Intel P4 vs AMD

As for power consumption the Conroe is just the evolution of the PIII line like the Yonah on down. Or maybe just INTELigent design

Either way the PIII based Pentiums never really had a power hungry nature making it good for laptops. So a low watt low speed chip like the Conroe would be a no brainer replacement for the old P4. If the do OK with 64 bit computing they might even be competitive again.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath. I'm glad Intel have finally seen the low-mhz high-speed light but I have serious reservations about an FX-60 beater coming out at a bit over $500.

 

I'll consider myself lucky if my needs let me get past June o6.

For those that are interested Tomshardware is keeping a VGA chart for PCIe and AGP. brobear will note of course that the 850 is at the top of the AGP charts.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html

And I don't think that any of us are surprised that the X1900 series is at the top of the PCIe charts.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

 

The THG VGA charts have been the source of a large part of my information regarding graphics cards.
I was thinking, we get plagued by people asking which such and such card people would recommend for playing such and such a game. Do you think it would be worth making a Graphics card buyer's guide thread and stickying it? (After testing its popularity of course)

 

I can see a VGA thread having some value. The trick is to get your information together before posting and then copy and paste it. Guidelines are also useful, they help to keep the thread on topic and the longer that a thread stays on topic the greater its value will be.

This is a thread that Doc409 and I started a while back. You'll note that we both got our posts in by synchronizing. We were then able to update info at the start for any newcomers and it was stickied.

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/97052

 

Hmmm, looks promising. Thing is, where would I start?

 

Start with a purpose, clearly define your goal. Are you going to discuss top of the line cards or middle level cards? Will there be comparisons based on system memory and CPU or are you going to stick strictly to VGA discussions?

You know that the center of the topic is going to be gaming along with performance to price ratios so you should try and limit the discussion to say nothing more expensive than an X1900.

Try not to show preference to one make over another, their individual performance specs should take care of that.

There should be room for over clocking, bios flashing, and moding. Some cards might have the same model number and manufacturer but come with memory that's made by different memory makers. Point! The ATI 9500 pro card could have hynix or samsung memory chips in them and the samsung chips of course are better.

 

Back on page 111 of this thread I posted the following:

I guess it was a dumb-assed question because I never got an answer. Maybe everyone thought I was being funny but I still haven't got a clue. Now that I have a handle on overclocking my MB so that it runs great, I'm going to get a decent AGP 8x video card so I would like to experiment with it next. Honest, I'm very interested. Now that the topic has been picked up again, I thought I'de ask.

Happy Computering,
theonejrs

 

I’m editing my post and suggest what 6402 is recommending instead. What I have/had is a registry modification tool from NVIDIA which I cannot find on their site any longer. What I posted earlier and what I believe was an updated version is not. I’ll make available to you via IM this reg edit tool if you want it, but what 6402 linked to seems a far better way to go with more options then this original tool from NVIDIA.

Here is a link that still offers the original NVIDIA utility:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/GeForce-Overclocking-CoolBits-Reg.shtml

 

Powerstrip should overclock Nvidia and ATI.
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

 

Sophocles
i forgot to ask you does the new rapter runs better then the older ones?

 

The 150GB raptor will run quieter and faster than the old 36GB raptor, but at ludicrous cost. You can get a 500GB drive for less money.
I may start this GPU thread, when I actually have some time.

 

You may want to include a link to the tweak guides from the link I posted earlier. Seems I've been so busy running and being lazy I haven't got around to checking them out yet myself.

 

Lots of folks with ATI video.
They are all using Catalyst Control Center (with MS Net framework).
The dislike of this is enough to make one purchase nVidia!
However, the Radeon Tweak Guide
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html
shows how to set system up with little or no resource penalty, and easily remove the s-l-o-w system boots and general intrusiveness of the CCC.
Because of it, I will now buy the X1600Pro (512MB) vidcard I've been looking at - and not nVidia.
GeForces are great too (and I have had many) but at least with the CCC/Net under control, we have choice :^)
To overclock ATI many use the 'ATI Tool'
http://www.techpowerup.com/wiki/doku.php/atitool/start
which will automatically determine the max core and memory timings that will function w/o artifacts and in complete stability.
The automatic thing can take hours (and they recommend you leave it run overnight).
L8R

 

I believe that I've already mentioned the Omega optimized drivers for ATI (Nvidia too). They come with a lot of built in features including over clocking. They can be downloaded here. If you choose to use them uninstall your your current drivers first.

http://www.omegadrivers.net/


baltekmi

I like my 150 gig Raptor. Hard disks are the bottle neck in overall system performance and with two gigs of fast memory and a Raptor I'm not hurting. It was costly but I can afford it so why not.

 

Too damn right. Some of us aren't so fortunate.
The_OGS far be it for me to disrecommend an ATI card but you'd probably be better off with an X850XT for not a lot more money. Unless you crave pixel shader 3 you'll experience much better results, the 1600 pro is quite slow. XT fine but not pro.
CCC is a bit of a pain in my backside, I may have a look at that guide too.

 

@Sammoris

I'll help you out in the GPU guide. I went crazy shopping for GPU's. Took me weeks to decide what i wanted, I'd be a great idea to get one started and stickey'd so it could be there to help anyone.

Oh and did you check out that link about the VGA chart on pg 117??
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
I thought it was hillarious that ALOT of the cards in SLI modes performed no differently from the single.
I don't see SLI hanging around for very long.

 

SLI will get better with time as more games support it I would think, but some of the latest games show less of an effect than oldies. You might notice that the best results are seen in 3DMark... It's the FX series all over again. My stance on GPUs has always been get a high end single card. In a fair few games you'll get BETTER performance than two GPUs.
Who's going to start us off?

 

I don't use CCC with my ATI cards. If I want to OC I use Powerstrip.

 

Yeah I'm with you on that one :^)
Amazing to see that 2 x X1600 cannot come anywhere close to 1 x X1800 or X1900... LoL
I went through that in the 90's with 3dfx Monster video (I have a Voodoo1, a Voodoo2 and a Voodoo3 here) and you needed two Voodoo2's to get 1024x768!
I have some great old 3dfx games that run on my PPro rig with Voodoo2 (ie. Shadow Warrior, NFS II SE, Hexen II).

Prices at my distributor, Canadian (retail):
ATI® Radeon™ X850XT Platinum Edition w/256Mb GDDR3 AGP Retail Box $489.
ATI® All-in-Wonder® Radeon™ X800XT w/256Mb GDDR3 AGP Retail Box $344.
Sapphire® Radeon™ X1600Pro w/512Mb DDR2 & 8x AGP TVO $169.
Asus® N6800/TD GeForce™ 6800 w/512Mb DDR2 & 8X AGP Retail Box $199.

Actually the GeForce 6800 is looking good to me, it has video-in (can watch TV on it)... what do you guys think?
Sorry Brobear ;^) but I write plenty about AMD vs Intel, LoL
Oh - and I have seen the Omega drivers but never tried them. Now that the CCC is under control I probably won't.
Regards