Atlantis Radeon 9100 or Creative FX5200?

[j.newman]

I have < £90 to spend on a graphics card and I am really only willing
to purchase it from a highstreet store since I if it's faulty I can
just take it straight back. I'm aware that I'm gonna fork out about
£20 more for that privilege so unless you really think that the prices
I quote are completely nutty then please don't tell me about the £20
price differential.

Basically, my Voodoo5 has now become totally useless to me. I used to
use my PC for 3d Studio Max, Midtown Madness, Activision Star Trek
sims and occasionally Flight Sims, GTA etc etc and whereas the older
software worked fine the new software worked but lacked all the
advertised T&L effects. Now it's got to the stage where my graphics
(and my 900mhz AMD @957 - don't tell me about it, when Christmas comes
I'll be getting a new beast) have become too decrepit to handle the
latest releases. Firstly, FS2004 is unusable...although loadable and
jerky. But, the final straw on the camel's back was Enter the Matrix,
which I cannot load at all. (Card must have HW T&L, also device should
be compatible with dx9)

I've had a look on the websites for my highstreet stores and I've got
a shortlist of two cards to choose from (although if you really think
I'd be better off spending my money on another card please feel free
to suggest it).

Atlantis ATI Radeon 9100 (128mb DDR) - £90

Creative GeForce FX5200 (64mb DDR) - £63. I looked for non-Creative as
in my experience they are slower, but no such luck.

Bearing in mind what I want to use the graphics card for, what do you
suggest?

Thanks in advance,

Jake

 

[EGK]

Basically, my Voodoo5 has now become totally useless to me. I used to
use my PC for 3d Studio Max, Midtown Madness, Activision Star Trek
sims and occasionally Flight Sims, GTA etc etc and whereas the older
software worked fine the new software worked but lacked all the
advertised T&L effects. Now it's got to the stage where my graphics
(and my 900mhz AMD @957 - don't tell me about it, when Christmas comes
I'll be getting a new beast) have become too decrepit to handle the
latest releases. Firstly, FS2004 is unusable...although loadable and
jerky. But, the final straw on the camel's back was Enter the Matrix,
which I cannot load at all. (Card must have HW T&L, also device should
be compatible with dx9)

I've had a look on the websites for my highstreet stores and I've got
a shortlist of two cards to choose from (although if you really think
I'd be better off spending my money on another card please feel free
to suggest it).

Atlantis ATI Radeon 9100 (128mb DDR) - £90

Creative GeForce FX5200 (64mb DDR) - £63. I looked for non-Creative as
in my experience they are slower, but no such luck.

Bearing in mind what I want to use the graphics card for, what do you
suggest?

On your 900mhz system, I dont know if either one are worth the bother. You
might be better off with an even lower end card like a Geforce2 mx since
that at least still supports most new games I believe. Then get a new video
card when you purchase the new system.

I had a GF2MX in an AMD 1.1ghz system and upgraded to a Powercolor 9100.
The Powercolor wasn't much better at all in the one game I tried. Nascar
racing 2003. When I upgraded my cpu to an XP2000, the Radeon 9100 scaled
way better. I even put the GF2mx back in to test it.

A friend with a Pentium 1gig machine purchased a Geforce FX5200 as an
upgrade from a TNT card which didn't support the T&L needed for Star Wars
Galaxies. He thinks it works great so that may work better on your lower
end cpu if you really want to spend the money on a new card.

 

[Larry Roberts]

Atlantis ATI Radeon 9100 (128mb DDR) - £90

Creative GeForce FX5200 (64mb DDR) - £63. I looked for non-Creative as
in my experience they are slower, but no such luck.

Bearing in mind what I want to use the graphics card for, what do you
suggest?

Thanks in advance,

Jake

I wouldn't touch any 64MB FX5200 cards. They all use a 64bit
memory bus, and that will make it about as fast as that old Voodoo5
(maybe a little faster). If it's between just the two you mention,
then get the Radeon 9100. It doesn't have the DX 9 shader engine as it
is a DX 8.1 card, but will perform a lot better than any crippled
64bit memory bus card.
If you want a DX9 card that's cheap, then your limited to the
GF FX5200, but make sure you get a 128bit memory bus version. Another
thing to keep in mind is that when the DX 9 shader supported games
come out, the GF FX5200 will be pretty "swamped" if you use high
detail graphics.

 

[j.newman]

OK. I've been looking around a bit more. What do you guys think of the
ATI RADEON 9600 128MB?

 

[EGK]

Great card but again, you won't see it's power with your 900mhz cpu. If
you're going to buy a new system or upgrade everything around Christmas, the
prices will probably have fallen a lot by then.

 

[ShinCat]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this helps but I'm running a circa 1997 BX system with a 900
MHz Celeron processor. Using 3D Mark 2001 SE, I benchmarked using my old and
new video card. My old card was a Radeon 7000LE while my new card was a
Radeon Sapphire 9100 128 MB. After overclocking the Radeon 9100 to 290 core
250 memory, the 3D Mark 2001 SE scored doubled to 5800. The biggest
difference are games which employ T&L. The hardware T&L on the 9100 made a
huge difference in games like Dungeon Siege.

The problem is that the 9100 core is an R200 GPU which is only compliant
with DX 8.1 and does not support all the features in DX 9, something you may
want to consider given Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 imminent release.

ShinCat.