Video Card Question #2

Corpfox

Corpfox

Active Member
ATI FIRE-GL X2 256MB DDR AGP-PRO50 DUAL-DVI RETAIL

Price (CND):
$1,054.08
Reg.$1,111.84

Why is it soo expensive? Better than Nvidia 6800/ATI X800?


I dont like it how on-line shops dont say their specs on video cards, I just have to depend on the name and price? Like ATI fire (above) which has no specs, how fast, how many fillrate per sec, etc...

The ATI Fire 128MB does, but I wouldnt know if having all those stuff make a difference....whatever those mean...


Features
Revolutionary graphics architecture
8-pixel pipeline architecture providing high performance, parallel rendering capabilities
24-bit for each color component (RGBA) enables true-life images to be displayed beyond 16.7M colors
Full scene anti-aliasing
High-speed 128MB DDR memory to meet the needs of the most demanding CAD/CAM and DCC applications
256-bit memory interface removes hardware performance bottlenecks and provides end users with faster 3D performance
Dual DVI-I connectors support any combination of digital flat panel and VGA displays
AGP 4X/8X support
 
Optimized Software Support
Optimized drivers certified for the leading CAD and DCC software applications
Full support for the latest OpenGL® API and Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
Hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSL
Robust support for Windows® and Linux® environments
Specifications
Graphics technology
Powered by the FGL™ 9700 Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
256-bit high bandwidth memory architecture
4 parallel geometry engines
8 parallel pixel pipelines
128-bit full floating point precision
24-bits per RGBA component displays beyond 16.7M colors
 
Display support
Dual DVI-I supports any combination of digital and analog displays
Maximum resolution of 2048x1536 per display
Independent resolution and refresh rate selection for any two connected displays
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI & HDCP compliant)
API and Operating systems support
OpenGL®
OpenGL Shading Language
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
DirectX® 9.0 HLSL
Windows® XP/Windows® 2000
Linux®
Graphic Features
Hardware acceleration of the following:
Anti-aliased points and lines or full scene anti-aliasing (2X, 4X, 6X)
3D lines and triangles
Stipple points
Two-sided lighting
Up to 8 light sources
Directional and local lighting
OpenGL overlay planes
Occlusion culling
6 user defined clip planes
OpenGL polymode functions
32-bit (24+8-bit stencil) Z Buffer
Fast Z and color clears
Full DX9 vertex shader support with 4 vertex units
Quad-buffer stereo support (FireGL X1-256p only)
SMARTSHADER™ 2.0
Programmable pixel and vertex shaders
16 textures per pass
Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 32-bit floating point precision for each RGBA component
Multiple render target support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
SMOOTHVISION™ 2.0
2X/4X/6X anti-aliasing modes
High performance adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2X/4X/8X/16X anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
HYPER Z™ III
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear

System requirements
Intel® Pentium® 4/Xeon™, AMD Athlon®/Opteron™ or compatible CPU
AGP 8X/4X bus
128MB of system memory (256MB or more recommended)
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
300 watt or greater power supply (recommended)
 
Its designed for graphics design/CAD not gaming ^_^

I doubt the drivers would even work with most if any games
 
Stick with the radeons and the nvidia for gaming. Sure they arent the most expensive cards around but they are designed to be gaming cards.

My friend has a system with dual xeons and dual matrox parhelias. And the speed in a game is not that great considering the power it has.. Since it is designed for 3d design, video editing and such.
 
wow, graphics designing...for almost $1.2k...
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I saw another one, its...

PNY NVIDIA QUADRO FX 3000G 256MB DDR DUAL DVI/DVI AGP 8X


Price (CND):
$3,638.52
Reg.$3,841.91

Is that also for graphics design?  
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NVIDIA Quadro products have been outperforming the graphics capabilities of proprietary UNIX systems for years, but until now they have been designed for single-system workstations. The breakthrough design of the FX 3000G delivers the power and advanced graphics capabilities of PC workstations to multisystem visualization and multidevice film and video environments.


Who would want to buy these...game makers/designers?
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]make sure your getting the right company otherwise youll get less of a product.
Click to expand...

Then which is the right company other than Nvidia and ATI:

3DLabs
ALBATRON
AOPEN
ASUS
ECS
GAINWARD
GENERIC
GIGABYTE
HIS
LEADTEK
MATROX
MICROSTAR
POWERCOLOR
QUADRO
SAPPHIRE

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I'm gonna definantly have to a agree....being the CGT (computer graphics technology) major that I am, those are the types of graphics cards we put in our GOOD machines around here. The machines that cost 10K+ easily....They're amazing, but definantly overkill for gaming, unless you are going to start rendering animated movies out in Maya or 3DS Max, DEFINANTLY save your cash!
 
They're designed for totally different purposes which as is already mentioned. The huge price disparity comes from the quanitity they sell in, the workstation cards sell a mere fraction of what the mainstream cards sell. It's like why cars are so expensive, the price has to be at a certain point to justify the production and make a profit because out of this particular brand of car only so many are going to sell compared to the whole, and the people who buy these cars will be out of the market for several years.

Also high end workstations will tend to run up over 10 thousand for all the high end stuff.

If you want to go the nVidia route go with BFG, they're really great, a gamer's company to be sure. The packaging with their cards is fairly minimal, so none of that bundled junk that comes with most cards, and they do that to keep the price of the cards down. Their cards though are some of the highest qualiy around, being tweaked and designed out of the box for better gaming. They're also super overclockable without worrying about it due to the hugh quality cooling they use that's nicer then alot of after market products I've seen. On my 5700 Ultra I get a 300/200 gain using coolbits, and that's not even pushing it that much. I'd really recommend the 6800 GT if your looking for something higher end without going all the way (and it competes with the 6800 Ultra and trounces all but the hightest Radeon card), or if your looking for something more midrandged go for their 6600 GT.

Either way I'd really go with BFG. Plus you get a lifetime warranty with all their stuff, 24/7 customer support, and something else that's suddenly slipped my mind grr. I'm going senile all of a sudden.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]They're also super overclockable without worrying about it due to the hugh quality cooling they use that's nicer then alot of after market products I've seen.
Click to expand...

I would really like to see one that doesnt says, Info Not Available.  
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This is the one that is cheap, looks very fast and what I would get (and it just came out a week ago):

ATI Radeon 9550 256MB AGP Graphics Card - Bilingual
$199.99

API Support:  Direct X, Open GL
Card Type:  2D/3D
Clock Speed of Video Memory:  800MHz DDR
DVD Acceleration:  Yes
Fill Rate:  1.0G Pixels/Second
Included In Box:  Manual, Setup CD
Included Software:  See The Features Section
Interface:  AGP
Maximum 2D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour):  2048 x 1536 dpi

Maximum 3D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour):  2048 x 1536 dpi

Number of Polygons Per Second:  250
Operating System Compatibility:  Windows 2000/XP/Media Center

Processor Type:  ATi Radeon 9550
Remote Control:  No
S-Video Output:  Yes
System Requirements:  See The Features Section
TV Out:  Yes
TV Tuner (Yes/No):  No
Video Compression:  Yes
Video Memory:  256MB DDR
Warranty:  3 Years



The BFG, decribed from Amusedtoe:


BFG GeForce 6800GT Overclocked Card
$649.99

API Support:  Direct 3D, Open GL
Card Type:  2D/3D Card
Clock Speed of Video Memory:  RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
DVD Acceleration:  Yes
Fill Rate:  438 Million Vertices/Sec
Included In Box:  Manual, DVI-I - VGA Connector, Cable, CD

Included Software:  Drivers, Window Blinds, NVDVD 2.0
Interface:  AGP
Maximum 2D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour):  2048 x 1536
Maximum 3D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour):  2048 x 1536
Number of Polygons Per Second:  Info Not Available
Operating System Compatibility:  Windows 98/2000/NT/ME/XP

Processor Type:  NVIDIA GeForce
Remote Control:  No
S-Video Output:  1
System Requirements:  AGP 2.0 Or Higher Motherboard
TV Out:  No
TV Tuner (Yes/No):  No
Video Compression:  Info Not Available
Video Memory:  256MB DDR3
Warranty:  Lifetime


The Info Not Available is not trustworthy on the GeForce, so its annoying to have an incredible card to have missing information.

From what I've compared, the ATI is almost $500 cheaper than the GeForce or any high end cards (ATI X800/6800), has a high clock speed on the ATI, 800 MHz and Fill rate is 1.0G Pixels.

If the GeForce cards had no, Info Not Available, THEN, I would buy them.

With the ATI X800 Radeon Pro 256MB compare to the ATI Radeon 9550 256MB, X800 Pro is 225 more # of Polygons Per Second, 4.4G Pixel, but its clock speed is almost half as low as the ATI 9550 (450Mhz) and cost $599.99, about $400 more than the ATI Radeon 9550.




And why dont I just buy the ATI Radeon 9550 256MB AGP Graphics Card - Bilingual?

Because I'll get the money in a couple weeks! O.K?
 
o_O The 6800 GT should be like $300 US. If I remember correctly everything I've read about the 9550 says it's not worth the money. For the extra 15 bucks I'd go with somethling like this this Sapphire 9700 Pro. The extra 128 of ram is fairly moot because it's only 128 bit of the 9550 compared to 256 bit. The 9550 also doesn't have the rendering pipeleines the 9700 does. They ussually stick more memory on low end cards to help mask some of the flaws like slower memory speeds and smaller pipelines. If you look around I'm sure you could even find a 9800 Pro for $200, Newegg has a bunch of em for $200 or less, they're just all out of stock. Those are just my opinions, and if you can't tell I'm not too high on all but a select few mid-range cards when you can get an older but still faster card for no more.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]o_O The 6800 GT should be like $300 US.
Click to expand...

Thats why I'm in Canada...and thats why that it costs almost $700 CAD/CAN, Canada so expensive!

SO, your suggestion to a Sapphire 9700 Pro would be double of that price, $430 CAD/CDN.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The 9550 also doesn't have the rendering pipeleines the 9700 does. They ussually stick more memory on low end cards to help mask some of the flaws like slower memory speeds and smaller pipelines.
Click to expand...





All I want is a biggy darny good cheap canadian dollar video card that can run games like; C&C: Generals demo, Counter-Strike 1.6,Half-life 2, Halo demo, FarCry demo, Doom 3 DEMO, etc! Cause my crappy intergrated video cant run any of those games!
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Sure, u see me in CS, but check out my ping, 150-300! And maps like Climb and CargoShip, its unbearable, makes my resolution so bad, it blinds me w/o a flashbang.

ITs really just a figure of speech, but I hate it when I start shooting someone and my gun doesnt fire/gets jammed cause my video card cant cut it! ARGH! RAAR!

Its like: Corp.fox shoots gun, gun gets jammed, the enemy hears clicks cause of Corp's jammed gun, Corp.fox is dead. Victory of the killer to Corp.
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Ok that makes more sense then, you should have mentioned that sooner.
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Just don't go with the SE version of any ATI card those things make better frisbees then vid cards.
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