Choosing Graphics Cards

[Nick]

Hi, I am new to this forum but I have had abit of experience with modding computers and customising them. I am running a P4 HT 3.1GHZ with 1024mb of pc2100 ram.

I am in need of a new graphics card as my GeForce 4 isnt up to scratch, I dont have a huge budget its about £70 to £100 max, I have been looking at an nVidia XFX FX5500 256mb card on ebuyer for £70. I was woundering if you could reccomend any better cards for my price range that would be suitable for gaming.

Thank You
Nick

[Wolfram]

With a P4 3.1 Ghz I would go for a faster card, like the Radeon 9800 Pro or Geforce 5900. You should get a 5900 (SE,XT, they're all ok) for ~ 100 (damn... where's the pound symbol? British pounds, anyway?). You get them for 150-170 € here in Germany. I know you said this is your upper limit, but IMO slower cards are too slow for the rest of your system.

Buy a card with 256bit memory interface. AFAIK, all Geforce 5900s (XT; SE) have one. There are some Radeon 9800 Pros with 128bit interface, stay away from them.

The memory size is irrelevant, as long as you have 128MB. You can never use the 256MB for a slow card like the Geforce 5500, because with screen and texture resolutions that use more than 128MB, you will get completely unplayable framerates on this card (rough guess: <10fps in modern games)

For 70 pounds, you might get a Radeon 9600 Pro, but there are a lot of castrated versions with only 200 Mhz memory clock, they're not worth the money. And there are a lot of 9600 LEs, SEs (not XTs, these are good but more expensive) with only 64bit memory interface. Crap.

If you definitely want a budget solution and you can wait, look out for the new Radeon X300. Should be cheap and faster than all Geforce 5200/5500 and Radeon 9200/9550 cards. Plus, many of the latter also come with a 64bit memory interface, which you should avoid at all costs.

[Wolfram]

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... 1/#vorwort

Lots of benchmarks for Geforce cards, from GF2 to 5900 Ultra in direct comparison. German, but the numbers speak for themselves. You'll notice that exchanging a Geforce 4 Ti with a 5200 or 5500 (not listed, but same ballpark) isn't really an upgrade. If you have a GF4 MX, it would be an upgrade, but you still won't be able to play any newer games than shown in that review.

[Nick]

So really I should wait until I can afford something like a GeForce 6 to be able to get the maximum from a new graphics card because the rest of my system is pretty quick?

[hyperspace]

Which game(s) are you going to be running? Or, are doing something other than gaming?

[Wolfram]

So really I should wait until I can afford something like a GeForce 6 to be able to get the maximum from a new graphics card because the rest of my system is pretty quick?

You could. I'm not sure about the influence of the FSB on current P4 systems. For Athlon systems, 133 Mhz FSB is significantly slower than 200 Mhz FSB. (http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/2003/06-11_a.php says: TBred system at FSB 200 Mhz is ~22 percent faster than at FSB 133 Mhz). Should be less for P4 systems (higher memory bandwidth).

But I wouldn't wait. Better get an affordable card now and a GF6 or 7 when they're cheap. But- like hyperspace indicated- that depends on the games you want to play, and the resolutions you want to play at, and on the question if you want FSAA and anisotropic filtering.

[Nick]

It would be all sorts of games like THUG2, Out of Hell, Half-life 2 etc.