Which video card should I buy?

[Laszlo]

Hello. I'm new here; I hope I'm in the right group for this question. If
not, could someone please point me to the correct NG?

Anyway, I'm buying a new video card, and I've more or less narrowed it
down to two cards:

GeXCube Radeon 9600SE 128 MB (325/200)
PixelView GeForce FX 5600XT 128 MB 64 or 128 bit

I'm not a very technical person when it comes to video cards; I'd just
like a card that runs games OK and has a shot at running Doom 3 and
Half-Life 2 eventually.

My system specs:

Celeron 1700
256 MB RAM 333 Mhz

Which one should I choose? The GeForce is slightly more expensive,
but not by much. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Laszlo

 

[Skid]

I'm not sure where you are or what prices you're seeing. But my advice is
neither of those. A 9600 (not SE) or 9600 Pro would run circles around
either of those two and shouldn't cost much more. Check the Sapphire OEM
models for the best prices.

 

[Dark Avenger]

Hello. I'm new here; I hope I'm in the right group for this question. If
not, could someone please point me to the correct NG?

Anyway, I'm buying a new video card, and I've more or less narrowed it
down to two cards:

GeXCube Radeon 9600SE 128 MB (325/200)
PixelView GeForce FX 5600XT 128 MB 64 or 128 bit

I'm not a very technical person when it comes to video cards; I'd just
like a card that runs games OK and has a shot at running Doom 3 and
Half-Life 2 eventually.

My system specs:

Celeron 1700
256 MB RAM 333 Mhz

Which one should I choose? The GeForce is slightly more expensive,
but not by much. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Laszlo

A celeron 1700, what a shame, You must know by know that the
performance of the celeron processor is a joke, any new videocard of
today the day will have to wait on your poor performing process to
send the data.

here a tip, buy a P4 processor, yes, not a celleron, a real P4
processor! One with 512kb cache and Quad Speed FSB!

It's not your videocard that makes your system slow and slugish...it's
your processor. Please do first something about that terrible
processor, yeah I know it was cheap..but now you know WHY it was
cheap!

But a good nice P4 processor and enjoy REAL performance!

 

[Jean]

hehe running Doom 3 and HL2 with a lame Celeron 1700, you must be joking
dude !

 

[PB]

Hello. I'm new here; I hope I'm in the right group for this question. If
not, could someone please point me to the correct NG?

Anyway, I'm buying a new video card, and I've more or less narrowed it
down to two cards:

GeXCube Radeon 9600SE 128 MB (325/200)
PixelView GeForce FX 5600XT 128 MB 64 or 128 bit

I'm not a very technical person when it comes to video cards; I'd just
like a card that runs games OK and has a shot at running Doom 3 and
Half-Life 2 eventually.

My system specs:

Celeron 1700
256 MB RAM 333 Mhz

1. Upgrade your CPU to a Pentium 4, even the slowest pentium 4 you can get
will work wonders on your performance for less than the cost of a serious
video card upgrade.

2. Upgrade your RAM to AT LEAST 512MB if not 1GB, again you will get more of
a performance boost for your money than buying a new video card.

3. After those two is when you should be considering a new video card, in
which case, don't hamper yourself with a wimpy SE model or whatever crap
some dealer or shop-owner is trying to foist off on you, there are 2 cards
at the price/performance sweet spot on www.pricewatch.com:

Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Chaintech GeForce FX 9800 128MB

Both will give you close to top-notch video for the next year's worth of
games at least.

The Radeon will be faster, but comes with ATI's shitty drivers.
The GeForce will be a little slower, but come with nVidia's insanely great
drivers.

DD

 

[Darthy]

Hello. I'm new here; I hope I'm in the right group for this question. If
not, could someone please point me to the correct NG?

You are in A correct newsgroup. Note, comments below are to point out
some issues... not to personally attack you.. WE ALL LEARN some time
or another... Hey, I did too.... but *I* will be blunt, but trueful
with what I am posting below.

Anyway, I'm buying a new video card, and I've more or less narrowed it
down to two cards:

GeXCube Radeon 9600SE 128 MB (325/200)
PixelView GeForce FX 5600XT 128 MB 64 or 128 bit

Both of these cards S U C K. I know you're not in the USA, but I
will only go by USA pricing... sorry. These two cards cost about
$100~130 USD. A $75 2yr old GeForce4 Ti4200 is more than TWICE as
fast as these two cards. www.pricewatch.com

I'm not a very technical person when it comes to video cards; I'd just
like a card that runs games OK and has a shot at running Doom 3 and
Half-Life 2 eventually.

None of these cards HAVE a SHOT running Doom3/HL2... But 9600se
includes a coupon (in the USA/Europe) for HL2. Even the above Ti4200
will be choking on HL2.

My system specs:

Celeron 1700
256 MB RAM 333 Mhz

With this computer setup, ESPECIALLY! You are cutting ANY video
card's ability. A $25 GF3 will be waiting for your computer to send
it data. You were tricked into buying a "fast" intel.... You could
have paid the same money and bought a more expandable AMD-XP 1900
setup that is comparible to P4 1800~2200 (depending on type A/B/C).

Here is how "slow" your Celeron is. It's performs about the same as
the OLD Celeron 1000Mhz or a PIII-750Mhz. My GF3 was waiting for my
SLOW P3-866 back then (I have an AMD2500 today). 256mb RAM isn't
helping.

Here, read this: http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927&p=1

Especially this page:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927&p=14
Notice HOW low the celeron 2000 is? And this is with the top end
ATI9800Pro and 512mb RAM.... so you'd be looking around 25fps with the
BEST card on your computer.... with a 9600se/5600XT - You'd be getting
around 10fps... if you're lucky. You need 60fps AVG for good game
play.

And this:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1933&p=2

Which one should I choose? The GeForce is slightly more expensive,
but not by much. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

At least the $150USD ATi9600PRO - but I'd wait until the game comes
out. The much faster ATI9800Pro maybe $150~185 when Half Life2
actually ships.

AMD... gives you A LOT more for your money.

Good luck.... U need a complete overhaul.... sorry.

 

[John Hall]

I agree with this poster in 2 out of 3 of his comments. Although you should
consider AMD as well. The Barton 2500+ XP CPU will give you a bigger bang
for your buck than a Pentium 4.

Personally I would not consider any Nvidia card right now. Their DirectX 9
series of cards have serious hardware problems running Direct X 9 games, all
of which is documented at Tom's Hardware if you want to check it out.
Nvidia has been messing with driver patches to try to overcome these
problems, but what they really need is a hardware redesign of their GPU.
And I understand this is in the works.

Right now your best bet for future games, which will be Direct X 9, is ATI.
Their 9600 pro is an excellent card, and if you can find one, the 9800 non
pro, not the SE model but the non pro, is also worthy of consideration.

By the way, Tom's Hardware just did a review of video cards. You should
check out the results.

JK