256 mb video cards?

[ReefDogg]

I'm looking at upgrading to a decent video card. I've seen some with 256mb. Is just a hype or will most systems actually use that extra memory?

I'm kind of leary about! Since most good high end mid-range card's have 128mb.

I'm still undecided if I will stay with NVIDIA or go with ATI.

[Yoshi]

Well 128MB is still being JUST used up, so 128MB will do you as good as 256MB, however the Vid Card makers will not be making 128MB cards anymore, so I would go 256MB, so if you have the money get a 6800 or X800

[iceblue]

http://www.fancysplace.com/smileys/stop3.gif and look here (http://www.jscustompcs.com/description.php?id=602) closely. You've got to have a fast GPU to take advantage of 256MB of memory.

[megaspazz]

that is a wikked price for that card.
what's the deal? :confused:

[Yoshi]

Originally posted by iceblue
http://www.fancysplace.com/smileys/stop3.gif and look here (http://www.jscustompcs.com/description.php?id=602) closely. You've got to have a fast GPU to take advantage of 256MB of memory.

So I can buy a 6800 from them, $299 is pretty good as the Non-Ultra was going to be $399

[ReefDogg]

Yeah, my GPU can handle it. I think it worth the money in the long run, cuz I wont upgrade for quite some time!!!! And $300 isn't really a factor now! Heck, why not! Big difference 4yrs ago, when I all I could afford was my first video card. A 32mb Gainward.

Thnx

[CaptHandsome]

Weeeeeeeelllll....if I were u I would get the ATi X800 for games right now, and for at least another year. Right now the X800 is the best vid card out there, but theres a dilemma. the 6800 supports SM/PS 3.0, ATi's only supports 2.0. However, there are no GAMES that currently support 3.0, and there probably wont be for at least another year, some say more, some say less. Performance wise...right now....you get way better graphics from the X800. Higher resolutions, better framerates, and the big one is that you can pop the AA and AF on those suckers so **** high and still KEEP the 30+ framerates and high resolutions.

Hope you didnt buy the 6800 yet.

Edit: Heres a good review/comparison of the X800. The good ol boys at [H]ardOCP compare the X800and X800XT to the 6800Ultra and 9800XT

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjEx

[ReefDogg]

No, I haven't ordered anything yet. I'm doing my homework, that link will help as well. Thx :t

I'm still undecided if I want to go with ATI or NVIDIA? You hear so much (articles/opinions, etc). My last two cards were NVIDIA, but this card will be my final upgrade and no builds for awhile!

So I want a good card that will stay with me for awhile. But, the tech is always changing. So there's no way to keep on top of it.

But my notebook has a ATI 9700 card and I like it.

But I'm not rushing and buying any card. I learned from that one!!!!

[Bigjakkstaffa]

As with Capt Handsome at this point in time, the X800XT looks to be the marginally better purchase than the 6800U (cheaper too if my sources are right). As stated though, the only cards where you will see an advantage from 256mb of VRAM are the 6800/X800, and even then i woudlnt expect it to be utilised fully for soem time yet.

--Jakk:t

[ReefDogg]

That's why I'm thinking about getting a card with 128 of vram, since right now it wont utilized?

I'll have to make up decide soon, cuz I want to order it monday.

[Rugor]

Ok if you want to order monday, the fastest card you're likely to get is the X800 Pro as nothing faster is going to be available over the next couple of weeks.

Personally I would go with ATI this generation as performance looks at least roughly comparable and ATI's better AA added to better system stability would make it the way to go.

I'm giving ATI the nod on system stability this time around because the Gf6800 series cards have significantly higher power draw and that is going to cause stability problems; especially in a world where a lot of people don't go the extra mile in purchasing a good PSU.

[iceblue]

"As for "480W" power supplies and power consumption, anybody whining about that is like a Ferrari owner complaining that his insurance is high and the car gets bad gas mileage." -Jakub

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Wheras the X800XT PE is a Ferrari with an excellent MPG ratio ;)

--Jakk:t

[ReefDogg]

Well I've been looking at the 9800 Pro instead, when I took into consideration my system. It will save me $ and it will be a big step up from 3yr old NVIDIA 64 card.

This isn't an easy one!

[Vampiel]

Get the 9800pro if your looking to get a good value card. Get the Nvidia 6800Ultra if you want a higher end card.

[iceblue]

If you aren't planning on upgrading for a long time, and still wish to play newer titles with ease, I recommend looking into one of the newer cards. Subsequent DirectX releases such as DirectX Next will cause a huge hit on the overall performance of the 9800 Pro shader 2.0 architecture.

[ReefDogg]

I've still been considering the X800 as well.

But I've looking at specs/reviews on the 6800 ultra as well, like I said this isn't going to be easy....:r

[Vampiel]

If you have a 480w power supply and an extra pci slot under your agp slot then I would get the 6800U. If you dont have those 2 things then it's the X800. There are so many reviews you can pull your hair out trying to decide b/c they are tied in performance almost. The 6800U supports pixel shader 3.0 so thats something the X800 doesnt have and why pay the same for less?

[Rugor]

Originally posted by Vampiel
If you have a 480w power supply and an extra pci slot under your agp slot then I would get the 6800U. If you dont have those 2 things then it's the X800. There are so many reviews you can pull your hair out trying to decide b/c they are tied in performance almost. The 6800U supports pixel shader 3.0 so thats something the X800 doesnt have and why pay the same for less?

The X800 supports 6x Multisampling and Gamma Corrected AA so that's something the 6800U doesn't have and why pay the same for less?

The real point is that unless you're dealing with the power and heat issues it doesn't look like there's going to be one clear winner this time around. At least not yet.

Nvidia has a clear feature advantage in SM3.0, though apparently there are some SM2.0 features ATI supports that Nvidia still doesn't even with NV40. ATI has a clear advantage in better edge quality AA at maximum settings, especially with Temporal AA.

Unfortunately, until we see a fair number of the new games come out we're not going to be able to judge which feature is more important. My own guess is that ATI had the better choice this time around because even if SM3.0 does give a major benefit the absence won't be crippling until we see more SM3.0 capable hardware. All the evidence suggests there won't be a lot of NV40 chips made, it's NV41 that's going to be the first mass version. If that's the case, and NV41 is still a few months down the road, then we won't need SM3.0 for quite a while. Also, since SM3.0 seems to be more about performance than new features, a fast enough card should be able to do without it at least in the short term.

The installed base of pre SM3.0 cards out there is just too huge to be ignored.

I think SM3.0 is only going to be important soon if we can see a lot of cards supporting it and it gives significant performance increases on major games. Basically a mass NV4x derivative will have to be both available and able to blow ATI's top card out of the water in Doom]I[ for it to really become important. However, if the 6200?MX? does beat the X800 in Doom and is available in quantity it will all be in Nvidia's ball-park.

Only time will tell

[Vampiel]

Im not even sure what "gamma correct AA" is, but it sounds like its only their if you use AA, causing maybe a marginal image quality increase over the NVIDIA that one would only notice if they looked at it through a magnifying glass. I was only pointing out the potentially major difference.
Technologically, ATi's 3D architecture has fallen behind that of NVIDIA
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040504/ati-x800-38.html
The NVIDIA, on paper, looks like it's going to come out on top in the future b/c of SM 3.0 and offering 32 bit floating point, unlike ATI which only offers 24 bits.

As you said, only time will tell.

[Rugor]

I do use AA, all the time, and yes the gamma correction is only a factor when using AA. Most people with R300 or better cards do tend to use it most of the time. At the moment, Nvidia's AA is slightly inferior to ATI's up to 4x. ATI's 6x (which R420 has the power to run at high resolutions) is better than anything Nvidia has. However, if you don't use AA this won't matter.

As to the 32-bit vs 24-bit FP, that's been done to death. Nvidia still uses 16-bit FP precision on NV40 as well as the 32-bit, so in those cases ATI has the advantage. It really comes down to the shaders themselves. Remember, the shader (I'm talking about the program here) doesn't request a specific precision; all it does is indicate partial precision if allowable. Otherwise it just runs at whatever precision the hardware supports. If we get shaders where FP24 causes artifacts, ATI will have a problem. However the jury is still out whether any current hardware can run shaders that complex fast enough for it to matter.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

A few analysis articles that i've read all seem to arrive at the same conclusion, SM 3.0 isnt going to be much to get ones knickers in a twist about mainly because of the way in which SM2.0 can simulate all but a couple of SM3.0's new features.

At present if you held a gun to my head and made me pick a "next gen" card i would go for the X800XT (which wasnt even promoted as a next-gen card by Ati- merely a stop-gao) on the basis that when tested over a range of application of all shapes and sizes it comes out as consistently faster card. That said theres no more 'caneing' of one card by another in the way the Nv3x was walloped by the R9500 Pro upover's this time around, and as such it probably depends on which manufacturer your most comfortable with as to which card to buy, as the margin of difference isnt paticularly massive.

Personally im sick of Nvidia's drivers which in the past two years ive had nothing but chew with, while recent driver 'optimisations' to improve performance at the cost of IQ have gotten on my goat, paticularly when optimisatiosn are made only for paticular 'killer app' games such as Doom 3 and Far Cry which most gamers are goign to base purchases around, still thats marketing.

With the FX 5xxx series, Nvidia was exceeded by Ati for the most part (low end/budget not included - i still go Nvidia in that paticular area). While there is no such defecit with the FX6800 any more, it doesnt paticularly beat the R420 (if anything the 420 is more consistently faster) as such i can see nothing at present to make me make the switch back to NV in terms of GPU's

--Jakk:t

[Vampiel]

Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
and as such it probably depends on which manufacturer your most comfortable with as to which card to buy
agreed

Though they both make good cards in my opinion so it's a flip of the "will SM3.0 amount to something or not" dice.:D

If not ATI is the way to roll, if so, nvidia will be rolling snake eyes!

[Bigjakkstaffa]

By the time SM 3.0 is adopted by most developers (something which still seems doubtful at the moment even among the developers themselves) and becomes a common feature the R5xx will be with us (its not that long away, the R420 is essentially a stop gap release to keep pace until the R5xx arrives, and from the rumblings ive heard its going to be rather tasty, similarly ive also heard BIG things are coming from the direction of the catalyst drivers over the next 12 months), which will, AFAIK, have support for SM3.0 and a whole lot more and by the sounds of the rumors, is going to rock some blocks

--Jakk:t

[jamil5454]

The main advantage of SM3.0 over 2.0 is speed. Code can be executed with more ops/clock (or something to that effect) when SM3.0 is used. Just read some articles and you will find that SM2.0 looks just as beautiful as SM3.0, but SM3.0 should be a little faster in the future. As for the NV40 vs. R420, I'd have to go with ATI. I believe Nvidia is still cheating with their drivers (ever heard of the farcry.exe ---> fartcry.exe incident?) and Nvidia still manages to get visual anomalities even with "Nvidia - The Way it's Meant to be Played" games. One great example of this is FarCry. Additionaly, SFF PCs are ssoooooo cool. I will highly adorn anyone who can successfully run a 6800U in a SFF system. This way you can show up at all your lan parties with an awesome SFF PC equipped with an equally awesome X800XT.

[too_much]

imo, the 9800pro is the best move right now. For the money it is absolutely golden, and hammers the **** out of most games easily.

It's all well and good to sit there and say "Just spend your life savings on an X800" but in the long run it's probably better to wait for the R5xx, which is what I'm doing. (I'm getting me a 9800pro in a week or two.)

Basically, if you have money to burn and nothing more constructive to spend it on, then get a X800, but like Jak said, it's basically a stop-gap and could prove to be not the best investment in the long run.

Granted I could be wrong, but I don't see the point of paying so much for a card when the 9800pro is still better than most games require...

Just my 2p :)

[jamil5454]

Agreed. Even a 9600 pro can run almost all current games at 1024x768 at highest settings (minus the AA and AF). I'm just hoping that the R5xx, 64-bit CPUs, and PCI-X will all be "in season" by next summer, when I'm building my next PC. Hopefully this mixture of awesomeness in a computer will carry me through 4 years of college with no upgrading required.

[too_much]

If you have a setup as described there, you'll be sorted for gaming for a fair while I would think... game development can only be so fast, and they still have to appeal to the mass market :)

[ReefDogg]

I've decided to I'm going to get the 9800, seeing the prices in the x800. Ouch! And really looking at how I'll be using it, it's a bit hard to justify $400 bucks for a video card.

[luikiedook]

http://www.tomshardware.com/ is the best site for product reviews, especially high end video cards, as they always have the latest comparisons on the latest video cards.. and www.newegg.com is very reliable and will have the lowest price 90% of the time in my experiences.. as for which video card you should get, and how much video memory you need... take the radeon 9800 pro for example. they make it in both 128MB version and 256 MB version. the performance increase is VERY minimal, because the memory banwidth speed and the GPU speed is the same for both cards... newegg.com also has product reviews by people that have purchased the card.


blah blah blah go check out http://www.tomshardware.com/ they know what they are doing

[Rugor]

Newegg (http://www.newegg.com) is probably the best online store for parts, but I would truly hesitate to call Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) the best video card review site on the web. Their methodology isn't the best and their comparisons are often shallow.

Probably the best site for in-depth video card analysis is Beyond3D (http://www.beyond3d.com) which gives a much better understanding of what's actually going on inside the card. However, they do not do cross-vendor comparisons. The best for that right now is [H]ardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com) where Brent Justice does reviews based on comparing best playable settings.

There are a lot of other good sites out there, but those two are probably the best for video reviews, and much better than Tom's.

[ReefDogg]

Yeah, I've been reading TomsHardware reviews. Now I'm think about just going with the X800, was looking at long term.

Oh, I always buy from Newegg or Uprgradesource only now.

:t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Originally posted by luikiedook
http://www.tomshardware.com/ is the best site for product reviews

A high proportion of the Tech community dont hold much faith in what Tom's has to say, there are a lot of complaints pertaining to reviewer bias in many of their articles and suspicions that the review outcomes are "tainted" by whichever manufactuer/site sponsor is flavour of the month with THG

Of course theyre still worthy of a read now and again, but the general guide when looking at reviews is to cross reference from two or three sources, as there a number of sites around with their own little biases and agenda's

--Jakk:t

[ReefDogg]

I don't look at one review at all, which is why I take my time and do my research before I buy something!

[Rugor]

Time and research is important, even though nowadays you have to research the sites as well as the product.

[Someone Stupid]

As shared by others, Tom's isn't a site I trust.

[Vampiel]

Originally posted by Someone Stupid
As shared by others, Tom's isn't a site I trust.
Ive yet to see any evidence of why this is.

[Rugor]

In simple terms, I don't trust either their methodology or their results.

Toms regularly has results, especially in video card and CPU shootouts, that are at variance with much of the rest of the enthusiast press. A closer examination shows that their testing is generally done differently than most sites and the results bear that out. Even on high end cards they still tend to use lower resolutions without AA and AF which tend to turn things into more of a CPU than video test.

When the A64FX came out they were the one site that rated the P4EE the clear winner, where almost all other sites either said it was too close to call, or gave AMD a slight edge. An examination of the tests used showed Toms test suite was biased towards applications that favored the Netburst architecture where other sites used a more balanced selection of test applications.

This result came from the one site where the managing editor (Omid Rahmat) has published numerous anti-AMD opinion pieces.

Also, when they noticed an apparent discrepancy in ATI's rendering in Aquamark, they contacted Nvidia for an explanation, rather than ATI. They had every right to examine the issue, but responsible journalism would have been to at least ask ATI about their own hardware.

On another occasion, they posted a rumor that the X800XT would be delayed, but were not able to contact ATI about this (even though they have had a recent interview with ATI's CEO). They based it on a report from one store, despite the fact that the X800 Pro shipped on time, and the Gf6800 has yet to ship despite being launched before either R420 card. Needless to say this rumor was stated before ATI had indicated they would be shipping the X800XT anyway.

After things like that, I just don't trust them any more

[jamil5454]

I like AnandTech.

[Hagen17t]

I think AnandTech is the review site for video cards cause they use user friendly computers in their tests so that resembles the computer I have at least...

[Rugor]

Best video card review site for in-depth non-shootout reviews is Beyond3D. Best site for what it would be like to play games on a given card is [H]ardOCP.

[Hagen17t]

Do you people agree that the ATI 9800PRO vs the nvidia fx 5900 ultra has

BETTER IMAGE QUALITY

OR

PERFOMANCE OVERALL

[Hagen17t]

SORRY it was think instead of agree

[Magua]

the 9800pro is the best card for the money right now

[Vampiel]

Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
A high proportion of the Tech community dont hold much faith in what Tom's has to say

Not true. A high proportion of the tech community goto tom's, it's not just the newbie's that give them hit's alot of experienced techie's go there for information including myself.

[Vampiel]

9800 pro is better bar none, ive had both.

[Vampiel]

Originally posted by Rugor
A closer examination shows that their testing is generally done differently than most sites and the results bear that out.
So does that tell you that tom's is biased... or most other sites are?