Which Graphics Card?

Arris - I don't claim to be fully 'teched up' when it comes to tweaking chipping or overclocking, in fact, I tend to steer well clear of adapting components past their recommended limits simply because I'm not rich enough to buy a replacement at a moments notice should something go wrong - I DO o\c my current card as it appears to be o\c friendly but with great care.
I built my first pc in 91 and have ALWAYS endeavoured to buy the best components possible within a pre defined budget and two months ago on realizing that 'star wars jedi knight 2' was'nt running as smoothly as it could be decided to upgrade several key components - these being

AMD DURON to AMD ATHLON 1.7
256 MEG PC133 to 256 MEG DDR
GIGABYTE 7DXE M\BOARD
WIN98 to WIN2000 pro

On installation of the above components, I can now play jedi knight with ALL graphical tweaks at 1600 res - soldier of fortune 2 is played at the same resolution and is superbly smooth, and medal of honour can be played at 1280 with all tweaks on - I never use anti aliasing features as this has quite a dramatic 'hit' on performance, instead, I tend to go for the highest possible resolution without compromising on the quality of gameplay.
Being an avid gamer, I've never been satisfied with games that crawls at snails pace due to cheap\mismatched components - the fact that I can now play and enjoy a graphically intensive flight sim like IL-2 Sturmovik with all graphics fx running to max at 1280 res on my current setup more than satisfies me - if your wondering why I'm intent on buying a new graphics card, its simply because of Direct x 9 and its abilities - I'm also awaiting next gen games like Doom 3 with anticipation and KNOW for a fact that its gonna run at snails pace with my current card (geo 2 Ti).

I'm not fully 'teched up' either. I guess my need for AA and AF in games probably killed the performance of my GF3. I'm happy that you get smooth play at 1600x1200, its just hard to swallow, especially since I couldn't get the same from a GF3

Check out the VGA Charts at tomshardware, I know detonators have improved performance of Geforce cards since this article was published but not by huge amounts.

At 1024x768 Max detail in JK2 the Geforce2 Ti that they tested with the following setup got about 60fps:

AMD AthlonXP 2000+
ASUS A7V266-E
VIA KT266A
133 MHz FSB
256MB PC-266 MHz RAM CL2 (2x128MB)
Direct X 8.1
Windows XP Professional

Bump the resolution up several steps and that is going to drop fairly radically. Another thing for me to take into consideration is that one persons ideal of superbly smooth will differ from the next.

Also in the recently redone charts where the test setup is considerably more powerful (AMD Athlon XP 2700+
ASUS A7N8X (nForce 2)) the Geforce2 Ti gets 120 fps which is much improved. And at 1600x1200 may have >60fps peformance which I find does make a difference to game play over the 25fps apparently needed to fool the human eye into believing that the images are infact fluid motion.

For instance:
Intel Pentium 4 2,53 GHz (133 MHz)
2 x 256 MB, PC 333, CL2
ABIT BG7 (i845G)

With a Geforce4 Ti 4600 which has a far superior bandwidth available only pulls 84.3 fps in JK2 @ 1600x1200.

Anyway aside from my apparent crusade for the side of "No way!!!" go with the 9500 Pro as it is the more future proof of the cards around that price range at the moment. Also the ATI driver department seem to have shrugged off the image they had created for themselves as incompetent ever since they started releasing their Catalyst drivers (which are unified drivers in the same style as the Nvidia detonators). The drivers used to be the area where ATI fell by the wayside when consumers were considering what card to buy next...

Vega,

as to your question regarding 64MB and 128 MB versions. currently it doesnt make much difference whether you have a 64MB card or a 128MB card. BUT......for future proofing your purchase I would recommend the 128MB version. Doom 3 I think will be the first game in which the amount of Ram your card has will be a factor in how your game performs and other games will follow suite. I expect that not long after Doom 3 is released most major card vendors will be offering 256Mb versions of their cards.

Arris - if there's one thing I'v learnt in the 12 + years I'v been building pc's, its this - with so many hundreds or thousands of combinations of components and software available, every single computer is unique and buying the fastest processor, graphics card etc is no real guarantee that the end result is a faster, meaner machine - example - me & my brother in law bought our components at the same shop on the same day but when I visited him a week ago, I was surprised to find that quake 3 (running at 1280 x 1024) was very slow and jerky , this despite the fact that his processor was an athlon 2.0 xp running with a geoforce 2 mx400 64 mg - the card being a mx400 should'nt have had any bearing on the performance as my my last card was a geo 2 mx 32 meg and it ran like a dream with my last duron 800 chip.
At the end of the day, I tend not to rely on charts and estimations but on my eyes - if it moves fluidly and there are no slowdowns when the action gets busy AND if it can do all of this whilst looking sharp, colourful and laden to the hilt with graphical fx, I'm in pc nirvana!

So true. So many combinations and so many factors. Things like defragging a hard disk can solve peformance issues with jerky rendering in games. There are so many parts that can contribute to how the system runs smoothly or not.

One thing that is always a mistake is either putting a very powerful graphics card with a puny processor or vice versa. You will always end up with a bottleneck as your brother in law has found out. Also the life of a computer and how its looked after, drivers updated correctly (detonators removed completely before installing new ones etc.) also affect how the computer will end up performing.

I'm sure you will be happy with the 9500 Pro. Nice image quality and great peformance tied in with some future-proofness

Where are you going to get it from? Getting a good price? If your getting it online, post the URL and price and we'll see if we can find it cheaper since we get so ripped off in the UK

A fairly comprehensive list of online shops including uk can be found here

Thanks for the links Arris - I'v found quite a few retailers offering prices from £115 up so thats savings for me and kudos to you!

My view is that if ur a overclocker (video or system) or u use win xp or BOTH then i wouldnt go for an ATi card - there drivers are not known for there stability, esp in win xp. Personally i would wait till the GeForce FX comes out then look at the ASUS Ti4200 that has extra cooling on (cant remember the model number soz) but it comes PRE overclocked to 4400 speeds and goes up to 4600 speeds no probs - just my thoughts

Steg

I'll try XP when I get the chance. When I first got a GF3 the detonator drivers that were out have problems with Half Life, some stability issues. There are always problems to be resolved with new hardware/software. From what I have heard and read the drivers from ATI have improved tremendously. I myself had gone from Voodoo2 -> TNT2 32mb -> GF3, so the last two cards I had used were Nvidia and I had grown used to using the detonator drivers and experienced the problems with new versions where people were generally using x.x version and not necessarily the latest and greatest. I was apprehensive about switching sides and joining the ATI Camp but I haven't had anything apart from pleasure in my experiences so far.

With AA and AF activated you can't beat the ATI offerings of 9500 and 9700 at the moment and their driver support isn't that far off from rivalling Nvidias in my opinion (having used both recently).

Also I've seen many people with 9700 Pro cards running the core and memory overclocked @ 200fsb. Not seen much about the problems with XP, I'll have to investigate that. But from what I have seen overclockers aren't having much of a problem with ATI. Plus the 9500 non pro to 9700 software mod is pretty good overclocking if you ask me!!!

Having just chased up and hassled anyone owing me money , I'v managed to scrape together enough money to pick up a 9500 pro at £146 from 'the overclocking store' and have ordered one today.
Just writing to let you know, these people are'nt called the overclocking store for nothing - they provided me with a wealth of information concerning the customising of the 9500 and how to do it safely - if it were any other store, I would have been told to just get a 9700!
As soon as the item in question arrives, I'll let you know how well (?) it performs.
Also, thanks for all the views, its nice to get a different perspective from people who are REALLY into getting the best out of their rig.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on

GOOD NEWS PEOPLE, MY NEW CARDS ARRIVED!!!

After my hands had stopped shaking with excitement, I ripped out my geoforce 2 Ti and slammed in my new ati connect 9500 128 meg card (£139), uninstalled the nvidia driver, installed the new drivers and the first thing I ran was the demo that arrives bundled with the card - totally awesome!
As much as I liked my previous card, you'd be a fool not to admit that the radeon is a totally different beast - the rendering capability and Dir x 9.0 capability really make the graphics truely a sight to behold, I only hope that future games can take advantage of this technology.
Running games was a revelation too - I can run most of my recent titles with anti-aliasing switched to max but I usually eschew this feature for maximum usable resolution resulting in pin sharp, detailed, and smooooth graphics.
I hav'nt had a chance to demo some of my more recent titles but the few games I'v tried run superbly and I can confidently say that its worth every penny - as if this were'nt enough, it can be overclocked to 9700 standards!

Thanks for helping me choose this card - just can't wait for doom 3!!!

And the TechSpot team scores again!

After a couple of days of benchmarking, testing and familiarising myself with my new card, I think I'm now ready to do a bit of tweaking and perform the magical transition from 9500 to 9700 - before this, I made sure I looked at all the issues concerning this and some of the issue resulting from this move but after seeing the massive leap in performance experienced by 9500 'tweaakies' feel that I'm now ready to proceed .
Can anyone tell me what this entails?

Download the latest version of Riva tuner. here....

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

Thanks for the link ISS.
I downloaded the tuner and after installation and tuning (a very painless process), rebooted and can say to any doubters - there is a VERY SIGNIFICANT increase in performance - I've yet to do a benchmark but can instantly see the boost in speed - the mod works well with my ati connect 9500 128 meg card, I was afraid that there might be problems with glitches and artifact which appears to be fairly commonplace but can report complete success.

VIVA RADEON!:grinthumb :grinthumb :grinthumb

More information regarding the mods and the software mod can be found here at HardwareCentral. One of the moderators of Hardwarecentral got himself a 9500 128mb card, but he was one of the unlucky ones and suffered artifacting

Glad its all working well for you Vega!

For any doubters who might be wary of the worth of modding a 128 meg radeon chipset board from 9500 to 9700, here's my benchmarking results - standard board - 9802 (3d mark 2001) , moded board - 11,204 and no artifacting!

On installation of the above components, I can now play jedi >knight with ALL graphical tweaks at 1600 res - soldier of fortune >2 is played at the same resolution and is superbly smooth, and >medal of honour can be played at 1280 with all tweaks on - I >never use anti aliasing features as this has quite a dramatic 'hit' >on performance, instead, I tend to go for the highest possible >resolution without compromising on the quality of gameplay.

eh.... how are you basing graphics on games like those? they dont work that hard on your graphics card.

btw, jedi Knight II.. omg.. man.. they ruined that game. the graphics are terrible and the level designs are a -100 on the 1-10 scale. Its AWFUL. argh. glad I didnt pay for that game. Only spent like 30 minutes playing it then threw it in the garbage.