A Better Video Card?

[Bowser]

I am buying a new video card and know next to squat about them; I was wondering if anyone could help me out? I'm not really looking for performance, but I do need an advanced card that can support high action games (America's Army, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, Doom).

I am on a budget, which is why I chose these two cards (listed in the poll), but I am looking for good card for not much more than $100 if you would like to recommend another one.

From what I can tell these two cards are essentially the same; please correct me if I am wrong and point out anything I need to know.

Thank you in advance

Your friendly neighborhood Koopa,
Bowser

 

[Exo-Slayer]

I would suggest getting a 9600 Power Color or other non ATI model on sale for around 120 as it will give yout he most bang for your buck at that price. Personally I would rather buy a GF4 Ti for $50 then 9200 or 5200 it seems to run DX8 games better but it does not support DX9 effects so most new games that require Pixel Shader 2.1 like Deus Ex 2 are unplayable. I would check at http://www.anandtech.com for all your benchmarks its pretty exstensive and they test all kinds of games.
Good card for the price.9600 Power Color
I would do a search of Newegg by card type and check the prices you can find a lot of cards on sale and they are very reliable with fast shipping.
Radeon 9600 SE

 

[amusedtoe]

Eww, those cards are both blech. If you go Radeon don't go SE, that's a huge waste of money. They're pretty much the MX cards of the Ti line, which yes I know one or two really good ones came out of for overclocking but that's a different story. Also don't go 5200, those things are truly wastes of perfectly good silicon and PCB.
If your looking for something to run things like Doom 3, and HL2 then your not going to be getting it for $100 or less now. Seriously keep saving your money and wait the couple months till they come out. I say this because only the super high end cards right now are going to run DX9(Direct X) games moderatly well. Not only that buit Nvidia's cards right now aren't truly DX9 compatible, and ATI's SE card's are only DX8(if I'm remembering correctly, might just be the 9200SE though).
If your absolutly bent on getting a video card now then save up another $50-75 and watch for a 9600 Pro, or 9600XT to be put on sale. It happens quite a bit. If you have to have one today then the GF4 Ti4600 is better then either card you've listed.
Offhandedly what are you upgrading from? Also these new cards won't perform nearly as well unless you have a mobo with an 8x AGP bus. I'm not a huge Power Color fan, I mean comeon the name's just lame

, but that would be a "fine" buy if you absolutly must have. Though once again, unless you have a pre-GF2 card and a junk proc, almost everything around right now should be made to be playable. Just remember when your buying to play something that could not even be out this year again, uprgrading now's like sending your money to my "Pay my big feet" fund.

 

[CCGR]

Nvidia drivers are still better

 

[SLAM]

From what I have seen in most test results, nVidia has one major edge over the ATI Radeon series in practice: slightly higher scores (Okay, occassionaly, dramatically higher scores) in Q3A and legacy-OpenGL engines. Radeon was quicker on the DirectX9 bandwagon than nVidia, and from what I can see, is still maintaining their lead.

I've seen performance at home from two different GeForce FX 5200s, and they just weren't all that. Yes, they "support DirectX9 pixel shaders," but what good is that support if that card just isn't fast enough to handle such scenes in the first place? The main system is a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz on a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP board with a gig of Dual Channel PC3200 RAM, so it was obvious that the slowdowns were the fault of the video card.

I agree with AmusedToe, however. Budget cards never have been and never will be a worthwhile use of money, either at the moment or in the long run. The best thing to do is bite the bullet with your current hardware until you can afford a major, top-end upgrade. I recently put a Radeon 9800 XT into my new main system, and I can't say I regret it in any way. I had to use one of the GeForce FX 5200s in it

Quote[/b] ]blech

while I waited for the money to get the newer card, but in the end it was all worth it. I'm running Unreal Tournament 2004 at 1280x960x32 screen resolution, with every detail option enabled and maxxed out, and I'm getting no less than 40 or 50 frames per second during any phase of gameplay.

So, all that being said, Radeon, and a top-end one, is hands down the way to go.

 

[Exo-Slayer]

Im getting 30-60 FPS in UT2004 at 1600-1200 maxed out with my 2.8ghz P4, Radeon 9600 and 512mb 3200 ddr. Or so Fraps tells me have you tried the new Drivers I hear they give a descent boost?

 

[FIR3]

I have a Geforce FX 5200...i wish I could upgrade it...

 

[amusedtoe]

Well Q3A is far too outdated to be used as a benchmark anymore. It's only used cause occasionally cause it's the most recent "big" OpenGL engine.

Not much good it does though when a lowsy card can pull down well over 200fps.

nVidia still isn't on the DX9 bandwagon, and won't be till their next line of cards. Yea the FX line can run DX9 games, but they "cheat" ala the big controversy with rigging scores in 3dMark 03. The cards handles DX9 info by breaking it down in DX8 that it can handle. Obviously adding another step into the process only slows things down. Now for playing DX8 games nVidia cards are great for one simple reason, they do polygons many times faster then ATI cards. But it doesn't really matter since we're kinda beyond the point where those numbers are relevant.