I am building 2 computers for my friend (him and his dad) and I wanted to know which is the best graphics card to put inside. For his dad, I insist that he put in an ATI because it is a good price to performance ratio. With his computer, I also insist that he put in an ATI rather than XFX 8600 in SLI. He won't listen to me. Now my question is, what graphics card is the best for all games currently on vista and for the future games (Halo 2 etc.) Isn't ATI a better deal over Nvidia? I have an ATI 9800 PRO (300x400, i think) (AGP) in a Celeron 2.93 GHz that matches the performance of a Nvidia 6800 GTO (350x900) (PCI-E P4 3.6GHz HT)
The nvidia 8800 Ultra is the best card in the world right now, and thats not an opinion, its a fact. What kind of ATi card are you substituting for the 8600 SLi? ATi vs nVidia will never stop, its an ongoing thing. But as I said before, the 8800 ultra by nvidia is the fastest card in the world right now, and then comes the 8800GTX, then the Ati 2900XT (cant remember if its the 1Gb version or the 512), and then the 8800GTS 640mb. So, by looking at those, nvidia is currently the leader, but Ati is coming close behind. Btw, ati cards are very well known to have driver issues with their cards. I had them too with mine, and fixed it with the omega drivers.
I was looking at this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150229 compared to this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102705
This one will beat both: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102067 So will this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102075 And this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102061 nVidia can't touch ATI in the DX9 generation. Or Nvidia's 8600GTS if he wants Nvidia. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127284 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130084 Out of all these the X1950XT is the best. (very top link)
So you are saying that ATI is better in DX9 cards and Nvidia is better in DX10 cards right? Since he will be using Vista, what is the difference between using a DX10 card and a DX9 card? What card would you personally put in a gaming PC? (SLI, Crossfire, Single card)? Is 1 8800 better than SLI in 6800? (XFX Brand)
Ignoring the obvious fanboy idiots, the Radeon you've chosen is far better, but obviously it's not DX10. I agree with AXT, however, that the X1950XT is better, but the X1950XT-X is the best DX9 card ATI made, thing is, it's price has not dropped sufficiently. The fastest card out there at the moment is the 1GB HD2900XT (specifically the 1GB version), a bit ahead of the Geforce 8800 Ultra. Assuming you don't have a vast budget though, the X1950 series is a very good place to look.
I disagree sam. The 8800 Ultra has a higher 3dmark06 score, and it performs far better than the 2900XT 1GB in numerous games. Although I am still favoring the 2900XT 1GB, it is still not as good as a single ultra. It will take 2 of the 2900s to overcome a single ultra in 3dmark06, and it will only surpass it by about 2000 points. See more benchmarks here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/12956/3
Then is this one good for the price? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102705 And whats the difference b/w running DX9 and DX10 in Vista?
I used to (and still do at this very moment) think nVidia cards are better supported. But I think that is going to change dramatically over the next year or two. AMD had released a lot of their internal documentation, so that fully open source drivers can be developed. Whether that means anything directly for Windows users is doubtful, but it is excellent news for Linux, as ATI cards will be fully supported from the kernel. So get an nVidia now, but don't write ATI cards off when you next want a new system in a couple of years, there are going to be some great changes happening soon.
Yes, nvidia do have the better drivers, and ATi certainly does not. But that card you were looking at, the x1900GT looks good, but its only 256mb, and that wont get you very far today. Something with 512mb is a lot better. Btw, DX9 vs DX10: This site has a lot of screen shots of crysis DX9 vs DX10: http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=511
I think I will end up with SLI in a 8600 GT, that way I have good clocks and DX10 and 512MB Memory. Is that a good choice? Does SLI actually double performance or does it increase it by a percentage?
It doesnt nessessarly double the speed. IE, if you got 4500 in 3dmark06, you wouldnt get 9000 with SLi, you would probably get 5500, or 6000.
The HD2900XT 1GB gets beaten in some games by the 8800, but not all, and the multi-card benchmarks are irrelevant because Crossfire is terrible, and always has been. The extra memory may come in handy with some DX10 games, but it's clear to say the 2900XT is nowhere near as much of an improvement over the 8800 as the 8800 was over the X1950. The DX10 pictures look good, but note that they're small. This hides the fact that Directx10 doesn't support anti-aliasing yet, so it'll look incredibly jagged-like. When AA is supported, the frame rates will make you want DX9 back. I'm all for pretty, but for those differences, I'm not willing to halve my frame rate.
