09-15-2003, 06:59 AM | #1 |
Tactlessly understated
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I need a new graphic card
I need a new graphic card. Any suggestions? Any cards I should be wary of? Any really good economy solution for my woes....
Also related to the topic at hand is my hatred for hardware. I hate hardware. The card that I have now (3D Labs Oxygen, 32MB I think) I bought when Black and White came out and the game looked great! Few weeks ago I had to do an unhealthy amount of optimization to run Morrowind at a tolerable frame rate. It isn't such a long time since Black and White came out, folks. This is rather annoying.... In addition I will probably have to buy a new board because my AGP slot is not in tune with the newest standards... the technological wankers.... Well, I guess I need to find some outlet for all that extra - though really insufficient - financial aid I have been getting for my e-dew-kaa-see-on.... EDIT: Tim-Damn articles. Why can't English be more like Latin? Last edited by Kingzjester; 09-15-2003 at 07:11 AM. |
09-15-2003, 07:04 AM | #2 |
A search for a crazy man!
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This is a thread from which I would greatly benefit as well. My PC hasn't even a shadow of a prayer of running any of the upcoming games on wish list, so I'll need to build one.
And forgive my blatant ignorance, but could somebody explain what precisely AGP is? And what would be an example of a non-AGP card? Does that mean, for example, integrated video?
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Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
09-15-2003, 07:20 AM | #3 |
El Luchador
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Well, if you're going for a high-end card, you're better off waiting to see what Ati and NVidia are putting out in the near future.
But if you want a main-stream, cheap but effective card, the Ati Radeon 9600 Pro is the best choice. As showed by the HL2 benchmarks it's almost as good as the FX 5900 Ultra, the highest-end card from NVidia, and almost three times cheaper. It's the card to buy with the current market, but just like any market, it's quite fluctuant.
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Use Verb On Noun - Adventure game inspired illustrations |
09-15-2003, 07:23 AM | #4 |
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ATI Radeon 9600 is cheap enough, and it's about the 3rd or 4th best videocard that can run Half-life 2 well. (even NVidia's top of the line FX5900 isn't quite as good as Radeon 9600 when it comes to HL2 performance, especially when you consider the image quality)
So I would go with Radeon 9600. AGP=accelerated graphics port non-AGP = either integrated video or PCI videocard = low memory bandwith = crappy performance That's all I know. |
09-15-2003, 07:30 AM | #5 | |
:P ^^^ at tamz
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Quote:
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In the next AG crash ___| A temporary board ____| I am born to spam In the "Get New" list __| Scrolling up and down | I am born to spam through a broadband ISP | i am back to steal your bandwidth --Spammo-head, "Windbag" |
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09-15-2003, 07:33 AM | #6 |
Kersal Massive
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To elaborate further, AGP is just an interface like any other (USB, PCI, etc). In this case, it's dedicated to shifting textures and other graphical stuff around as fast as possible. It can run at a variety of speeds, depending what's supported by your motherboard, with 4x being able to shift data twice as fast as 2x. Obviously. I believe the fastest currently available is 8x, but don't quote me on that...
Without AGP, you're stuck with either on-board video (generally bad) or (even worse) PCI video boards, which were all the rage in 1998 but can be safely ignored now. In general, you'll only get the full benefit from a blazingly fast graphics card if the rest of your machine is also blazingly fast to match it. If you're at the lower end of the computing scale, you'll find that a "budget" card will perform almost as well as a high-end one. |
09-15-2003, 07:35 AM | #7 | |
:P ^^^ at tamz
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AGP is faster than PCI (which is almost gone in graphics cards). AGP 8x is faster than AGP 1x. PCI Xpress is faster still, but too new to be supported. I'd recommend 4x. 8x is not really needed, but certainly couldn't hurt if it's not a big price difference. Both your mobo and card need to support a certain slot interface for it to work. Next?
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In the next AG crash ___| A temporary board ____| I am born to spam In the "Get New" list __| Scrolling up and down | I am born to spam through a broadband ISP | i am back to steal your bandwidth --Spammo-head, "Windbag" |
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09-15-2003, 07:37 AM | #8 |
:P ^^^ at tamz
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Hee. It seems I've been brainwashed by the DoRD.
One more comment: Get Pro, not the normal kind. There's a huge difference, in this case. (Don't take this to be true in general -- graphics cards branding schemes are about the evilist in existence.)
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In the next AG crash ___| A temporary board ____| I am born to spam In the "Get New" list __| Scrolling up and down | I am born to spam through a broadband ISP | i am back to steal your bandwidth --Spammo-head, "Windbag" |
09-15-2003, 08:29 AM | #9 |
A Slice of Fried Gold
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I need a graphics card period. Seriously, my crappy computer doesn't have one.
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09-15-2003, 08:36 AM | #10 |
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/me raises from the dead
why didn't you tell me, bro? I can spare you a few bucks to beef up your box. /me hands his brother $100 million /me dies, again |
09-15-2003, 08:46 AM | #11 | |
A search for a crazy man!
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Quote:
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Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
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09-15-2003, 09:16 AM | #12 | |
A Slice of Fried Gold
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Quote:
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SamandMax's Recommended Songs Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball They Might Be Giants - Dog Walker The Kinks - Money Talks Gorillaz - DoYaThing |
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09-15-2003, 09:18 AM | #13 | |
A search for a crazy man!
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Quote:
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Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
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09-15-2003, 10:04 AM | #14 |
Tactlessly understated
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*cue Twighlight Zone theme*
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09-15-2003, 01:26 PM | #15 |
:P ^^^ at tamz
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You know, this would be funnier if it weren't obvious that SamandMax posted it.
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In the next AG crash ___| A temporary board ____| I am born to spam In the "Get New" list __| Scrolling up and down | I am born to spam through a broadband ISP | i am back to steal your bandwidth --Spammo-head, "Windbag" |
09-15-2003, 01:28 PM | #16 | |
A search for a crazy man!
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Shhh! Don't spoil our fun!
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Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
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09-15-2003, 02:02 PM | #17 |
:P ^^^ at tamz
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Nah, I'm just jealous I didn't come up with this scheme, myself.
__________________
In the next AG crash ___| A temporary board ____| I am born to spam In the "Get New" list __| Scrolling up and down | I am born to spam through a broadband ISP | i am back to steal your bandwidth --Spammo-head, "Windbag" |
09-15-2003, 02:04 PM | #18 | |
A Slice of Fried Gold
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Quote:
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SamandMax's Recommended Songs Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball They Might Be Giants - Dog Walker The Kinks - Money Talks Gorillaz - DoYaThing |
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09-15-2003, 02:28 PM | #19 | |
A search for a crazy man!
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Quote:
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Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
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09-15-2003, 04:14 PM | #20 |
merely human
Join Date: Sep 2003
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Posts: 22,309
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Meanwhile, back at the topic....
Kingzie, before you choose, keep in mind the kind of games you expect to be playing in the next 2-3 years, the speed of technological progress within the genres of those games, and how the graphics cards giants are dealing with all this. To start, buy only a DirectX 9.0 supported card with 128MB RAM. If you are a big adventure fan you most likely won't need the latest, most bleeding edge card. An ATI or nVidia card 2-3 notches down from the top-o-the-line model is a lot cheaper, with the top model having cutting edge features you'll never see used even in the most graphically advanced adventure game next year or after, therefore you won't need those features. But if you love first person shooters, you'd better get the best model or the next one down. FPSs are the whore-iest games for graphics, they're very greedy and demanding. They are the nymphomaniacs of the game genres. The typical situation is that graphics cards, based on the benchmarks (3DMark, etc.), are good for one year. But that's according to hardcore hardware fetishists (the ones who masturbate to screenshots of Doom III). The reality is that the strongest features (like vertex & pixel shaders, bump mapping, kumquats, and watchamacallits) of the latest card that came out just 3 seconds ago will not actually be taken advantage of by current games, you'll really begin to see those features used in next year's games. So if you dropped your money at this very minute on an nVidia FX 5900 Ultra, you won't find any game out right now or the next several months that take advantage of all this card's features. Probably the only games that'll do so are Half-Life 2, Doom III (and perhaps S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), but then nVidia and ATI are working very closely with the devs making these games so that the games themselves will act as pimps for the cards to sell. In short, you won't actually see your investment returned until a year from now, unless you buy HL2 at the end of this month.
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