to have that with a higher RPM or have 160 GB with 7200 RPM? Since, well, right now I have 30GB and even though sometimes I have a problem, most of the time I dont have any space problems... so I dont see myself having no space if I have 70GB present... and its faster... but, any suggestions?

So, how does that combinations out?

 

[DiebytheSword]

Smaller drives tend to operate faster, if size isn't your dish, plunk down for WD Raptors (10,000 RPM), and plunk down for SATA instead of IDE. DO NOT waste your time on raid, it's only faster in certain situations, none of which you'll be using (unless you run a busy fileserver).

As for Shader Specs, let me shut up the fan boys on either side:

Shader Spec 3 is simply Nvidia trying to force the situation they brought on themselves on ATi. ATi has no support for 32bit floating point shader colors, but full support for 24 and 16 . . . since your eye can only decipher 24bits worth of color difference (which is why 24 bit is called true color), the whole shebazz is BS. Sadly, Microsoft bent their knee, and allowed the Direct X9 c specs to include this rediculous color oversample.

In addition, Smith, if you run a new Nvidia on a 350 watt PSU with no floppy, a small green happy, hard drive, and no opticals, I'm sure it will work. Sadly, most people like to use their PCs, and thus, require more 12v powerplugs than you can spare on a 350. Do the math Mr. Electrician. Nvidia suggests a 520 watt, the minimum I would suggest even trying is 400 watt. If you go lower, you deserve every random reset and boot to desktop you can muster.

 

[Tassadar]

Jesus, someone has a lot of money to blow. It looks good, I mean, you get the best of everything, how can it NOT look good? As for ATi vs. nVidia, for you, it shouldn't matter either way, you're going all out, which means you're most likely going to get a strong PSU either way despite the fact you're getting an x800 or a 6800. What I mean is, the resources the 6800 takes will make no difference for you, because of the PSU you will most likely get.

As long as you have 500 to blow for a video card, you should have money to blow on a good PSU to support the 6800, however, I would choose the x800 XT (oh no suprise). And this is only because I'm looking forward to HL2 more than I am to Doom 3, while both will kick major ass, the x800 will run better with HL2 because of the sponsorship, the same goes with Doom3 and nVidia.

If you look at benchmarks, ATi is somehow still beating nVidia by a small margine, I didn't think it would happen after seeing the huge gain from the 5950 to the 6800, but they managed, somehow. What it comes down to right now is who you support most, nVidia, an American company, or ATi, the Canadian company. I've always been with nVidia, but recently I've seen things that would convince me that nVidia has been slacking off for far too long, and their about to lose a once dedicated customer.

As for FarCry, I don't know the specs of the PS capabilities but patch 1.2 (which converts to PS 3.0) DEFINATLY makes the game look a LOT better. It was released sometime last week, then pulled by UbiSoft very quickly because of complications with certain hardware mixtures. I can say as a witness the game looks a lot better, but I don't know anything about Pixel Shading, so that's all I can say.

You could use this analogy, the video card situation is in my mind a lot like the Coke VS. Pepsi situation, it's not always about who tastes the best, but more of who does the better job (meh, that was a poor analogy).

 

[niobe]

No, that was a fake.

Gawd, people who think they are up to spec always aren't. Those screenshots were the difference between 1.0 and 3.0/2.0. Infact, when those screenshots were taken pixelshader 3.0 wouldn't work at all in farcry yet, so you were seeing 1.0 vs. 2.0.

3.0 and 2.0 are basically identical, but 3.0 just allows longer programming limits.

sorry that i've come in the subject but that thing i saw was realy no slideshow, it was in-game only then on an big screen so you can see the diverents.
you can see it your self on nvidia on that long movie where they let everyone see what they have made in the geforce 6800.
it realy makes a diverent, trust me.

 

[Soulicro]

Well, Im gonna go with the ATI. Im more excited for HL2 also , plus... I dont know, ATI's performance seems to always be better then nVidia in benchmarks and stuff. Plus, I dont think there will be that big of a change between the two, so screw it. Oh, and Tassadar, no I dont really have that much money to blow... my dad just feels sorry for me because Ive had the same ****ty computer for 3 years.

 

[Hash]

no I dont really have that much money to blow... my dad just feels sorry for me because Ive had the same ****ty computer for 3 years.

Lucky bastard. I've had the same piece of junk system since 2001 now, and my fathers sympathy stretched just far enough to land me one 256mb stick of ram. woop-dee-do!

But ya, when your buying video cards at the very top of the market, the differences between the two are so miniscule it doesn't matter which one you get. And besides, it's still gonna be kicking everything elses ass anyways.

 

[Smith|]

Smaller drives tend to operate faster, if size isn't your dish, plunk down for WD Raptors (10,000 RPM), and plunk down for SATA instead of IDE. DO NOT waste your time on raid, it's only faster in certain situations, none of which you'll be using (unless you run a busy fileserver).

As for Shader Specs, let me shut up the fan boys on either side:

Shader Spec 3 is simply Nvidia trying to force the situation they brought on themselves on ATi. ATi has no support for 32bit floating point shader colors, but full support for 24 and 16 . . . since your eye can only decipher 24bits worth of color difference (which is why 24 bit is called true color), the whole shebazz is BS. Sadly, Microsoft bent their knee, and allowed the Direct X9 c specs to include this rediculous color oversample.

In addition, Smith, if you run a new Nvidia on a 350 watt PSU with no floppy, a small green happy, hard drive, and no opticals, I'm sure it will work. Sadly, most people like to use their PCs, and thus, require more 12v powerplugs than you can spare on a 350. Do the math Mr. Electrician. Nvidia suggests a 520 watt, the minimum I would suggest even trying is 400 watt. If you go lower, you deserve every random reset and boot to desktop you can muster.

nVidia also had 32bit floating point shader colors in their last generation of cards, that's why they called it Shader Version 2.0+. They always had to run in either 16 or 32, and since 32 was too slow for nv30, they usually ran in 16. Also, the shader version 3 is really only an optimized 2.0 that allows longer shader line code, but... if someone actually made a code to the limits of a 6800 ultra it would take days to render it :/.

sorry that i've come in the subject but that thing i saw was realy no slideshow, it was in-game only then on an big screen so you can see the diverents.
you can see it your self on nvidia on that long movie where they let everyone see what they have made in the geforce 6800.
it realy makes a diverent, trust me.

No, trust me. It was a fake.

1.1
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1082748673K3Ci0AOPz9_1_1_l.jpg

2.0/3.0
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1082748673K3Ci0AOPz9_1_2_l.jpg

2.0 vs. 3.0
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1082748673K3Ci0AOPz9_1_7_l.jpg

 

[DiebytheSword]

nVidia also had 32bit floating point shader colors in their last generation of cards, that's why they called it Shader Version 2.0+. They always had to run in either 16 or 32, and since 32 was too slow for nv30, they usually ran in 16. Also, the shader version 3 is really only an optimized 2.0 that allows longer shader line code, but... if someone actually made a code to the limits of a 6800 ultra it would take days to render it :/.

It was not native in D3D, Cg, or OpenGL2. They had the capability through assembler only [hardware accellerated]. Now the new card is able to support it in D3D and Cg fully accellerated.