Radeon 9800 PRO vs FX 5900 XT

T

ThePentiumGuy

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hey guys,
im buyin a comp soon
i need your advice on what kind of graphics card im getting:
Radeon 9800 PRO or FX 5900 XT (both are 256 MB)

i heard the FX takes up a lot of space, makes more noise, but is a little faster
the Radeon is about $30 cheaper and performs better at higher resolutions

thats my first dillema

my 2nd one is: do i really need 256 MB? or would 128 be fine (but both the cards are 256-bit anyways)
im thinking of playing games such as Half Life 2, and Far Cry, Doom III ..etc - the latest directX games

btw i also heard from Darc that
Nvidia: OGl
ATI: DirectX
and i read somewhere that the FX is better for older games (< dx 8.1) and the radeon is better for the newer ones

i dont want to start a flame war or anything, but what do u think?

pent
 
Having used both GeForce and ATI - the simple answer, from me, is the ATI card.

I have a 9500 Pro (slower than 9700 Pro but faster than the 9600 Pro - go figure) and FarCry demo played beautifully. HalfLife 2 will *probably* play better on an ATI card since they seemed to have made some kind of deal (Valve and ATI). If nothing else, the shader implementation that Valve goes with will probably be either faster or better implemented for ATIs drivers - but who knows if that will translate into more than 1 or 2 FPS in the end.

I wouldnt think either choice would be a landslide. I dont think youll be disappointed with either card and from what Ive seen, a few FPS difference isnt really going to make that much difference. If you can save $30 (heck, even $10) why not?

Visually, they both run great with all the "extras" turned on. The antialiasing and anistropic filtering alone make a lot of games look a lot nicer. Since youre buying now, before HL2, its hard to say if one card will look much nicer than another for some of those advanced games.

-Ner
 
What Nerseus said :), and I would recommend buying the video card manufactured by the chip maker (ATI or NVidia). Other manufacturers tend to use lower quality components sometimes (ex. memory speed might be lower).
 
mutant said:
What Nerseus said :), and I would recommend buying the video card manufactured by the chip maker (ATI or NVidia). Other manufacturers tend to use lower quality components sometimes (ex. memory speed might be lower).
Click to expand...
very true
the Sapphire (http://www.boycottsapphire.com/) was a huge ripoff because they were selliung them at 128-bit
note: if you look at the site, they changed it to 256 now (for an extra $25)

ill stick with Radeon.
with the case im getting(www.nzxt.com) and the huge Abit IC7 Max3 motherboard,
i dont really think that theres gonna be enough room for the enormos Nvidia
and i heard the ATI makes less noise and takes up way less power

thanks,
pent
 
I dont know much about the FX - but my researching lead me to get a (ATI) Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB (256-bit) for the PC I built last month. Im completely happy with it. It crushes all the games I have, including FarCry (very beautiful game). Previously Ive always used NVidia cards and been happy with them - but it seemed like ATI had the advantage in the price-range I was aiming for. From what I read 256MB doesnt add much for performance (at this point) but game requirements only get steeper so Id get the best you can afford. For ex, a coworker has the 9800 Pro all-in-wonder w/ 256MB and he runs FarCry with the same resolution as me (1024x786) and says he has FPS issues if he pushes the resolution higher (both using max settings otherwise, I believe). I have an AMD64 3000 and he has a pentium 3.2x, which could be an issue too (Im not much of a hardware expert).

Paul
 
sweet :)
so farcryll be great (u have an amd 3000 - whihc is the same as a p4 3.0 gHz which is what im getting)

" From what I read 256MB doesnt add much for performance "
i guess thats true :p, i decided against it.. i dont have that much money to spare. When the time comes ill upgrade to 256 as needed

i did my research- All In Wonders tend to be a little slower becuase of all the features in them

in either case: ill be happy with whatever card i get becuase im upgrading from a 32 bit integrated o_O :p

thanks to all,
pent
 
ThePentiumGuy said:
(u have an amd 3000 - whihc is the same as a p4 3.0 gHz which is what im getting)
Click to expand...

Well, supposedly, AMD 64s 3000-3400 are better for gaming and compiling than P4 3.x - the AMDs are supposedly better at integer crushing. The P4s (especially with hyperthreading) are supposed to be better at some multimedia stuff like MPEG encoding. There are a lot of tests and benchmarks out there to prove it - although its often a marginal difference and Id imagine they are close enough in overall performance.

Some people say AMD 64s are better because theyre 64 bit - and are ready to run 64-bit Windows. However, this wasnt a convincing argument to me because by the time Win64 is in common useage and theres a decent amount of 64-bit software itll probably be time for another PC/upgrade.

I was considering a P4 3.0 or 3.2 at first, since Ive always had Intel CPUs, but since I do a lot of gaming and programming and no encoding I decided to try an AMD for a change. I like it so far. But of course, if youre updrading from a considerably lesser machine like I was - either would be a huge performance boost.

My old machine was a P4 1.5ghz w/ 768MB of mediocre RAM, 40gb HD, and a GeForce FX 5200.

New machien is AMD64 3000+ w/ 1gb quality PC3200 ram, 120gb HD, and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.

*hugs his new machine*

All of my previous machines were retail bought - so they had a lot of integrated parts and limited potential for upgrades. I built my new machine using quality parts and hopefully itll be easier to maintain and upgrade over time. It better be...my wife isnt appreciative of my desire to buy a new PC every 1-2 years.
 
I own 3 gaming computers... all of which have Athlon XP 3400++ speed cpus (Overclocked of course) and Radeon 9800Pros.

I wouldnt trade them for any nVidia product. Im not a Fan boy, just know what good hardware is :) Ive owned many nVidia cards in my day (well, still own them, but they are stuffed in a shoe box somewhere. lol).

The only nVidia card that can compare to the 9800 is the 5950XT, and it still looses in "quality". May be faster, but not as purdy. :D

Get the 9800.
 
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