Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

Also, I was just looking at the ultras and GTXs on newegg. Is the only difference the cooler and that the ultra is over clocked? You can turn a $500 ultra into a $650 ultra right?

EDIT: Yay! I got the 1000 POST!!!!!!!

 

Fantastic. In all fairness though, you deserve it because you actually started the thread. The only difference between the 8800GTX and the Ultra is indeed an overclock and a slight cooler change. Considering if I ever owned an 8800 I'd put an HR-03 Plus on it and overclock it myself, there'd be no need for an Ultra for me, or anyone like me.
The 8800GT might get a higher score in 3dmark, but:
a) we don't know if the tests were real or not
b) 3dmark is a synthetic test, it doesn't properly indicate how the card will really perform. PCs with 512MB RAM can still get huge scores in 3dmark, but playing games like FEAR is pretty much impossible with them.

 

ahh i see. Hmm, maybe I'll go the 8800 way then... Only time will tell.

 

I did it through the cable that cable with the ATI card. It's the round cable that looks like S-video. The TV I connected it to is not a HDTV, and I was running the resolution at 1024*768, so that is why it probably looked like crap.

 

It will look crap if you used S-Video, because TVs can't do 1024x768! Standard def TVS do a pretty poor job of producing PC images. You need to use a res of 640x480 with them. At least in the US your TV resolution is supported. TVs in this country are 720x576 and there's no video mode that size!

 

But Abuzar has an HDTV, not standard def. What's your resolution, Abuzar, 720i or 1080i?

 

Ray, nice post on those charts - how'd you get your paint working?

Sam, thanks for explaining the gx2 - so it's a two gpu card? Still depends on sli, huh? "Crossfire is crap" to quote you, yeah, the benches hardly show any real improvement with crossfire, or is it that the game developers don't really code for crossfire?

 

BTW - Ray, so what did you get having the 1000th post??

 

Rich, he gets personal satisfaction. BTW I have two TV's, one is 1080p, I believe, while the other is 720P. Just that the on I connected it to was the smallest one I had because I needed to move it to my room to test, and that one was not a HDTV.

 

Two hdtvs. Nice. Picked up a recorder yet? Will you be going blueray or hd-dvd?

 

No, not yet, still waiting for someone to come out on top.

 

So I overclocked my card and this is what I'm getting now:

Fill Rate - Multi Texturing 6785.149 MTexels/s

 

Rich: There's no 720i, only 720p. There is, however, both an 1080i and a 1080p.
As for my crossfire statement, blunt as it seems, I've yet to see a game where it works as well as SLI. As for the GX2, think of it as two graphics cards in SLI (Specifically two 7900GTs in SLI) but they only require one PCI Express slot.

 

Abuzar, wow your fills are way up from 6500 I recall. Do you want to re-run your 3dmark6 and I'll repost your numbers?

Well, I guess Sony learned their lesson after vhs ended up on top and beta died. Now their secret weapon is to package the blueray with the ps3.

So, Sam, no 720i, only p? I can tell you know your hdtv - I'm going to have lots of questions for you in a year or two about that. Out of curiosity, Sam, do you yet own an hdtv like abuzar. If not, are you planning to pick up something over the next couple years?

Btw, I know you think crossfire is useless, and I have to agree from the benches, but do you think the sli implementation offers significant performance enhancement? - rich

 

Hehe, HDTVs is something else I've learned a lot about, sort of coupled with learning about graphics cards. My parents own a standard HDTV, a basic 26" that only has VGA and Component as its HD inputs, but I've learned a fair amount about them over time. One of my other options before seeing my current monitor was to get a 40" HDTV and use the 1080p function of that. Trouble is, at the time 1080p screens were hard to find, and the higher resolution of this meant it would serve me better as a PC monitor.
We may perhaps get an HDTV at some point, me and my house mates play a lot on an Xbox 360, which of course doesn't look its best on a 24" CRT TV, but nonetheless it suffices, and I'm confident that interpolation will make the Gamecube look worse, and if I'm honest, that will see more activity, simply because of Super Smash Bros. Melee. We played the original Super Smash Brothers emulated on my PC, because you can upscale it to 2560x1600 and anti-alias it. Whilst emulators for the gamecube can still do that, my PC isn't powerful enough to emulate a gamecube on a 32-bit OS. None are. :-( So unfortunately the genuine article will have to do.

As for SLI, I still only recommend it to people who are so well off they can afford two 8800GTXs for example, or whatever the current top of the line card is. For midrange it makes far more sense simply to get a faster single card rather than run two slower ones, because even if on occasions you get a better frame rate from the SLI setup, you certainly won't always. SLi has improved a lot over the years, but unless you have a LOT to spend on your PC keeping it up to date, it's not something I recommend.

 

Well "my" HDTV is the smaller one, the one that is 720P. I first got it when the Xbox 360 came out and I was having a party so I asked my dad for one. Amazingly enough he got it for me!

 

In that sense, I've done quite well in life, but nothing compared to you Abuzar! That's crazy!

 

My new score:

Main Test Results
3DMark Score 5562 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 2026 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 2218 Marks
CPU Score 3065 Marks

Sam, I haven't done anything in life yet. My dad just decided to buy me a TV lol. He was in a good mood I guess, plus it was only 900, a very good price for the time. Also I just checked and my TV is 1080i, so it can do 720P also.

 

That's not really what I meant. I haven't exactly achieved many life goals yet either, I meant that you're very lucky that your parents will just up and buy you something that expensive.

 

Yeah, I guess I'm blessed.

Do you know if Photoshop relies on the video card? I know you need it to display an image, but does having a more powerful card have a big effect on performance?