At the moment I am running a P4 2.80 with 512 meg of RAM and a GF4 Ti 4400, now I wanna be able to play the next generation of games with a decent framerate and have been looking about for info. I like Nvidia hardware because I have always owned one going back to my 3dfx voodoo days, however I have seen alot of hype lately saying that the Geforce FX series can't handle DirectX 9.0 games such as HL2, and the ATI 9800 Pro runs much faster at a higher detail !!

What I want to know is all of this true? If so is it worth forking out the $'s and buying a 9800 Pro or am I better off waiting for the PCI-Express cards to be released which may be a couple of years down the track? I don't wanna fork out big $'s and then find out I have wasted my hard-earned money when I try playing these new games on it. What do you guys think?

Basically when the fx series of cards are played off against the radeon with unoptimized code the radeon will be quicker.

While Doom 3 has been optimized to benefit fx users im not 100% sure on HL2. Nvidia has given its latest beta series of drivers to Valve but when they did their benchmarks they chose to use the older 45.23 revision which showed the true difference. John Carmack has said the same thing about ATI and Nvidia's performance, and Futuremark with 3D Mark 2003 also have released a patch to stop Nvidias optimisations from working to give a true represenation.

Personally Im looking at ATI more favourably. They have had the problems in the pasts, quake 3 optimisations and slow driver release but that's in the past and they are looking good nowadays. Besides that's what Nvidia's new beta drivers will be doing anyway imho. You don't necessarily need a 9800 pro the 9600 pros in some cases where beating the fx5900.

In my honest opinion the AGP interface has come to the end of the line.

A few years ago video cards kept making huge leaps in technology whereas processors and chipsets weren't. A new video card was a massive upgrade and the difference was instantly noticeable. Unfortunately that is not the case anymore and I do believe that the AGP interface has been completely exhausted and to make the matter worse processors and chipsets are about to make a massive leap (32 to 64 bit).

It's time for the video card to catch up before the gap gets any wider. Millions more transistors and tacking more memory onto the board is just not paying off anymore. Moving up from AGP 4X to 8X was a step in the right direction but 2 or 3 frames per second extra does not make a supposed 50% extra bandwidth justified (we are paying more than ever for video cards - but is it worth it?).

Sound moved in the right direction (digital, 24 bit DSP's etc). Hard drives got an update (S-ATA) and even the humble but ever useful USB got an update.

It's time for Nvidia and ATI to take a risk and move away from the norm and make us go "wow" once again. I want to see a new video card that makes me think that's what the future of video gaming is all about. Not just an incremental update which is faster (for the next 2 months of new release games), has maybe one new experimental feature and a host of driver issues which the gaming manufacturer will resort to cheating (can anyone say Nvidia?) to solve.

Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will rock, but not with the state of the current video hardware. Another 2 or 3 generations of video cards will go by until either of those games are seen at their finest. I first played Half-Life on a 3DFX Banshee/Voodoo 2 but really did not appreciate the game until I played it years later on a GeForce 2 GTS. Ditto Quake 3 on my GeForce 4.

As for buying a new video card at the moment, you are far better off waiting for the next "big thing" update (not upgrade) and the prices to fall before purchasing. Your processor is more than capable of running future games and software for the next year/2 years so just sit back and see what happens before you buy.

Yeah maybe I will just wait for the PCI express cards to arrive, I know the AGP port has its limits and they have probably been reached, however how long is it going to be before this new technology is available? I mean HL2 is meant to be out in a few months, Doom III is meant to be out early next year, and I am sitting here with a GF4 Ti 4400 still? I am not sure how my GF4 will handle those next generation games?

yeh I'm still using a herc gf3 and find it fine for current gen games, I'm not planning on upgrading until at least mid next year, see what the gfx market is upto then but all games coming out before then will run find I think

im using a GF-fx 5200 right now, mainly cos im cheap, but it runs every current game really really nicely. The only slowness ive had was with the new Tomb Raider game (but i think its because i was using a version that was bundled with my friend's radeon9600, so the GF-FX renderer was disabled)
So pixel shader performance isnt great, and the BETA drivers dont have as much image quality (but its hardly noticeable, ive seen it for myself, you can only see the difference in still shots) When nVidia actually finish the driver, it should be fine for HL2 and Doom3

Nvidia has been making a mess of their driver releases lately. Toms Hardware ripped into their most current release because it does not render properly (colours are wrong, shadows missing etc).

ATI seems to be doing a very good job at the moment. After my experience with my GF4 Ti4600 I won't be buying another Nvidia video card. Terrible graphic quality, overheating after overclocking the card just 2% (mine is a Leadtek, has a HUGE heatsink with 2 fans embedded) and general instability depending on the drivers at the time.

My mates Radeon 9000 makes games look amazing, has very few stability issues and doesn't have any overclocking issues without a massive heatsink and just a small fan.

IMHO I'm waiting for the next Radeon release or will get a 9800 Pro Ultimate (256mb) to go with my next PC upgrade (P4 extreme edition w 2mb L3 cache).

Nvidia had better tighten the slack before it goes the way of 3DFX.

Hey Thorn

I'm an NVidia boy from way back too, every video card I've ever bought has had an NVidia chipset. I recently won an ATI 9800 Pro and it's my new favourite. Don't be afraid of trying ATI, huge numbers of people are using them and loving it.

Regarding the NVidia problems HL2, I haven't been following it very closely but was it to do with Anti-Aliasing? If so, it's been fixed.

As long as your current card is running everything fine, wait until HL2 is release and then buy your card based on reviews. Even a TNT2 is supposed to be able to run HL2.

I wouldn't bother waiting for PCIX cards to come out, because by the time there're released the next generation of PCIX2 (or whatever) will be coming up. If you're always waiting for the next latest thing you'll never end up buying anything. You can be sure that any card on the market today will be good for a couple of years at least.

In my view it comes down to a choice between buying the top card for $700 every four years, or buying the cheapest card for $150 every two years. I'd go for the cheap one, but it sure feels good to have a top-of-the-range system at least once in your life.

Hope that's of some help.

yeah i agree. i own a Radeon 9800 Pro and it feels great to finially have the best for a change.... remember, you only live once so why not?

/ drools


If only i have 800 bucks to waste on a video card.

for a start do not buy anything because if you want HL2 aswell you cant use AA or AF and jaggies will be everywere plus HL2 needs sum other component in the grpahics which i forgot the name of other wise your screwed. But if you just want to play doom 3 i suppose the best graphics on the market well maybe a 256mb Radeon 9800 would do with 1024mb of Ram maybe a bigger HD with a 16mb cache or sumthing but i doubt that we could all offord it

As long as you only want 1024 res, every detail doesnt have to be maxed etc you will be well off. Theres no need to hurry.

But defintly go for ATI cards.

Definately get an ATi card. Right now nvidia drivers are totally useless. As you probably know, Nvidia cards such as the entire Geforce FX series so far use DirectX 8.1. All ATi cards above a 9500 use DirectX 9, which basically means they will run better on Direct X 9 games.

Half life 2 and Doom III are both Direct X 9 games, and so will most new games, if not all. If you can't see what i'm getting at then go to www.tomshardware.com and look up benchmarking results... or www.anandtech.com.

Basically, the Nvidia Direct X codepath is totally F!@#$D and Nvidia hasn't done anything about it...... yet. I have a Leadtek Geforce 4 ti4400 which set me back about $365 when i first bought it. My mate bought a Radeon 9100 and beats my system in FPS for some games! There's a $200 odd dollar difference between the cards, not to mention 2 fans and a friggin memory cooler.

Nvidia are sitting in a forever growing deeper hole, they use 3DFX technology which SUCKS, have enormous fans/heatsinks which are VERY noisy and don't make the cut. I have to admit, there was a stage where i was totally Intel/Nvidia loyal, i switched from Intel to AMD because they're cheap & fast and my next card will definately be a Radeon- hopefully a 9800 pro or 9600 pro. I'd stay right where you are until you've actually benchmarked HL2 on your CURRENT system. Then wait 3 months & buy the newest and the greatest (it will be an ATi) and then you'll be set for a long time.

*Athlon xp2000+, 512 DDR, Leadtek Ti 4400- Do i have bragging rights? Sure 7 months ago!*

By the way Jono your off your nut.... God u don't need all that crap to play it.. hell just look at the benchmarks.... your prolly sum FPS demon who has to get 140FPS max detail or your not happy.

Upgrade yur processor when the AMD 64/Opteron 4000 comes out man, that'll be sweet!

I agree. And personally I wouldn't bother going out and buying a new 9800 Pro yet, as ATi are developing a new card that is better than the current nVidia 5900's, but is basically just an overclocked version of the current top of the line 9800 Pro's. In the end though, it comes down to whether you want to brag to your friends now, or wait and save your money to get a brand new completely top of the line card in a couple of months. Unless you're a framrate junkie and need another fix quickly.

nah mith not really im just stating sum facts i saw in PCPP and usually get like hmmmmmmmmmm......80 fps? yeah i did put my radeon on full everything but its stable no jaggies. and i dont want doom 3 so i dont have to worry bout cards
it looks good but i aint a sci fi man half-life 2 = maybe but im more into commandos 3 and call of duty and that stuff also

oh yeah and i dont overclock so dont make a judgement less ye be judged

I didn't say that you did, I was simply saying that the new Radeon card is the equivalent of an overclocked 9800 Pro card.

What the hell jono, no one even said the word "overclock" what planet are you on! Yeh the 9900 is due to come out relatively soon. The 9800 pro already beats the FX 5900 ULTRA so Nvidia's lost the graphics card race already. It's only a matter of time until they have to completely re-design their cards so they run cooler, more efficiently and have far better performance (aswell as small fans/heatsinks), My friend has a 9100 and he can overclock his so far he gets 10,000 3dmarks. I have a 2000+ (his is a 2400+) and i have a ti4400 and he beats my machine by about 700-1000 3dmarks. His graphics card cost him $169. Mine cost $365, so definately go RADEON.

Videocards are edible

The 9800 Pro does not acually beat the new GeForce FX 5900, as these benchmarks show.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-14.html

and

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-28.html

The new Radeon 9800 XT beats the new 5900's, but it is simply an overclocked 9800 Pro, as I stated before.

Comparison Benchmarks -

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2003q3/radeon-9800xt/index.x?pg=5

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/9800xt/index10.htm

Well I say Go the 9800 pro (if you can afford it).
They are around to $650 for the 128meg version see http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=3

Also see this benchmarking from Gamespy. it compares the ATI 9800 pro, the Nvidia 5900 Ultra and the upcomming ATI 9800 XT
http://www.gamespy.com/hardware/october03/radeon/index.shtml