Video cards

I've been thinking about this lately since I have a new card coming in the mail (set to arrive Nov. 12) and I figured I'd use it as an excuse to move away from the political topics.

Are you an nVidia (GeForce) user or an ATI (Radeon) user? There are other sub-brands that aren't GeForce or Radeon, so I included some choices for them.

I've been an nVidia guy forever but my new card is a Radeon.

N-vidia and I've never had a problem. Nothing against radeon but n-vidia was my first card, has always been reliable, offered good performance and I see no reason to change to radeon.

For me, nVidia cards have always performed well but my 6600 died on me and just had a lot of issues, prompting the switch this time around.

I was the exact opposite Petrus. I have run radeon cards in all computers I put together for quite some time now and just switched to NVidia. It seemed like I constantly had problems with Radeon cards having their fans go out and/or overheating.

Petrus, there's an old thread in the private General forums about me building a new PC for Jelly that got pretty long but it debated various graphics cards. No less than four people (Malaese, Galt, Xeos, and myself) discussed how we had old Radeon cards (9800 PRO in most/all cases I believe) that just basically started overheating after some years with the fans all failing.

I went ahead and got an nVidia card for Jelly's PC and it has been seriously smooth sailing.

I'm rocking a Radeon 3850 in my machine now, only reason I got it was because it benchmarked the same as a lot of high end nvidia cards and was a total steal (plus it came with Company of Heroes: Allied Assault.)

I'd recommend nVidia in your case as well.

See, I had the exact same kind of problem with my nVidia GeForce 6600. I had it for about four months and everything was fine until suddenly it started freezing the screen, artifacting, overheating, etc. Just a bad experience. Turned out that at some point it had started pulling too much current from the motherboard somehow and had fried some of the contacts. I had to roll back to my GeForce 4 Ti4800SE that I have, and I've been using it ever since. It's a very reliable card but just too old for what I want, and my Radeon option was cheaper and both Andrew (Alithilin) and Thomas (Furbish) have ATI cards in their PCs with which they've had good experiences (though Thomas uses a Mac more often than not lately). I was considering getting an nVidia card again this time but it's been tough with limited AGP options.

For the record, I'm getting a Radeon X1650 Pro and it cost me about $60. It's a big upgrade from what I have and not a brand new model but important because I can't afford to upgrade almost my whole PC, which is what I'd have to do if I wanted to get a newer card (read: I don't have a PCI-Express slot because my motherboard is from 2003).

TL;DR: Radeon was a cheap option and I needed inexpensive with at least a noticeable upgrade in performance, plus my last nVidia card was bad.

I used to be a big fan of ATI back in the day when they were on top of the market both technology wise and on prices, but over the past like 2 years nVidia has overtaken them by quite a bit imo (oh hi x200 series plz). The last ATI card I used was a 9800Pro, worked great. My new comp has a GeForce 8800 and it works great.

But I only really know about the high end. If you don't even have PCI-E on your rig... lol ur bad. It probably doesn't matter what you get.

ATis are better right now.

If I were to get a card right now it would be a HIS 4850HD IceQ4. They are about 180 on tigerdirect and its an OC'd version of a badass card. Best bang for the buck right now imo.


edit: saw you said AGP only. I have an ATI x800 pro and its decent but you can't polish a turd. Agp is shitty this way.

right now I'm rocking a x1650 pro only because it was the best one I could get that is still agp.
It will last as long as the rest of my computer or until i get a new machine

30 fps in shat is bareable

As long as you keep the fan Clean it will last awhile

Radeon X800 PE still going strong after 4 years!! lol

grak wrote:

Radeon X800 PE still going strong after 4 years!! lol

Fuck, I had that up until a few months ago

I'd replace it, but I've already made up my mind that I'm going to save up for an uber SLI notebook to replace my desktop instead. It's on a AGP16 video bus anyway, so even the MB is obsolete.

Yeah, I'm going to replace the motherboard at some point but it's very expensive and I can only afford the card atm.

i have 2 nvidia 8800 GTX's in SLI, had em since i put this computer together, easy installation(if your case is big enough to hold em :S) run smooth as ever, real easy setup and came with some game. win-win-win.

I don't know how much longer I can hold out. Every time I go to Fry's lately I get a hard-on.

THG does a monthly article "The Best Video Cards for the Money." Here's their October one, which may help you decide a good card for whatever price point (obviously the vendor will influence the pricing a bit). They include a section for AGP cards, and although it's only one page long with a few recommendations, you don't really get to complain because AGP stopped being the de facto standard a couple years ago.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Best-Graphics-Card,2033.html

I own a GeForce 9600 GT.

I had a vary similar situation as you a few months a go Petrus. I had a nVidia 6800 whose fan stopped working. I stuck with nVidia though and used it as an excuse to get a better card. To be honset though I am at a point where I just need to build a whole new rig.

Might want to look over Tiger Direct's barebones section. You can get a nice case/psu/mobo/cpu/ram/hdd combo for very little.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4282928&CatId=332

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4103538&CatId=28

I'm thinking of saving for that combo, the motherboard is kinda weak but it makes my current computer look like a ti-81. Not bad for $450 shipped.

Good looking out Galt. Wish they would let you upgrade the 1gig stick to a 2gig less than $20 dif.

My desktop replacement notebook as it currently stands...who knows when I'll feel safe enough in this shit economy to spend the money...

17 Inch Notebook
CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache 64-bit
CD: DVD Optical Drive (8X DVD Rewritable Drive)
FLASHMEDIA: Built-In 7in1 Media Reader
HDD: 320GB 5400RPM SATA150 HARD DRIVE
IEEE_CARD: BUILT-IN 1394 IEEE FIREWIRE PORT
MOTHERBOARD: Intel P965 + ICH-8R Chipset Mainboard
MEMORY: 4GB (2x2GB) PC5300 DDR2-667 SODIMM Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
NB_LCD: 17.1" TFT LCD Display (Widescreen WUXGA 1920 x 1200 Pixels)
NETWORK: Built-in 10/100/1000 Mbps Network Card
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
SOUND: BUILT-IN AC 97 SOUND
USB: 3 x USB2.0 Port Connectors
VIDEO: Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 9800M-GTX 1GB DDR3 Video in SLI Mode
VIDEOCAMERA: Built-in 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera
WNC: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 802.11a/b/g 54Mbps MiniPCI Card