Curse

A NERD1989 · Nov 04, 2005, 04:51 AM // 04:51

what is overclocking i cant find out anywhere, whats it mean? whats it do

swaaye · Nov 04, 2005, 06:25 AM // 06:25

I wouldn't put X800GT in there. It's an 8-pipe card that costs almost the same as the 12-pipe X800GTO (stupid naming!!).

Couple of other ideas:

Add links to these excellent card roundups:
Tom's Hardware's VGA Charts Summer 2005 PCIe
Tom's Hardware's VGA Charts Summer 2005 AGP
Beyond3D's fantastic board/chip info chart <-- This is bar-none the best place to find out what you actually are buying or have already. Incredible.

Also, please tell people that they should NOT buy Geforce FX cards. As in any NV card with FX in the title.

My Radeon 8500 can run Guild Wars at 1680x1050 high quality. The post processing effects should be turned off though. But 8500 can definitely do a lot better than low quality. I tried GW on a Radeon 7200 PCI and a Geforce 2 MX200 (lol) and those cards had to run about 800x600 low quality.

Techie · Nov 04, 2005, 07:42 PM // 19:42

Ok I will add the following, and the 8500 correction.

lord_shar · Nov 04, 2005, 11:52 PM // 23:52

I'm still not sure why the 6800-Ultra isn't even mentiond in the full-eye-candy card list. The reason can't be price since the 7800GTX is also listed. It is noticibly faster than my 6800GT in the same box (yes, I have both) and is still one of the quickest AGP solutions available.

I also agree with Swaaye's previous post mentioning that the FX-series is utter trash...

Old Dood · Nov 05, 2005, 11:39 AM // 11:39

The November issue of Millinum PC magazine has a Nice Video Card list. Breaks it down into price groups. Good review. The October issue has a decent How To build a Computer article.

EternalTempest · Nov 05, 2005, 02:40 PM // 14:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by swaaye

Also, please tell people that they should NOT buy Geforce FX cards. As in any NV card with FX in the title.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord_shar

I also agree with Swaaye's previous post mentioning that the FX-series is utter trash...

My Geforce FX 5700 Ultra 128mb does very well and plays GW great as well as many other games. I agree there is no reason to go with an FX card now, but this is due to the Geforce 6x series out and the 6600 being extremely affordable and an agp version of it as well. I do admit that latter cards were much better but at the time it was a positive step up from the Geforce 4 series and the 6xxx series did not exist.

swaaye · Nov 06, 2005, 04:03 AM // 04:03

If it runs well I'm quite happy for you. Guild Wars is not pixel shader heavy and that is why. In fact I believe only the post-processing effect uses a shader.

It is not debatable that the Geforce FX series has absolutely terrible pixel shading performance. The 4 year old Radeon 9700, which came out even before the first GeforceFX card, is several times faster than the fastest GeforceFX at pure shading. Most games still are not very heavy on shading (undoubtedly because of the userbase of cards with limited shading capability). However games like FarCry, Everquest 2, Half Life 2, FEAR, and others like them will run EXTREMELY poorly unless the game has a specifically optimized path for GeforceFX.

The biggest reason R300 (9700) is faster than NV30 (FX) is that 9700 is really a more standard GPU design than NV30 was. nVidia created a pretty unique chip, one that changed the way graphics pipelines worked, and it was really ahead of its time. This unfortunately carried with it serious performance challenges though. ATI played it safe while NV played for the future. Neither was a better decision really, but for performance ATI definitely won out. 9700 was an absolute beast for the time. NV3x has less processing resources for DX9 effects than R300 by a long shot, and NV3x requires advanced compiler technology in the driver along with proper utilization by the game to get decent performance. R300 was a LOT easier to work with.

Half Life 2, for example, actually runs FX cards in DirectX 8 mode because although they have "full" DX9 support, the performance is just too terrible for them to run at that level, even with the developers attempting to tweak the game specifically for these cards.

The GeforceFX is basically a highly tuned DirectX 8 level card with DX9 shading capabilites there as features, but not with viable performance. The Geforce 4 Ti series is actually faster than most Geforce FX cards, but your 5700 probably is faster than or at least equal to a Ti4600. A Geforce FX5600 or lesser card is not faster. I had a friend upgrade from a Ti4400 once to a FX5600 Ultra and he told me flat out that he was quite disappointed.

EternalTempest · Nov 06, 2005, 04:40 AM // 04:40

The reason why I responded the way I did was due to the "harsh" language used to slam the FX.

I grant you that the Ati 96xx+ and up gen was better then the Nvidia Geforce FX 5700 ultra at that time and the pixel shader was much better in that battle then the Nvidia FX pixel shader at that time.

The situation had flipped to Nvidia 6 and 7 series better then current Ati, and the upper end brand new ati stuff just know coming out is on par, slightly better in some cases. In 6 months who knows, it will be next gen Ati vs next gen Nvidia and I will be reviewing many different web sites and reviews on them to see what is better.

Quote:

However games like FarCry, Everquest 2, Half Life 2, FEAR, and others like them will run EXTREMELY poorly unless the game has a specifically optimized path for GeforceFX.

A lot of games will drop to dx8 mode due to the sheer number of cards out there that don't support full dx9. I do own Farcry, HL2, and Doom3 - they all play on at least medium or higher settings, look great and are very playable. I also play with them having EAX turned on too (doom 3 got the support from the most current patch + having the openAL drivers installed).

I'm also aware that the FX line is a bit out of date for next gen games coming out now. It's two geneartions behind. I will be picking up Fear very soon and expect to play it on low to med settings.

lord_shar · Nov 06, 2005, 05:06 AM // 05:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

The reason why I responded the way I did was due to the "harsh" language used to slam the FX.

...<SNIP>...

Sorry about that -- I'll keep the rhetoric more toned down next time.

I tend to favor NVidia cards over ATI. I've owned every generation of GeForce GPU until the FX5000 line, which I completely skipped due to its serious performance issues. My current graphics card is a 6800 Ultra. The 7800 GTX is my next planned video card, but I haven't purchased it yet since I'm trying to decide between new PCIe-equipped desktop vs. laptop (Dell M170 w/ Nvidia 7800-Go GTX).

Ironsword · Nov 06, 2005, 05:44 AM // 05:44

I got some odd problem I have a desktop PC with 768 mb sys ram and a nvidia 5200fx 128mb ram card my cpu is 3.0ghz but my game locks up when I open my inventory and the textures flicker quite a bit ingame but my Laptop with a 2.8ghz processor 512sys ram and an ATI9200 64mb video card runs perfectly on high settings I really want to play GW on my desktop pc but I can't deal with the game locking up the way it does so I'm forced to play on an inferior laptop because it runs the game better.

I don't know why this is happening but it shouldn't be since my video card is better in my desktop and there's more sys ram and cpu power. you guys may say that even though ATI supports the game that there won't be any difference with nvidia cards but I've noticed otherwise and it's really frustrating because I've had the exact opposite problem with BF2 which is why I took an ATI card out of my desktop and replaced it with the nvidia for now I'll stick to the laptop until I can get a realy good video card from ATI which will run all my games properly

lord_shar · Nov 06, 2005, 05:49 AM // 05:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ironsword

I got some odd problem I have a desktop PC with 768 mb sys ram and a nvidia 5200fx 128mb ram card my cpu is 3.0ghz but my game locks up when I open my inventory and the textures flicker quite a bit ingame but my Laptop with a 2.8ghz processor 512sys ram and an ATI9200 64mb video card runs perfectly on high settings I really want to play GW on my desktop pc but I can't deal with the game locking up the way it does so I'm forced to play on an inferior laptop because it runs the game better.

I don't know why this is happening but it shouldn't be since my video card is better in my desktop and there's more sys ram and cpu power. you guys may say that even though ATI supports the game that there won't be any difference with nvidia cards but I've noticed otherwise and it's really frustrating because I've had the exact opposite problem with BF2 which is why I took an ATI card out of my desktop and replaced it with the nvidia for now I'll stick to the laptop until I can get a realy good video card from ATI which will run all my games properly

If you've swapped video cards with different GPU brands on your desktop, then you might have mixed ATI + NVidia drivers loaded in memory. There are a couple of video driver cleaner utilities out there, but I can't think of any names at the moment.

Also, the latest NVidia WHQL drivers have a known texture corruption bug in GW. Load the previous NVidia driver set should correct this.

Techie · Nov 06, 2005, 08:38 PM // 20:38

Well oddly enough, DriverCleaner is the name of a great program :O

Google it and check it out.

And I will add 6800 Ultra, but seriously for that dough just get a 7800GTX.

lord_shar · Nov 06, 2005, 08:58 PM // 20:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techie

...<SNIP>...

And I will add 6800 Ultra, but seriously for that dough just get a 7800GTX.

I agree, but the 7800GTX is only available for PCIe slots. Older motherboards will only have AGP slots available, so for an older system, the 7800-series isn't an option. And yes, the 6800Ultra can run full eye candy at all resolutions.

Techie · Nov 06, 2005, 11:31 PM // 23:31

Yes I added it. It is great for running games at high resolutions, I will agree with you on that. And yes the fact it is AGP is another bonus. I guess I could recommend it if you want full eyecandy at the highest or close to highest resolutions.

EternalTempest · Nov 07, 2005, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Nvidia just added the Geforce 6800 GS to there line up.
The 68xx series cards from worst to best in the series.

GeForce 6800 LE -> GeForce 6800 -> **GeForce 6800 GS** -> GeForce 6800 GT -> GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Also read how the 6800 Ultra is no longer being made.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/278/

lord_shar · Nov 07, 2005, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Strange, they have two listed 7800GTX, but the 512MB version has a much higher GPU + memory clock!

EternalTempest · Nov 07, 2005, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord_shar

Strange, they have two listed 7800GTX, but the 512MB version has a much higher GPU + memory clock!

I didn't notice it either untill you pointed it out. Something else in the conclusion, that caught my eye this card beats the yet to be released ATI x1600 XT at the same price point. The only think I could not find if the new card is Agp & PCIexpreess or Pciexpress only. I'm pretty sure they tweaked the core gpu to tune it better the the existing 6x series cards.

Techie · Nov 08, 2005, 02:51 AM // 02:51

The x1600XT will be a highly talked-about card once released, I might actually be able to test one depending.

Oh and the 6800LE is a superb card for unlocking pipes and shaders. Leadtek's stock fan can do wonders.

MaglorD · Nov 08, 2005, 10:07 AM // 10:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

The situation had flipped to Nvidia 6 and 7 series better then current Ati, and the upper end brand new ati stuff just know coming out is on par, slightly better in some cases. In 6 months who knows, it will be next gen Ati vs next gen Nvidia and I will be reviewing many different web sites and reviews on them to see what is better.

Comparing Nvidia 6000 series and X800 series from ATI, Nvidia isn't better. The Nvidia card 6800 Ultra cannot match the ATI X850 XTPE when AA/AF are notched up. Except for SM3.0 support, which arguably favours Nvidia over ATI's SM2.0b, the Nvidias aren't better.

The Nvidia 7000 series is meant to be compared with ATI's X1800 series. The jury is still out on this...

lord_shar · Nov 08, 2005, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaglorD

Comparing Nvidia 6000 series and X800 series from ATI, Nvidia isn't better. The Nvidia card 6800 Ultra cannot match the ATI X850 XTPE when AA/AF are notched up. Except for SM3.0 support, which arguably favours Nvidia over ATI's SM2.0b, the Nvidias aren't better.

ATI's benchmarks with the x800's and x850's are a bit skewed due to their catalyst driver's dynamic texture filtering. Also referred to as "bri-linear filtering," ATI's x800 series dynamically shifts between bilinear + trilinear filtering modes to achieve the best benchmarks. However, the X800's/850's could not perform true trilinear filtering unless you turn off ATI's filtering optimizations, but once you disabled this feature, ATI's X800's/850's fell behind NVidia's 6800's. ATI caught a lot of flak for the above and finally conceded by adding an "off" switch to their optimized texture filtering.

Why does the above matter? Simple: ATI was compromising video quality for the sake of benchmarks. NVidia did this in the past as well with their fx5000 series, so they're not squeaky-clean either. However, neither company should be resorting to such driver tweaks given the speed of their current card lines.

Drivers can always be updated, but you're stuck with the video card until you toss it, so you might was well get the best hardware possible until the next best thing comes out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaglorD

The Nvidia 7000 series is meant to be compared with ATI's X1800 series. The jury is still out on this...

Actually, it's the other way around -- NVidia dropped a bombshell with the 7800GTX's release and immediate availability in mass volume. ATI could not immediately counter this move, so here we are 5 months later and just seeing the X1800's going through the usual trickle retail release.

ATI's X1800 series will be faster in some games (e.g.,Far Cry), and slower in others (Quake3-4, Doom3, etc). So it looks like equilibrium will be restored between the two competitors, which is good news for consumers like us.