Which Graphics Card?

Some years ago, I decided to jump onto the then new 'accelerator card' bandwagon by buying a voodoo engined card by creative - I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread at the time so a year later when voodoo anounced that a new card based around a new engine - voodoo 2 was to be released offering much higher frame rates and better graphics, I spent over £200 on a 12 meg card and was immediatly p....d off to find that it was virtually identical to its predecessor in everything but price - after that I vowed I would never spend over £100 on any card.
My current card is a £80 generic 64 meg Geoforce 2 ti card which has served me admirably for two years and with my AMD 1.7XP can run games comfortably at 1600 res.
However, with 3rd and 4th generation geoforce cards on their way out and games like Doom 3 just around the corner, my card is getting long in the tooth and with so many new cards on the market, think its time to upgrade but the problem is this - my budget must not exceed £150 - can I buy a card that offers significantly faster and better graphics than my current geo 2ti for this amount or do I hang onto my current card for the time being?

Hang onto your current card at least until the GeForce FX has been released long enough to lower prices of other video cards.

Then either grab yourself a GeForce 4 Ti4200 [which are already £100-£130 ], or get yourself a Radeon 9500, which you should be able to soon turn into a Radeon 9700 [not pro] with a new version of Rivatuner. Or get youself a Radeon 9500 Pro if that sounds like too much work. All are/should be in your price range soon. [The GeForce FX will be launched within weeks]

I am also about to spend about the same on a video card.....so watch this space...

It sounds like you dont upgrade cards all that often so I would suggest a card that has DX9 compliance. Dx9 games wont be out for another year or two probably but buying a DX9 card now means you wont have to upgrade when you do want to play DX9 games when they come out.

I would go for the Radeon 9500 Pro a powerful card that is DX9 compliant. and HDMK has a point the current Radeon cards should see a drop in price when the FX comes out AND when ATI's new crop of cards come out around april.

I've been using Nvidia graphics cards now for 3 years and to date , have had no cause for complaint - drivers are regularly updated and usually offer improvements over the prior version, performance on my machine is impressive (I regularly play the latest games like MOH, SOF 2 etc at max resolution and at impressive frame rates with my geo 2 ti + amd 1.7) and its extremely tweakable - patience, not being on of my virtues, I'd like to buy a card asap - can anyone tell me how the radeon cards mentioned above differ from nvidia based cards as the pricing is a bit more competitive than nvidia's.

here is a detailed comparison of the Radeon and Nvidia cards.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/radeon9500-9700/

i'd get a geforce ti 4200 8x agp

i know that u can get that card for min 150$USD.

i just got a geforce mx 440 8x agp for about 60$USD

go to ivmm.com and check out their gfx cards..

I am in exactly the same position as you here Vega, except I only have about £130 to spend. Ive been doing quite a bit of research into cards for that type of money on the Internet, and so far the two most affordable that I am impressed by, are the Gainward Geforce4 PowerPack ! Ultra/650 XP Golden Sample, which is apparently safely overclockable to standards of the Ti4600. I also fancy the Radeon 9500, but like you, i'm quite a big fan of nvidia, and so I think im gonna go for the afformentioned Geforce card.

Some of the knowledgeable people here on the forum (and also as mentioned by HDMK & iss in this thread) recommended waiting for the Geforce FX that is due out in the next few months. That way we could be looking at a big drop in prices

Also, i'll leave you with this excellent article that I found. It compares some of the cards in our price range with higher models such as the Ti4600 and thoroughly benchmarks them. The overclocking bit is particularly worth a look!

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

Enjoy,

I myself would reccomend you get a Radeon 9500 Pro. It's pretty much even with the Ti4600 and is alot cheaper. Best price to performance ratio on the market today, IMHO. Will serve you the best, and with DirectX 9 support it will last longer than any GeForce4 Ti card. I must stress the DX9 functionality - nVidia's latest offerings are only DX8.1.

Gainward has been a market leader in performance cards but until they iron out their problems with their latest production run of cards I would steer away from buying a gainward card.

if your really interested in a G4 Ti4200 here is a review of several differnt brands tested on AMD and intel systems.

http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=484

Please don't get a Ti4200...you will regret it as opposed to a 9500 Pro...

Thanks for the opinions people.
Despite being an all out Nvidia junkie, some of the points raised concerning the radeon are definately worth checking out and I'v spent time doing just that.
To date, radeon seems to have several positive issues, primarily, Direct x 9.1 compatiabiliy and price, however ,the radeon everyones talking about - the 9500 pro, does'nt appear to be on sale - at least, I've had no luck finding a retailer that sells this model, more often than not the 9000 appears to be the norm but if the price is reasonable (I'm not going a penny over £150) it would appear to be the one to plump for.

You might want to check this place out.


http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=29883&t=278&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=24&GrpID=1&s=pl

that card is not a pro but it can be turned into a pro with a Bio's flash.

Komplett sells the Pro as well but it's a bit more expensive. Just search for '9500'. I would get the 128MB version if I were you, it's worth the extra money.

Scan sells the 9500 as well - 4th product down from ATi's line

Thanks for the links guys but having checked both out, I find that the model indicated is the 9500 - not the pro - can you indicate if the pro IS available? if not, is the 9500 a viable alternative?
By the way vehementi, you say that I should go for 128 meg as opposed to 64 - can I expect to see any significanct imkprovement in performance if I shell out for 128? when I upgraded from a geoforce 2 mx 32 meg to my current geoforce 2 Ti, apart from the increase in speed (which was expected as the Ti is much faster than the Mx), I could'nt see what the extra 32 meg was doing for me.

9500 is certainly a viable alternative - especially when you can actually change it to the 9500 Pro via a BIOS flash. It is highly risky but worth it, IMHO. I did it to my 8500LE and it works great.

Komplett - Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9500PRO

Because that's a brand name and not a Built by ATi card, it's a bit more expensive but you're getting what you pay for - it includes stuff like games and DVD software. That's the full decked out version of the 9500.

I should be a bit more specific about the 9500 NON Pro. the bios can be flashed to allow you to clock the memory to Pro speeds. currently 4 of the eight piplines on the NON Pro are disabled. there are two methods to enable them. one is soldering. the other is the soon to be released Riva tuner which promises a software solution for unlocking the 4 disabled pipelines.

I've made my choice (god help me!) 've decided to plump for the radeon 9500 and if this 'riva tuner' ever becomes available, I'll use it (hopefully) to increase its performance to pro standards.
The main reason why I've settled for this babe is primarily Direct x 9 and the features and enhancements it offers.
Buying the geoforce card would have meant disregarding those features and to be honest, I would love to pick up the new geoforce card when it comes out but I can guarantee that the price is gonna be totally humungous!
Thanks for all the advice, I'll give you my opinion on this babe once I've scraped the money together.
One final thing, there is a £20 price difference between the 64 and the 128 meg version - is there a real and significant difference in performance between them?

First of all go with the Radeon 9500 if you can. The Pro version will be based on a new PCI board made specifically for the 9500 series. The older Radeon 9500 cards are made on the 9700 board and have the 8 pipelines and 256bit bus that the 9700 has, they are just disabled. There is a chance you can use a software mod to get full 9700 (non pro) functionality. An informative thread on this can be found here

Second, I am not accusing you of lying but I SOF2 isn't a very well optimised game and I couldn't run it at 1600x1200 very well on a 2100+ XP and GF3 64mb, So I don't think a GF2 Ti would have done better job. My combination gave me a 3dmark2001SE score of round 8000 so its the game that didn't run that well at 1600x1200 rather than my hardware. Saying that I usually opted for Image Quality over huge resolutions, so was running anisotropic filtering and 2x AA most of the time.

Regardless of what I have against SOF2, the 9500 Pro or 9700 pro (which I managed to get for £170 with a trade of my GF3 ). But also heed the wise words of others in this thread saying to wait a little while until the Geforce FX is out so that you can take advantage of its influence on other cards' prices.

As Arris stated, the early 9500/9500Pro boards use the 9700/9700Pro PCB & chips which means the extra functions ( extra pipelines, 256-bit bus ) are present, just disabled.

ATI will release a more "apropriate" reference design for 9500/9500Pro boards so you'd better get the ones available now before it's too late.

9700Pro performance at 9500 price is very promising.