This or That? [PC Hardware]

[Sunday8pm]

Okies New question.

ASUS V9750 Geforce FX 5700 128 mb AGP8X DDR

or

ATI ASUS Radeon XT 9600 128 mb DDR

or

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 256 mb DDR

or

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 Ultra 128 mb DDR


Baring in mind that we are using an ASUS P4P800S mobo and an Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz FSB800 512k H.Thread

Also I don't have a freaking clue about the difference between the ATI's all I know is that they are all in the same price range and that's the only ASUS built 9600 ATI.

Apologies if I'm proving taxing btw.

[Kurashima]

1 Gig of DDR ram, regardless of Graphics card.

[NEWSBOT3]

stop talking shit kura.

the 5200 and 5700 are both gf5's, but the 5700 is going to be vastly better for you playing games than an extra 512mb of ram is.

[Pyr0 MK III]

Stop talking shit kura


I agree with NB3 entirely

[Luckeh!!!!]

nitpicking... no such thing as a GF5 in existence, the generation after the GF4 line is the FX series,

GF1, GF2, GF3, GF4, GFFX, GF6, don't ask why NV reverted to GF# again., probably because the FX series was a serious flop compared to previous generations and to ATI.

Also depends on what versions of those cards they are, the best FX5200 (FX5200 Ultra) can be around the same speed as the worst FX5700 ( FX5700LE/SE/XT)

But assuming they are both the NU versions then, 5700 + 512MB would most likely give you best gaming performance.

And further more, generally a GF4Ti4200 would perform much better than an FX5200 in games, yes the FX5200 might be DX9 capable, but its too slow and crap at DX9 shading.

[Androme]

I couldn't give a shit how good/bad the graphics card, 1GB RAM is minimum (for me anyway)

[skiddy]

I'd personally go for the 1Gb too, but that's simply because I don't play games other than Mines and FreeCiv. I'd have more use for the memory as I do a fair bit of Photoshop work and run some rather large CMS databases.

[Pyr0 MK III]

I assume this is for that PC that sunday is building for his friend, and he expressed a desire to play games on it, therefore, get the 5700 now and buy more ram later, the 5200 really sucks anyway

[Kurashima]

There are 2 things you can never have enough of, Memory and Hard Drive space. Top of the range graphics cards are for posers who want to compare E-Penis'

[Helix]

Lol Kurashima, I want to see you try and play HL2 or FarCry or Doom3 on a 5200 at a framerate of at least 30 without turning the resolution down to 4x3 The 5200 simply cant handle the new games very well at all.

If you are hard set on going nvidia get the 5700 (ultra or at the lowest just regular, dont get any of that le stuff, as that just means they took a 5700 and then shit all over it).

Personally I would go ATi, as the ATi 9xxx series of cards genereally outperforms the GeForceFX series. I would get a 9800pro or a 9600pro/xt (9800pro is ~200 and the 9600 is ~100).

Actually, memory is becoming a lot more important in certain games, I know that SWG is a frigging memory hog, but that is because the devs are idiots and have huge memory leaks in the program. 512 is absolute minimum, 1 gig is better.

As for which one you should go for, get the higher graphics card, it is cheaper to add more memory than it is to upgrade a graphics card.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Helix

Lol Kurashima, I want to see you try and play HL2 or FarCry or Doom3 on a 5200 at a framerate of at least 30 without turning the resolution down to 4x3 The 5200 simply cant handle the new games very well at all.

I played Far Cry at 1024x768 very well on my GeForce4 MX440 without even having to turn all the options completely down.

[Sunday8pm]

Okies New question.

ASUS V9750 Geforce FX 5700 128 mb AGP8X DDR

or

ATI ASUS Radeon XT 9600 128 mb DDR

or

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 256 mb DDR

or

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 Ultra 128 mb DDR


Baring in mind that we are using an ASUS P4P800S mobo and an Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz FSB800 512k H.Thread

Also I don't have a freaking clue about the difference between the ATI's all I know is that they are all in the same price range and that's the only ASUS built 9600 ATI.

Apologies if I'm proving taxing btw.

[NEWSBOT3]

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 Ultra 128 mb DDR

will do just fine, the ram difference really wont matter very much in most things.

[Helix]

For about 40-50 dollars more you can almost double your performance and get a full out 9800 pro....but out of those choices I agree with NB3


(oh and to prove my point, the 5200 playing FarCry on High Settings gets a framerate of about 2-3 fps lol)

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally Posted by NEWSBOT3

ATI Power Color Radeon XT 9600 Ultra 128 mb DDR

will do just fine, the ram difference really wont matter very much in most things.

yep, and any game that NEEDS more than 128MB to run will be too hard on the R9600XT anyway.

Also, some 256MB versions for R9600Pro/XT's are actually lower clocked than the 128MB versions.

[Sunday8pm]

Originally Posted by Helix

For about 40-50 dollars more you can almost double your performance and get a full out 9800 pro....but out of those choices I agree with NB3


(oh and to prove my point, the 5200 playing FarCry on High Settings gets a framerate of about 2-3 fps lol)

Yah it'll cost $53 before tax extra to go for the 9800 pro model, is that a massive boost in performance over a 9600 XT ultra? (he upgraded his budget to $1200 after tax but that includes windows xp now and the 9600 XT pushes over the $1200 mark already)

I do want to be wary of just creeping too far up in gfx card costs for diminishing returns when he'd be happy to take something that's good for the next 12 months and then upgrade to the latest gfx card when his 1 year warranty is up.

Oh yah one last important question.

What's the deal with AGP... some of them dont' have AGP, some do, some have AGP8X

Is AGP really important?

[meglamaniac]

NO NO NO NO NO do NOT get a 9800 pro (or whatever was top of the line in the FX series either, for that matter).

Both nVidia and ATI are have just released their new mid-range cards.
nVidia's is the GeForce6600 series, and ATI's is the Radeon X700 series.
These cost significantly less than a top of the range card from the previous generation does, while walking all over them performancewise. The only problem I can see is I'm not sure how available they are in AGP at the moment, as they are both PCI-Express native cards and I'm not sure if the AGP versions have launched at the same time.

Anyway, if you can, get a 6600GT or an X700 pro.

PS: 1gb of ram would be nice, but I can get by on doom 3 with 512mb (I don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for it to load though).
PPS: There are some performance benefits from using AGP over PCI, but I cba to go into them.

Please note that PCI-express is a totally different and unrelated system from PCI. It is the next generation replacement for both PCI and AGP, and is appearing on new motherboards about now.

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

Yah it'll cost $53 before tax extra to go for the 9800 pro model, is that a massive boost in performance over a 9600 XT ultra? (he upgraded his budget to $1200 after tax but that includes windows xp now and the 9600 XT pushes over the $1200 mark already)

I do want to be wary of just creeping too far up in gfx card costs for diminishing returns when he'd be happy to take something that's good for the next 12 months and then upgrade to the latest gfx card when his 1 year warranty is up.

Oh yah one last important question.

What's the deal with AGP... some of them dont' have AGP, some do, some have AGP8X

Is AGP really important?

AGP is just a port like PCI , its where you stick the thing on your motherboard. agp cards = vastly better than pci cards.
pci express cards you probably cant put on that motherboard.

agp speed isnt important.

[Sunday8pm]

Alas a lot of the advice here is massively out of budget range for now

So Ideally I want to aim for AGP, however PCI will do.

Comparitively then Does a PCI 9600 XT Ultra outspank a FX 5700 AGP8X, or is the difference in performance minimal, you see the latter stays within budget and we are looking to a view of upgrading the gfx card in a year from now anyway.

I appreciate all advice towards tuning up for that little bit extra but we've applied that little bit extra we already have to avoiding the 5200/9200 gfx cards options.

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

snip.

ATI have yet to announce whether they will release AGP versions of X700 series
Nvidia have already showcased AGP versions of GF6600 series (via on-card bridge chip) no idea on their availability in shops though, not seen anything yet.

and Sunday, it isn't regular PCI, it is PCI-E (PCI-Express) you will need to buy a whole new motherboard to use such a card, there is no PCI-E version of the R9600XT either.

However if in 1 years time you are looking to upgrade the card, it isn't known what ATI or NVidia will do about AGP support and their range of cards. I'm assuming they wouldn't drop AGP that early, but the new NV NF4 motherboards are looking to support PCI-E only (possibly an AGP budget version though).

It is quite a crap time to be looking to get a new computer AND looking for maximum future upgradeablity.

[Sunday8pm]

ok, Can I clear this up.

Are you saying that the R9600 XT Ultra is PCI-E and needs a new mobo or just plain old PCI as it doesn't specify it's AGP.

I'm trying atm to clear up which is better to bother with out of R9600 XT Ultra or the FX 5700 AGP8x

While I might have to be forced to admit that PC's are in a transitional state atm, the Games are at there best this November and what not.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Luckeh!!!!

It is quite a crap time to be looking to get a new computer AND looking for maximum future upgradeablity.

Probably the most true sentence of this thread.

[Sunday8pm]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Probably the most true sentence of this thread.

Yup I get that, however the games everyone wants to play are coming out right now and we'd like to look at, at least him being able to enjoy them at a reasonable bang for buck price.

So feel welcome to enlighten me on my latest query :P

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

ok, Can I clear this up.

Are you saying that the R9600 XT Ultra is PCI-E and needs a new mobo or just plain old PCI as it doesn't specify it's AGP.

I'm trying atm to clear up which is better to bother with out of R9600 XT Ultra or the FX 5700 AGP8x

While I might have to be forced to admit that PC's are in a transitional state atm, the Games are at there best this November and what not.

Sorry I meant to say that, R9600XT's only come in AGP versions, so your current choice of motherboard will accomodate it.

[meglamaniac]

To further complicate matters, many cards come in both PCI-E and AGP versions.
To complicate matters further still, there are PCI (which, for clarity, I shall henceforth refer to as Legacy PCI) versions of *some* of the previous generation of cards which you are looking at. There may be Legacy PCI versions of current ones too, I've not looked.

Luckeh is partially right.
You can build a futureproof system at the moment, you just need the defecit of a medium size 3rd world country to do so which kind of puts it out of your range.
A futureproof system at the moment consists of:
- An Athlon64 based system (socket 939 version, not the other one)
- A motherboard with PCI-E
- A motherboard with SATA2 support (drives will be available shortly)

The problem with the above is that processor + board = ~£200 - 300 at the moment.
And there is a lack of PCI-E expansion cards (example, you try finding a PCI-E network card) so you'll either have to get everything onboard, wait til such cards become available, or get a motherboard with both Legacy PCI and PCI-E (yes, beleive it or not, these exist. The worst of both worlds).

Stay clear of socket 754 Athlon64's.
Stay clear of AthlonXPs.
Stay clear of P4's.

All of these are about to undergo major physical revisions, are being discontinued, or have no upgrade path once the current generation is out of production. P4's are also for the most part a ripoff. The top of the range P4 3.4Ghz Extreme Edition costs over £700. An Athlon64 3200+ will beat that P4 and costs £140ish, and isn't anywhere near the top of AMD's range.

In other words: argh!

[Helix]

Sigh @ megalamaniac, you need to take a lot closer look at your information.

First off, dont worry about Legacy PCI cards, they haven't really been in existence for quite some time, occasionally Nvidia or ATi releases a Legacy PCI version of their LOWEST end cards, ie the 9200. But I dont believe they have done so for some time, the reason being that Legacy PCI does not have the bandwith to support any kind of decent graphics cards.

As for AGP over PCI-E, AGP isn't going anywhere over the next 2 years, it will still be used and you will still be able to get AGP cards, they will slowly get phased out in favor of their PCI-E cousins. Purchasing a computer now, if you can get PCI-E great, if not, your computer will be obsolete by the time you are looking to upgrade the graphics anyways so it is sort of a moot point.

As for future proof, both Intel and AMDs newest sockets are what you would want to chose, the socket 939 for AMD and the socket LGA775 for P4. The newest P4s that are coming out now include Intels 64bit extensions, which means that they will be able to operate 64bit programs, thereby making them "future proof" for 64bit computing in the future. Intel plans to use the socket LGA775 for some time to come, as does AMD with their socket 939. As for megalamaniacs claims of the 3200+ outperforming the P4EE, I have no clue what you are smoking man. Yes the FX-53 will outperform the P4EE, but that is all (aside from the newly released FX-55 and 4000+). The pentium chips are not bad at all, and will always lay the smack down on their Athlon bretheren when it comes to certain areas like media encoding. However overall the Athlon64 is the superior chip in price/performance.

Back to the topic at hand, graphics cards. Yes the X700 and the 6600GT are better cards than the 9800PRO, for only about 10-15 dollars more, but they require a PCI-E motherboard which will run you about 50 dollars more (at the least) than a decent motherboard with AGP graphics.


In short, they are correct when they say this is a bad time to build a computer, either for forward compatibility or otherwise, since in a few months the current generation technology will take a large price drop as the new technology becomes prevalent. Since your friend seems to be looking for a budget system here is a general rule of thumb, spend about the same amount of money on processor/Video Card, that generally will give you a good system, spending more in some place or the other gives you a bottleneck somewhere. Depending upon what your friend plans to do with the system will determine whether to get 512MB or 1024MB of RAM. I would err on the side of getting 512, with the knowledge that it is easy to upgrade to 1024 later if needed.

The longer you can wait to get the new computer the better. Unlike the past many years when the changes have been minimal and simply the introduction of a higher speed part, the changes happenening to the PC now are a lot more fundamental, such as the change with PCI-Express, and with the eventual (maybe) adoption of the new form factor BTX.

[Luckeh!!!!]

the 6600GT is available in AGP version, but not in shops yet I think. X700 ATI has no plans yet AFAIK.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2249

While some areas of encoding are still weak, AMD are catching up very quickly. There are instances of the S939 3200+ outperforming the P4-3.4EE, and most notably look how little behind it is in many tests. P4-EE chips are nothing but wallet emptying objects.

[meglamaniac]

Helix:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7

Yes i know thats "only for gaming performance" but
a) You don't try and get the best processor and graphics card you can afford if you're just going to be doing spreadsheets.
b) The P4EE is marketed at gamers. On those results you'd be insane to buy one. I'd be getting A64 3000+ - only very slightly below the top of the range P4EE and costs nearly eight times less.

The other thing to note is the 3000+ will overclock to 3800+ speeds while still running cooler than a P4EE - in other words, even an idiot could get 3800+ with very little effort, relatively little cash, and no need to mess about with fans the size of jet engines (or even to change the stock heatsink and fan).

I'm not trying to restart the Intel v AMD war again (hell, my job here is to delete posts like that).
This is a simple financial comparison. It simply does not make sense to buy Intel at the moment if gaming is what you want to do.
Intel realise as much, which is why they have canceled the 4Ghz pentium entirely and are moving towards developing dual core processors, something which they said they weren't even considering about this time last year (and there are press releases to proove it if you want to look). AMD on the other hand have already demonstrated their dual core processor, are planning to release it H1 2005, and are talking about quad core versions.

Just a few facts I have in fact checked, to remove any accusations of drugs from the discussion

[Luckeh!!!!]

hehe, AFAIK Intel cancelled the 4.0GHz model in favour of a 3.8GHz w/ 2MB L2 cache lol, suggests to me they have problems with yields.

[Sunday8pm]

I'm watching Hackers... it's wonderfully hilarious.

Anyway I appreciate all the input, certainly enlightened me a lot and I've settled on something within his budget that I wouldn't of originally opted for before I asked you guys.

Thanks.