Figuring out which card to get

[perdomot]

I want to upgrade my old Radeon 9200 AGP vid card and I don't know which of these two cards to get. I can get a Radeon 9800 Pro or a X1600 Pro for the same price. The 1600 has the newer technology but according to Rojakpot's guide, the 9800 has a fill rate of 3040M Texels compared to the 1600's 2000M Texels. Is the fill rate the crucial point to look at when choosing a video card? I'm not sure how to use the guide so I'd appreciate some advice. BTW, this is for a non gaming system. I do lots of video encoding so thats my main focus. Thanks.

 

[Munky]

The 9800 would do better in older games where texture fillrate is important, especially if there's any kind of multi-texturing (Quake3 era games...), the x1600pro would do better in modern games that rely heavily on pixel shaders. Since you're not gaming, none of that matters, but the x1600pro does have a newer feature set, which included additional video encoding/decoding capability, so in your case the x1600pro would be a better choice.

 

[Geomagick]

Go for the X1600.

ATI are constantly upgrading their video products and the move to the current generation is no exception.

 

[perdomot]

Thanks for the feedback. I thought the newer tech would be the way to go.