I need a new graphic card

[Kingzjester]

I need a new graphic card. Any suggestions? Any cards I should be wary of? Any really good economy solution for my woes....

Also related to the topic at hand is my hatred for hardware. I hate hardware. The card that I have now (3D Labs Oxygen, 32MB I think) I bought when Black and White came out and the game looked great! Few weeks ago I had to do an unhealthy amount of optimization to run Morrowind at a tolerable frame rate. It isn't such a long time since Black and White came out, folks. This is rather annoying....

In addition I will probably have to buy a new board because my AGP slot is not in tune with the newest standards... the technological wankers.... Well, I guess I need to find some outlet for all that extra - though really insufficient - financial aid I have been getting for my e-dew-kaa-see-on....

EDIT: Tim-Damn articles. Why can't English be more like Latin?

[remixor]

This is a thread from which I would greatly benefit as well. My PC hasn't even a shadow of a prayer of running any of the upcoming games on wish list, so I'll need to build one.

And forgive my blatant ignorance, but could somebody explain what precisely AGP is? And what would be an example of a non-AGP card? Does that mean, for example, integrated video?

[bigjko]

Well, if you're going for a high-end card, you're better off waiting to see what Ati and NVidia are putting out in the near future.

But if you want a main-stream, cheap but effective card, the Ati Radeon 9600 Pro is the best choice. As showed by the HL2 benchmarks it's almost as good as the FX 5900 Ultra, the highest-end card from NVidia, and almost three times cheaper. It's the card to buy with the current market, but just like any market, it's quite fluctuant.

[BostonLow]

ATI Radeon 9600 is cheap enough, and it's about the 3rd or 4th best videocard that can run Half-life 2 well. (even NVidia's top of the line FX5900 isn't quite as good as Radeon 9600 when it comes to HL2 performance, especially when you consider the image quality)
So I would go with Radeon 9600.

AGP=accelerated graphics port

non-AGP = either integrated video or PCI videocard = low memory bandwith = crappy performance

That's all I know.

[twifkak]

I need a new graphic card. Any suggestions?
ATi Radeon 9600 Pro. Next?

[Huz]

To elaborate further, AGP is just an interface like any other (USB, PCI, etc). In this case, it's dedicated to shifting textures and other graphical stuff around as fast as possible. It can run at a variety of speeds, depending what's supported by your motherboard, with 4x being able to shift data twice as fast as 2x. Obviously. I believe the fastest currently available is 8x, but don't quote me on that...

Without AGP, you're stuck with either on-board video (generally bad) or (even worse) PCI video boards, which were all the rage in 1998 but can be safely ignored now. :)

In general, you'll only get the full benefit from a blazingly fast graphics card if the rest of your machine is also blazingly fast to match it. If you're at the lower end of the computing scale, you'll find that a "budget" card will perform almost as well as a high-end one.

[twifkak]

And forgive my blatant ignorance, but could somebody explain what precisely AGP is? And what would be an example of a non-AGP card? Does that mean, for example, integrated video?
The hardware/protocol by which your motherboard communicates with an AGP graphics card. In laymen's terms, it's the slot you stick your card in, and the language by which your computer and card communicate bidirectionally through the wires in that slot. Yes, that was the laymen version. Whatever. Shut up.

AGP is faster than PCI (which is almost gone in graphics cards). AGP 8x is faster than AGP 1x. PCI Xpress is faster still, but too new to be supported. I'd recommend 4x. 8x is not really needed, but certainly couldn't hurt if it's not a big price difference. Both your mobo and card need to support a certain slot interface for it to work. Next?

[twifkak]

Hee. It seems I've been brainwashed by the DoRD.

One more comment: Get Pro, not the normal kind. There's a huge difference, in this case. (Don't take this to be true in general -- graphics cards branding schemes are about the evilist in existence.)

[SamandMax]

I need a graphics card period. Seriously, my crappy computer doesn't have one.

[HamandTax]

/me raises from the dead

why didn't you tell me, bro? I can spare you a few bucks to beef up your box.

/me hands his brother $100 million
/me dies, again

[remixor]

non-AGP = either integrated video or PCI videocard = low memory bandwith = crappy performance

Ah, that would be me and my shitty laptop with integrated video then...

[SamandMax]

/me raises from the dead

why didn't you tell me, bro? I can spare you a few bucks to beef up your box.

/me hands his brother $100 million
/me dies, again

Ok, this is starting to get creepy.

[remixor]

Ok, this is starting to get creepy.

What, you mean you didn't post that? :shifty:

[Kingzjester]

*cue Twighlight Zone theme*

[twifkak]

You know, this would be funnier if it weren't obvious that SamandMax posted it.

[remixor]

You know, this would be funnier if it weren't obvious that SamandMax posted it.


Shhh! Don't spoil our fun!

[twifkak]

Nah, I'm just jealous I didn't come up with this scheme, myself.

[SamandMax]

You know, this would be funnier if it weren't obvious that SamandMax posted it.

It would be funnier, but the truth is, I didn't post it.

[remixor]

It would be funnier, but the truth is, I didn't post it.

Seriously?

[Intrepid Homoludens]

http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/contrib/AoErat/uhhuh.gif Meanwhile, back at the topic....

Kingzie, before you choose, keep in mind the kind of games you expect to be playing in the next 2-3 years, the speed of technological progress within the genres of those games, and how the graphics cards giants are dealing with all this.

To start, buy only a DirectX 9.0 supported card with 128MB RAM. If you are a big adventure fan you most likely won't need the latest, most bleeding edge card. An ATI or nVidia card 2-3 notches down from the top-o-the-line model is a lot cheaper, with the top model having cutting edge features you'll never see used even in the most graphically advanced adventure game next year or after, therefore you won't need those features. But if you love first person shooters, you'd better get the best model or the next one down. FPSs are the whore-iest games for graphics, they're very greedy and demanding. They are the nymphomaniacs of the game genres.

The typical situation is that graphics cards, based on the benchmarks (3DMark, etc.), are good for one year. But that's according to hardcore hardware fetishists (the ones who masturbate to screenshots of Doom III). The reality is that the strongest features (like vertex & pixel shaders, bump mapping, kumquats, and watchamacallits) of the latest card that came out just 3 seconds ago will not actually be taken advantage of by current games, you'll really begin to see those features used in next year's games. So if you dropped your money at this very minute on an nVidia FX 5900 Ultra, you won't find any game out right now or the next several months that take advantage of all this card's features. Probably the only games that'll do so are Half-Life 2, Doom III (and perhaps S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), but then nVidia and ATI are working very closely with the devs making these games so that the games themselves will act as pimps for the cards to sell. In short, you won't actually see your investment returned until a year from now, unless you buy HL2 at the end of this month.

[ysbreker]

In addition I will probably have to buy a new board because my AGP slot is not in tune with the newest standards... the technological wankers.... Well, I guess I need to find some outlet for all that extra - though really insufficient - financial aid I have been getting for my e-dew-kaa-see-on....



AGP is backwards compatible so you shouldn't be too worried about that, you can put int he best card money can buy in it. But if that is a wise choice is whole diffirent subject, tell me what are your current system specs, and what do you plan on doing with your PC?

[Kingzjester]

The AGP slot doesn't support anything faster than 1 - I assume that by the very fact of it not having a number and an X before or after it.

I plan to do some heavy 3D Studio stuff, but as long as the card is OpenGL, I am okay with it (I think Open GL is a standard across the board nowadays).

As far as games go, the only 3D shooter I am excited about is Half-Life, although Morrowind would be nice in a better light too... I am not a big 3D whore. I don't really play many games (adventure or otherwise), I just like them to look good... Deus Ex 2 looks promising too...

[twifkak]

Whether a card is "OpenGL" or "DirectX" is whether the mfr provides drivers (ICDs) for those. The translation to the card's native language is done in software.

Eek. 1x is a little slow.

BTW, I say 9600 Pro not just because of the HL2 benchmark. I actually helped a friend look for a card only 3-4 weeks ago, by using my brilliant knowledge to synthesize the information and advice I got from places like anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/), Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/), and newegg (http://www.newegg.com/), and that's the very card I came up with. It is tops, in bang-for-buck, and it ain't that bad on bang alone. (And yes, if plan on keeping this card for more than 3 months, you'll need DX9.)