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debating to get radeon 9800 pro vs. Geforce FX5900 Ultra

L

LongCoolMother

Diamond Member
it seems in current and future games, the 9800 pro benches better than the FX5900u almost always. is there any reason at all i should get the 5900ultra over the 9800 pro? assuming they are near same price... it seems the 5900u isnt all that popular anymore, perhaps because the 9800 pro is more powerful.
 
I made the choice to go with ATI mostly because it only takes up 1 slot instead of 2.

The only problem so far is an occasional bsod at weird times when there is no heavy video usage.
 
The only problem so far is an occasional bsod at weird times when there is no heavy video usage.

Wow that sounds like quite a deal 🙂

Personally I would say if you can wait to do it until about April. You will be able to get much more of a card for the same price.
 
I've got both cards, I like the 5900 ultra better, The ATI drivers I have run, are unstable as far as I'm concerned, but your mileage may vary of course.
 
Originally posted by: Big Lar
I've got both cards, I like the 5900 ultra better, The ATI drivers I have run, are unstable as far as I'm concerned, but your mileage may vary of course.
Click to expand...

I've had 100% stability with my drivers...
 
Originally posted by: Evdawg
Originally posted by: Big Lar
I've got both cards, I like the 5900 ultra better, The ATI drivers I have run, are unstable as far as I'm concerned, but your mileage may vary of course.
Click to expand...

I've had 100% stability with my drivers...
Click to expand...

You are the proud recipeint of the 14th national no glitch blue ribbon. I also know the guy who won the 6th ribbon way back when.
Buying ATI is like shooting craps. You never know what you'll get. Instant perfection, or untold fixes and patches and driver issues.

5900 here. working like it was made to.

 
With ATi performance is guaranteed to be there. Although, compatability is a lottery. With nVIDIA, it's compatable, and performance is high. I would choose the 5900 Ultra because it is just as quick as the 9800 Pro, it comes with 256MB and it is more compatable.
 
I got a 9800 np, only issue I've had was in Need for Speed: Underground. Messed up textures on screen, just needed to increase the mipmap detail level.
I installed the Cat 3.6 initially, then using the ATi uninstaller, upgraded to the Cat 3.10's, no problems whatsoever.

My nVidia card (GF4 Ti4400), installed 29.20 drivers (one's I had on CD at the time), uninstalled them, got some updated drivers (43.something IIRC), installed, and they were a bit messed up for some reason, the control panel type thing won't work so I can't change display properties, has happened before, just needs the drivers reinstalling. nVidia is so good
rolleye.gif


I've had no real problems with either ATi or nVidia, I would go witha 5900XT though (they're something like $200) as they are the best price/performance card, unless you can snag a 9800 non-pro, which is a rare card now, but also great value for money. The higher end cards (which just have greater clock speed and stupid price tag) and not that good a deal really. Neither card is a good option. The 5900XT and 9800np are the way to go.
A 5900nu is just a 5900Ultra with lower core/memory clocks, and with a bit of overclocking, the 5900nu will be equal to the 5900Ultra.
 
Originally posted by: VIAN
With ATi performance is guaranteed to be there. Although, compatability is a lottery. With nVIDIA, it's compatable, and performance is high. I would choose the 5900 Ultra because it is just as quick as the 9800 Pro, it comes with 256MB and it is more compatable.
Click to expand...


Oh no, here comes the 256MB again...... I still don't see WHY you would want to buy a card for 100$ more vain, and get no boost in performance.... ESPECIALLY when another generation of video cards is coming out in a few months.. wait till the prices go down!!
 
I just have to say I've had nary a hitch with my 9800Pro, despite a) upgrading from an NVIDIA GF4Ti4600, and b) swapping out my motherboard for a new NForce2 without doing a full reinstall of Windows. I don't doubt that some people have had problems, but I've seen plenty of people on here whining about compatibility with NVIDIA cards, too. Neither company's drivers are perfect.
 
I agree with Matthias99,
I rarely have any problems with my 9800 pro except for a few certain games which with a patch or driver update solved it, I remember when I used to own geforce cards, I've had similar problems with different games too. ati has gone along way now with their catalyst driver being much more stable than the past ,not to mention that they have the best image quality,are more future proof and are the leaders in performance right now. Why do you think so many are now going from nvidia over to ati lately?

you can check it out yourself with these recent articles or any newer ones:



here

or

here

or

here
 
Quote

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Originally posted by: VIAN
With ATi performance is guaranteed to be there. Although, compatability is a lottery. With nVIDIA, it's compatable, and performance is high. I would choose the 5900 Ultra because it is just as quick as the 9800 Pro, it comes with 256MB and it is more compatable.
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Oh no, here comes the 256MB again...... I still don't see WHY you would want to buy a card for 100$ more vain, and get no boost in performance.... ESPECIALLY when another generation of video cards is coming out in a few months.. wait till the prices go down!!
Click to expand...

Who said anything about performance, I'm talking about image quality.

Benchmarks don't always show a difference because they might not ever cross a scene that exposes large amounts of big textures. Not only that but the game itself may not even have enough textures to stress such a card to begin with.

However it's a fact that a handful of games already benefit from 256 MB RAM. For example, UT2003 texture swaps on 128 MB cards at 1600 x 1200 in certain benchmarks (causing a very low minimum FPS) while at 1280 x 960 it doesn't. Also there's supposed to be a setting that allows extra high resolution textures and some levels are reported to have up to 160 MB worth of texture data when it's enabled.

Another game is Call of Duty and I believe it loads extra high resolution textures when it detects it's running on a 256 MB card.

Like I said before, 256 MB cards are probably not necessary this generation but the next generation they'll basically be compulsory.
Click to expand...

Here's the link.
 
Quote
Quote

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Originally posted by: VIAN
With ATi performance is guaranteed to be there. Although, compatability is a lottery. With nVIDIA, it's compatable, and performance is high. I would choose the 5900 Ultra because it is just as quick as the 9800 Pro, it comes with 256MB and it is more compatable.
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Oh no, here comes the 256MB again...... I still don't see WHY you would want to buy a card for 100$ more vain, and get no boost in performance.... ESPECIALLY when another generation of video cards is coming out in a few months.. wait till the prices go down!!



Who said anything about performance, I'm talking about image quality.
Click to expand...

you are saying that nvidia has better IQ?
 
No, I'm just saying that because of the extra 128MB, that special games can show higher resolution textures. You could also get the 9800 Pro 256MB, might be a little cheaper too. And like the quote from my previous post, you get better PERFORMANCE at higher resolutions.
 
9800Pro if you want IQ settings and DX9 performance.
5900U if you want opengl and non-dx9 non-IQ settings game.
 
My view is that stability and compatability is everything. As soon as nv40 is release I will be removing my 9800aiw. Its all very well people arguing over IQ differences but how often do you run the games side by side? and most of the time the differences are so slight that I dont think its that much of an issue.
Personally I dont notice the graphics in a game that much when I am playing it, occasionally I might think 'that looks good'. As long as a card plays every game I want at 1024x768 with 50fps minimum I dont mind, but endless patches really bug me.
 
I have only had one bug in NFSU, which was succesfully fixed with newer drivers. 100% stable and bug free.
 
Well of the games I used I had bugs in;

warrior kings - crashing to desktop
Vice city - dodgy textures - restrict frame rates to 30 to fix
Metal gear solid 2 - as above
All quake 3 based games e.g. rtcw, SOF and quake III - fixed by downloading 30mb ati opengl patch
Halo - dodgy textures - solved by tweaking 3d settings
Impossible creatures - again dodgy texture skins
Unreal tournament - refused to run - solved by driver/patch update.
Aquanox - refuses to run.

and I am sure their is a couple more that I cant think of at mo. Of these the only excusable one is Vice city as my ti4200 had similar(ish) problems.

Perhaps I am just unlucky :-( but I have got to the point were I hate updating the drivers incase they bring about more problems.

 
9800Pro if you want IQ settings and DX9 performance.
5900U if you want opengl and non-dx9 non-IQ settings game.
Click to expand...

Watcha talking bout IQ settings?


ATi: Better DX9 Performance; Better AA IQ.

nVIDIA: Better OpenGL Performance; Better AF IQ; Better Compatability.

 
Originally posted by: Matthias99
I just have to say I've had nary a hitch with my 9800Pro, despite a) upgrading from an NVIDIA GF4Ti4600, and b) swapping out my motherboard for a new NForce2 without doing a full reinstall of Windows. I don't doubt that some people have had problems, but I've seen plenty of people on here whining about compatibility with NVIDIA cards, too. Neither company's drivers are perfect.
Click to expand...
I'll top that one...
Went from a Ti4600 to a 9600 Pro to a 5700 Ultra to a 5900nu with NO compatability problems at all. Driver Cleaner is your friend people. The "problem" is probably between the chair and keyboard.
 
thanks for the info guys. im really kind of worried about compatibility. i am on a radeon 8500 right now and i have no problems whatsoever it seems. however, occasionally, when playing certain games (not just one, a couple) i get crashes. not often, but they are definately there. no biggie, but i remember when i was back on my AMD KT266A with a xp1800+, i had more troubles. the radeon didnt seem to like it even after i had the card for a long while. in the end it finally cleared up as drivers were substantially improved, but it sure did cause me a few headaches early on.

now im on a dell machine. intel i845pe, so im guessing this chipset is compatible with most things. moreso than the kt266a was. but i dont want to take any unecessary risks. i know for a fact of course that the 5900 ultra performs less than the 9800 pro, but right now im thinking that sacrafice in performance (not a great amount) is worth it just for the insurance of having the card work well. as for the DX9 performance, im concerned about that as well. i mean, right now it looks like the FX is going to be slaughtered in the next gen games. i really dont want to be busting out all this $$$ right now just to have the geforce die out on HL2 or doom. you guys think nvidia will get their act together for these guys before those games come out?

one more quick question. it seems the geforce 5900 ultra chipset comes with 256MB standard memory? i previously assumed it was 128MB DDR. people are always arguing about how memory amount doesnt matter. will it matter in the future games? and will it matter for me? (the highest resolution i ever play at is 1024, i know, its low, because my screen is only 15" LCD) thanks dudes.
 
Originally posted by: Big Lar
I've got both cards, I like the 5900 ultra better, The ATI drivers I have run, are unstable as far as I'm concerned, but your mileage may vary of course.
Click to expand...

same experience here... But it's with a 5900 Ultra and a 9700Pro. Around 5 out of my 30 games would not work. Switch to 5900, all problems are gone. Sure it's not quite as fast anymore with AF turned up, but at least all my games work

If you already have experience with ATI, and you don't think ATI's drivers are gonna get you, then I'd go with ATI, otherwise I'd just get nvidia for compatibility's sake.
 
It might be the game too, that is crashing. Medal of honor has crashed on me with both both ATi and nVIDIA cards. That game crashes a lot. Happened to me about 5 times. RTCW has crashed on me once on nVIdIA. Day of Defeat has crashed on me once or twice on 3dfx and nVIDIA. It might not be the cards but the games instead. These are random crashes by the way, very distant from each other. And I don't play many D3D gamesl, so I don't know if it just OpenGL. Unreal II hasn't crashed on me yet, but I haven't played it much yet.

Compatability issues from my experience. Never any problem installing or updating drivers fro 8500, 4600, 5900. 8500 experienced some missing textures in MOH in one driver issue, but was quickly fix next driver. 4600, experienced messed up polygon rendering in a cut scene of mafia demo, that only existed in beginning cutscene and then cleared up late in that same cutscene. As far as compatability from both cards. My experience was great. I guess it is a lottery when you buy a card from either brand. Although from the problems posted here, there are more Radeon problems, but then again, there are twice as many Radeon owners. So I guess from that, compatability would be about the same. But from some reviews that I've read, Radeon refused to play more games properly than nVIDIA.
 
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