EventHorizon

Join Date 02/2003

Newest graphics cards

I saw recently in an ad in the paper some new card out from nVidia. (Not sure on the exact model...like nForce 5900 or something like that)
Anyway...I noticed it came with 256mb ddr ram. Why the heck would you ever need that much? Wouldn't a decent 64mb card be good enough for whatever you're doing? (Let alone the 128mb cards)

Now, personally, Ive never used a card with more than 4mb vram so, just looking at a picture of a 2yr old 16mb card makes me drool. (

) Possibly im overestiamting the power of vid cards...Am I?

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The more ram on board the graphics card the faster rendering, also with AGP whatever does not fit on the GPU's on board memory is filled out in system ram. So besides speed and such, your looking at less of a hit on the main systems resources (ram)...

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Ok, right I can see if you have an older comp that you dont want to throw away (for one reason or another) you get a better vid card so the whole thing runs faster... But lets say you have one of the newest, top-o'-the-line comps (2.6+ ghz 512+ ddr ram etc)...would it be a good investment?

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I built a new system a while back and put in an nVidia FX5600 w/128Mb. I never play games so I don't know if it's a big improvement for them or not (I suspect it would be though). I do use it to make some huge commercial jobs in Illustrator or Corel Draw where the filesize can be well over 150MB. So far I love it - nothing seems to slow it down. My old system would choke constantly.

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Leo the Lion

Join Date 05/2003

+100

EH.........You would need to more than just a graphics card upgrade to get an old computer to run faster..........you would certainly have to upgrade the CPU to notice any discernable difference. This then can act like a bit of an avalanche all newish CPU's are not compatitable with the older motherboards so you would have to replace that as well. And if all that is not bad enough your old system would more than likely be running old SDRAM and after shelling out your cash for the other components you then might as well go the whole hog and get the faster newer DDR ram

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Thats the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, at the moment that is NVIDIA's flagship, but they are currently working on Faster card for September launch or so NV36 or NV37 NV38 Chips just to get that edge over ATI.

Heres review on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256 MB "NV35" http://www.guru3d.com/article.php?cat=&id=40

The FX 5900 Ultra uses UltraShadow Technology for Upcoming game DOOM3.

Also Gainward NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 128 MB
http://www.guru3d.com/article.php?cat=&id=54

Both require minimum of 300/350 Watt PSU.

FX Family being DirectX 9 compliant.

These cards are built for FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Alasing) and AF Anistrophic Filtering.

Also read GeForce FX 5800 Ultra review http://content.guru3d.com/article.php?cat=review&id=22

These are most likely cards for hardcore gamers and what ID Software recommends for DOOM3.

However if your looking for cheaper cards which still a good buy

FX 5200's are like the MX range (low end) 5600 Ultra's (mid range)are you could say compared to the GeForce4 Ti 4400 plus i dont know if manufacturers are still selling the 5800's as NVIDIA phased them out due to the loud FlowFX fans.

http://www.guru3d.com/article.php?cat=&id=59

If your after best performance in 3D card and also for WindowFX, i heard ATI 9700 / 9800 Pro's are the best along with Radeon 8500, tho ATI is really coming on strong these days as they also have 256MB 9800 Pro's.

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I have an ATI 64MB DDR Radeon and it does eveything I ask it taking the graphics load off my CPU. Personaly, I do not see a need for anything greater than that. But, I don't play the big games either.

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There was an article in last months issue of Maximum PC that I brought concerning the new graphics cards and its relation to the new features in Directx 9 in review of Half Life 2. It detailed all the differences in older cards back to Nvidia TNT. In fact unless one has a new Directx 9 compliant card, you just won't see everything in the new Directx 9 features. It is a awesome article, about 4 pages. If you see it and like gaming, it will definitely convince you to get a new Directx 9 compliant card. It convinced me.

I found a link to the article but unfortunately it is dead. Sorry.

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The link I found was in this forum. http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=5841

The people seemed impressed by it. But, I can't get to the link.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1846

Things have changed...once upon a time the Vid Card manufacturers released cards and the Games designers made their games to suit.....now, with the advent [soon] of Doom 3, ID Software is telling the Vid Card designers what they 'need' to make the games work. My future system upgrade will start with Doom 3's card requirement/s and that will define the CPU, MoBo and Ram necessities as well....

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Half Life2 DX9 FSAA issue was fixed i heard, whole time it was Valve who screwed up as they disbaled FSAA option, they said it was something they were working on from XBox and didnt fix it in the meantime so blames NVIDIA / ATI's Hardware.

Some guys that were at QuakeCon Jafo said DOOM3 might not be ready till mid 2004

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