Wirehead Studios

Vote, and post your opinions, I want to see how the majority votes.

I don't really know at the moment. I know that the ati 9700 was the fastest card on the market a couple months ago, and I'm not sure how the GeForceFX stacks up against it.

I'd wait to hear what Lt. Phil has to say...he's the hardware junkie. He absorbs hardware the way an addict shoots heroine

When I recently upgraded, my first choice was a Radeon. The thing would not work worth shit though. It conflicted with EVERYTHING, the drivers sucked, etc. So I took it back the very next day and bought a GeForce, popped it in with no problem what so ever, and the baby has been running nicely in my machine ever sense.

So my vote goes to Nvidia, for making my life easier if for nothing else  :D

from everything ive seen, and ive seen a lot, the gf-fx was a huge dissapointment because bandwidth issues. it barely out performs the 9700 pro, and has nothing on the 9800 pro. the 9800 pro is something of a disapointment as well. just the 9700 with a faster clock, really no new technology to be found. as far as drivers go, i would have agreed with dev, back when the 8500 was ati's top card that is. today the drivers for ati cards are exceptional, and are an even match for nvidias. i have a 9700 pro, a gf-2 pci, and an ati all in wonder in one machine and have no conflicts. as for what cards on the market to currently buy, take the 9800, 9700, or 9500 depending on how much you want to spend. all of these cards are from ati, but be sure im am not biased one way or the other. i used to be quite the nvidia fan boy, but they just seem to have blown it this time. if you dont beleive me check out the benchmarks, i recomend www.hardocp.com.

I'm still stuck with a built-in Intel 810 chipset. My big case hasn't arrived yet.

redx, i would recheck the bench marks, the new ones out perform ati.

so it seems. apparently the low quality with anisotropic filtering, and the mediocre speeds were due mostly to poor drivers on nvidias part. the benchmarks with the new detonators i have been shown are very different to say the least. the gf-fx actually seems to be the front runner by a small margin at current. im going to have to look at a few more benchmarks before i make my final desiscion though. ill be sure to post my results here.

with these new results i have reworked my recomendations. currently from best performance down it seems:
gf-fx 5900 ultra, radeon 9800 pro, gf-fx 5800 or radeon 9700 pro (its hard to say who is top here), radeon 9500

There's more to it than benchmarks and sheer power. I always prefer the chipset/board/hardware/girlfriend that outsmarts the competition, not brute-forces it. That is- when price is not an issue, and the performance difference isn't absurd.
That's why I have an Athlon CPU and an ATI Radeon. And I'm very happy with those two babies :]

i just stuck a radeon 7500 in my computer, its barely a step above my old gf2 mx400.. but it does run almost everything at least marginally faster than the gf2 i had in here.. my only problem with it is that i cant alt + tab out of games like i could with the gf2.. whether its just a misconfiguration on my part, or its the card itself.. i dont know, but its not that big of a deal.. and i got it for free anyways(but its basically only a 64mb card being a 32mb ddr card... however the memory is clocked higher than the old gf2mx i had in my system).. so whos complainin

I currently own Geforce 4 Ti4200 128mb, but I'm planning to get a new card. It seems that it will be Nvidia or ATI :P. I don't know which one, yet.

I used to be an nvidea boy miself but. then when they launched theyre geforce Fx i was dissapointed big . i waited for a year on that card.
and when i saw  my radeon 9500pro card lying there in the  shop against half the price of the Fx and almost the same speed. (exept some points ) my choice was made .
its all up to you but at this moment i dont see any problems with radeon drivers and the Fx was launched in a very , very buggy state IMHO.
+ have you seen the cooler on that thing. and the sound it makes.
they tell ya the fan speed goes down when you are running aplications that dont use the card . but the only thing we  guys do is playing games so .

Well the new Unveiled GF-fx seems to rock the competition..

Nvidia made amends to their crappy job with the NV30, and totally blows Ati away with the NV35...

The results arent that far off at 'normal' playing resolutions, but as soon as you get out of the system limits, and put it on the graphics card (1600x1200, 4XAA, 4XAF that sort of stuff) the NV35 shines. Also with the NV35 is this hardware 'shadowing' shit, which is supposed to take virtually ALL the light-shadow work off of the processor, and speed up anything that uses it signifigantly. As of now there's nothing that uses it, so its hard to see what the difference is.. but as with most things, time will tell.

But currently, straight from the benchmarks, the NV35 Rocks the 9800 hardcore

Also, the NV30 had something like a 17Gb bandwith maximum, the 9800, something like 21Gb, which was the main problem with the first FX, th 128 bit pipe instead of 256... The new NV35 has something like 27Gb stock, and over 30Gb when overclocked... which it does nicely according to the reviews ive read. (stock is 400/850, they got it to like 450/944)

only two words are needed....

God damn....

All I can say is thank God for Nforce2, or Nvidia would have bit it with the NV30.  That was a monstrous disappointment, but it showed them what NOT to do, so that they finally got it right with the NV35.  Almost all the scores I've seen shows it beating the 9800.  There's a few spots it lagged behind in speed, but I think it was only one particular game, and it's not Doom 3, so who cares.

That being said, the good points to me is it does Anisotropic RIGHT.  I don't care what people say about AF not being important on flat viewed planes and only important on slopes, it's rubbish.  I saw the AF shots of both, and the NV35 looks a LOT better AF on far away surfaces.  Detail's crisper.  On the OTHER hand, the FSAA could use some improving, and from the shots I've seen of the 4xFSAA it undoes any benefit the AF did by blurrying up the textures.  I don't know what effect a difference in drivers would have, but I've never been a huge fan of FSAA.  Anisotropic, on the other hand, I look at quite seriously.  Of course if FSAA ends up looking better and doesn't hit framerate badly, then I'd consider turning it on.  ATI is still killing Nvidia on FSAA, but that's the only area I can see, besides single texture fill rate.

Now, that brings me to this point.  Nvidia's using a 2x4 texture pipe which is better for multitexture, which most games use anyway, whereas ATI is using an 8x1, which gives much better single texture fillrate, but the NV35 is still killing them on sheer throughput.  It makes me wonder if the next big card revision from Nvidia will end up with 2x8?  That would theoretically quadruple the single texture fill rate and double the multitexture.  Up the core clock back to 500, increase the ram speed, and make some other embelishments and good God what could they do with that.  They're also already on the .13 process, from what I understand this was a rather difficult changeover and was largely responsible for the production delays (I could be wrong here) and ATI has yet to cross that technical barrier.  I really don't see how ATI can speed things up much more without a serious redesign, and during that time Nvidia could easily shoot ahead by a large margin.  The framerates I've seen for Doom 3 on the NV35 is astounding.

I'm happy with the path Nvidia's taking now.  They screwed up, and they've fixed it and the result is that they produced a killer (if costly as f@#!) card.  It will be interesting to see how things go now that ATI has effectively been dethroned again, at least for now. B)

I'll admit right off that I've preferred ATI since the Radeon 32mb ddr. I've had no problems with it whatsoever and I keep finding compatibility issues with Nvidia *shrug* I guess I'm weird like that :P.

The major selling point the Radeon had at the time was just the bells and whistles. Bumpmapping support, mesh-smoothing, all sorts of toys that didn't hit performance much. Sure, I only got 70-80 fps in q3, but it looked better, and it was above 60fps, that's what I was important to me. Not to mention the fact that my card was under half the price of nvidia's equivalent card *cough* <_<

And then there were the benchmarks.. Jeebus were those messy.. Nvidia with giant scores at 640x480x16 with nothing enabled.. Who plays games at that resolution!? :blink:  Nvidia had tailored driver sets to increase scores in Mad Onion's benchmarks as well, a couple artifacts STILL show up if you know what to look for. And ATI isn't innocent of this either. The general benchmarks were decent, best rates at 1024x768x32 with decent quality settings. ATI won there, but they crossed the line with the infamous q3 driver hack.

Thankfully, Tom's Hardware and a number of other hardware review companies have been wising up and starting to use what I'd refer to as real-life benchmarks. But I can't forget that godawful taste I get in my mouth when I see some (self-censored, explicative deleted) all proud of himself because he has 300 fps in the latest game at 320x240 with everything under the sun disabled. Congratulations (explicative deleted)... :idiot:

All I see is "benchmark benchmark benchmark " nobody gives a damn about the actual performance any more and it pisses me off to no end. Both Nvidia and ATI make good cards, but the fact is, with really only two companies in the running, competition is cutthroat and neither one has shown themselves to be above cheating.  :wall:

End result, ATI has my vote, not because of speed, but because ATI has always catered to my gaming sweet-spot. 1024x768 32-bit color, with all the eyecandy possible and at a good framerate.
 :biggun:

Well, most of the "benchmarks" Used anymore include several synthetic tests, as well as testing it in actual game demos.  Any of the good review sites will test the cards across multiple tests, games, and give the results of each.  The reviews I've seen show actual screenies for the anisotropic, FSAA, etc, so you can compare one vs another "as it appears in game".  That's a lot of what I look at.  3Dmarks to me only amount to just one little test.  How it performs "in-game" is where I put the most concern, and right now the NV35 is eating the Radeon 9800 for breakfast in Doom 3.  Really it depends on what you're looking for in a card.  I just find the video card race quite fascinating personally.  For actual cards I'm sticking with my GF4 for some time.  It was a good investment, and I got it for quite a bit less than list, so I'll squeaze every last dime out of it that I can.  At the risk of sounding sacreligious I can't justify spending $500 on a card just to play Doom 3 when I could put that money to much better use where it's more needed.  I think once this development cycle plateaus and the technologies mature (and costs come down) I might be in the market for a card, but not for at least a year, maybe two.  Until then let the grudgematch continue.  ;)

what do you guys actually do with your old  hardware . just to ask.

bye the way still if i see price and kwality I stil would go for radeon.
 if im gonna haveto pay 500$ for a card I'm broke and it would  even cost more then all the res of my pc together

I save a lot of my old hardware, until it gets REALLY old. I used all the spare parts from my old PC to build a Linux box. Nothing really impressive, it just makes sure everyone on my network has internet support ;)

Bout the same here dev, though i have a habit of keeping things

over the years, I've collected all my spare bits and that got me running 3 decent computers right now. Since the next update will prolly be a big one, I'll have 4 when it happens ;]
(2 work pc's and a dedicated file/print/ftp/http server - the next will be a linux plaything)

same here .
but since i don have much space here .I gave my old pc to my cousin.
we also have a server for internet on all the 12 pc's around here.
its a entium 1 .and if i need a cable , mous , cable ,  an other junk you can think of , even 2 17" screens I just have to go to the back of my house

ok now GK, there's no reason for you to spell pentium wrong :P It's spelled the same way here in belgium :P You're doing that on purpose! :)

my god he figured out my mistakes I make on pupose.
aaarggh.

you do know I have  to kill ya now dicion?

I'll go with nVIDIA.