posted
I would stay away with anything that has a PCI interface. The old PCI is MUCH slower than the AGP you are presumably using (I don't think I ever saw a Geforce3 based PCI card), and if it is based on PCI Express (the new, faster PCI), your computer probably doesn't have the necessary slots (they only started showing up this christmas season or thereabouts). Basically get an AGP card. There are really two specs you need to worry about with a graphics card once you get pased the interface (AGP). One is the chipset, the other is video memory. 128MB should be fine for anything in the relativly near future, 256 will get you a bump, but if you keep the settings at a reasonable setting (maybe 1024x786 resolution, medium graphics settings) 128 will serve you well and save you some money. The really big decider is the graphics chipset (this is what hte model number will primaraly refer to).
There are two big manufactures of video chipsets, ATI and NVidia. They make the chips and resell them to various other manufacturers, whose cards will vary in things like the number and type of outputs (single VGA (analog), TV-out, DVI (digital connection)). If you're using a flat panel (LCD) screen that can use a DVI connection, you will probably get a better picture using it. If you have a CRT (the old kind) monitor, and no plans to upgrade to an LCD, all you need is a VGA connector, which every card should have. The various manufacturers can also do things like overclock the chips to eek out a bit more performance at hte expence of additional heat (and thus fan noise)
You will probably get more bang for your buck with an ATI Radeon card than an Nvidia, and I'm more familliar with their lineup so I'll talk abou them. You can getwhat looks like a pretty good version of this card from Newegg for about 125 USD + shipping. The 9600 is a bit old, but it should be able to play anything that comes out for the next year or two at least without any problems , though you may not be able to max-out every setting. If you bump up to the 9800, you should be able to run anything out now or within the next few months at maximum settins with ease. They arne' the highest end cards from ATI, but they're still very good, and since they're last generation, you don't pay the new-and-shiny tax. You can get a good one of these for around $200 (get 9800 PRO if you get one of these, as i understand it the 9600 linked above is probably a better performer than the lower-end 9800s (like the SE's) that are in the same price range.
You could spring for the brand-spanking-new ~$500 Radeon X-850, but in all honesty it's a waste of money. You could buy a 9600 now and something substantially better than the 850 a fews years from now when this one gets a bit old for the same cost, and be able to play whatever you want for longer.
Note: I haven't paid a terrible ammount of attention to the graphics card market as of late and my knowledge may be a bit outdated, though I'm relativly sure its accurate.
Posts: 187 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Now before you do anything hastiy we need all the facts. What type of computer do you have? What sort of cpu do you have? How much ram. As for what type of video card you should get. This is taken from the faq
quote: Q4: I want to see all possible Celestia eye candy. What kind of graphics card should I get?
A4: a) Only Nvidia FX (5nnn series) and GF (6nnn series) cards with 128MB of memory or more will show all of the eye candy drawn by Celestia v1.3.2.
ATI Radeon 9500 and above, including the X series, are comparable to Nvidia FX 5nnn series cards in functionality, although performance differs. However, not all of the eye candy drawn by Celestia v1.3.2 is compatible with them. This may change in Celestia v1.4.0.
b) Graphics cards with drivers that support only OpenGL v1.4 will show most, but not all, eye candy.
E.g. Nvidia GF4 Ti 4xxx series cards cannot show smooth shadow borders. Also, ATI Radeon cards, even 9500 and better, cannot show haze or smooth shadow borders, but this may change in Celestia v1.4.0.
As of January '05, ATI fixed more of the bugs in the Windows drivers for their lower performance cards, those with model numbers less than 9500, but some features are still missing.
As of October,'04, lockups have been seen on Macs and Linux systems which have any ATI card when drawing bumpmaps and specular reflections. Apparently the lockups are due to bugs in ATI's routine GL_ARB_vertex_program as provided for non-Windows systems. Windows systems with ATI cards and Macs with Nvidia cards don't seem to have these problems.
In other words a nvidia 5xxx and 6xxx will give you all the bells and whistles you want, whereas ati radeon cards will not. There's nothing wrong the cards made by ati, they just won't get you all the eye candy you want. How much money are you willing to spend? Also under no circumstance get a pci card. I found some video card for virtually the same price as the card you're looking at but with far better perfomance. It's at new egg (edit for wrong link)
posted
With that system, you won't really get anything out of more than a 9600pro video card (You'll bottleneck at your CPU, and probably your RAM with anything higher, so it isn't worth the money). I'm an NVidia fan myself, but the 5xxx series was pretty much junk. So go with ATI. The 256 meg RAM cards actually don't give you much of a performance boost. The difference is about 5 frames per second if you're lucky. Only the really new games (Doom III in particular) even utilize the extra RAM. 9600Pro will run you 100 dollars... Here's one
(BTW, when I say bottleneck at your RAM, I mean the Bus speed. 100MHZ is a REALLY slow Bus speed.)
Oh, UrbanX, that video card you linked to is PCI-Express. That WILL NOT work with his Mobo.
[ February 18, 2005, 01:13 AM: Message edited by: Boris ]
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Remember Pentium 4's quad pumps its fsb. So while it says 100 mhz its really 400 MHZ. While not the fastest fsb. It sure beats 100 mhz.
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
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If you want to go with NVidia, you can get an FX 5500 for about 80 Dollars here.
It doesn't perform as well as the 9600 pro, but it will do all the eye candy stuff in that game for you. I would recommend the 5600 (I had one myself. Loved it), but they have stopped producing that particular model. The next Chipset up from the 5500 is the 5700, which runs about 80 dollars more.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: Remember Pentium 4's quad pumps its fsb. So while it says 100 mhz its really 400 MHZ. While not the fastest fsb. It sure beats 100 mhz.
Yeah, also known as the slowest Clock speed you can have and still use a Pentium 4 chip. Any way you slice it, though, that RAM is going to bottleneck pretty hard. Especially when you run all the data through the pipes of an ECS budget board.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I have the 6800 and with all the eye candy on it stutters when I look at saturn. Not much but I can notice it. Sorry about the link. I wasn't paying attention.
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
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SO I am not sure what bottleneck means...are you atalking about my 750+ ram or my video card? I am new to this computer stuff.
I would like to learn, maybe I can get a new motherboard and try switching over.
I have not tried to put in all the extra stuff yet. I have done the basic tour which requires no add-ons. I just downloaded the educational general add-ons, but I can not find out how to install it.
I see a icon that startes it, I am thinking I just use that Celestia, or maybe I cut and past the folder into the Celestia min programs folder. I am reading on that right now.
I appreciate all the help. So, what is the consensus on the best card to get? Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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One problem I ran into quite often while looking to upgrade my video card is that quite a number of the high-end ones require a more powerful power supply then I had. Just something to watch out for....
Posts: 512 | Registered: Jun 2002
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By bottlenecking I mean that certain parts of your computer will actually not run fast enough to keep up with the video card. One example is my own computer. I have a 6800gt in my computer, but I have budget quality RAM in my computer. A person with a 9800pro can beat me in some benchmarks if they have better quality RAM because my ram just can't push the data to the Video card fast enough. A bottleneck is an actual speed limitation. But as was just mentioned, getting a big video card also requires more power. That's another reason I recommend the 9600pro or FX5500. Going any higher than these cards requires a direct connection to the Power-Supply, and about 100 more watts of power capability from the PSU.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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The FX5500 is slower (Most benchmarks put it at and average of 5-10 FPS slower out of 120 FPS), but is about 30-40 dollars cheaper.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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