Geforce or Ati ?

[Novice2]

Hi Clever people I am a total novice and trying to upgrade my 266 mghz old PC ! I am negotiating buying a pals 18xp athlone and he is giving me a choice of video card either a Geforce 3 niverda or a ATI Radion 9000 Pro now knowing nothing about these things which one should I choose any advice please ? Merry Christmas ( sorry if this seems a dumb question ) ....Gerry

 

[CrazySaint]

The gF3 will probably be faster than the 9000 Pro, but either card will be sorely bottlenecked by that slow 266MHz CPU of yours. I have an original Radeon 32MB DDR that was severely bottlenecked by my PII-350! You're looking at running a much faster card on a much slower CPU. As cheap as Athlon CPUs and motherboards are now days, you really need to look at upgrading your CPU/mobo/RAM. If money's tight, you could get a Athlon XP 1600+/mobo/256MB DDR RAM for $150-200 (US).

 

[BigFatCow]

Originally posted by: CrazySaint
The gF3 will probably be faster than the 9000 Pro, but either card will be sorely bottlenecked by that slow 266MHz CPU of yours. I have an original Radeon 32MB DDR that was severely bottlenecked by my PII-350! You're looking at running a much faster card on a much slower CPU. As cheap as Athlon CPUs and motherboards are now days, you really need to look at upgrading your CPU/mobo/RAM. If money's tight, you could get a Athlon XP 1600+/mobo/256MB DDR RAM for $150-200 (US).

Originally posted by: Novice2
Hi Clever people I am a total novice and trying to upgrade my 266 mghz old PC ! I am negotiating buying a pals 18xp athlone and he is giving me a choice of video card either a Geforce 3 niverda or a ATI Radion 9000 Pro now knowing nothing about these things which one should I choose any advice please ? Merry Christmas ( sorry if this seems a dumb question ) ....Gerry

 

[boyRacer]

I think he said he's getting an 1800 along with the video card right?... i have a GF3 Ti500... but i'd take the 9000 pro... 🙂

 

[Mem]

The performance between the two is very close (See here) ,yes your cpu would benefit from a faster card then either of these however if the choice is between those two then it`s very close,I would give the ATI 9000 the edge in image quality but the GF3(I presume it`s a GF3 Ti200) the edge with drivers,so it`s your call.

If it`s a normal GF3 or GF3 Ti500 then that will be even faster.

Btw welcome to AT(Anandtech) forums.
🙂

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: BoYRaCeR
I think he said he's getting an 1800 along with the video card right?... i have a GF3 Ti500... but i'd take the 9000 pro... 🙂

D'oh! 😱 I read it that he was building a Athlon 1800+ for a friend and was getting the card in return.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Novice2
Hi Clever people I am a total novice and trying to upgrade my 266 mghz old PC ! I am negotiating buying a pals 18xp athlone and he is giving me a choice of video card either a Geforce 3 niverda or a ATI Radion 9000 Pro now knowing nothing about these things which one should I choose any advice please ? Merry Christmas ( sorry if this seems a dumb question ) ....Gerry

Sounds like a good friend 🙂 (I also give away excellent parts to my bro and bro-in-law when I upgrade) Either card costs more than the CPU itself, but you don't have to tell him that 🙂

Go with whichever one, they are pretty close in performance (3D and gaming), I'd look at features like DVI, TV-out, hardware DVD decoder (ATI), 2D quality (ATI) and don't forget to thank your friend. 🙂

Chiz

 

[Novice2]

Hi Thanks for the replys ! Actually the Pc I am buying is Abit 333 M/b 256xpc2700 memory athlone 1800xp cpu audigy sound card usb v90 modem 16x52 dvd/cd rom and as I msaid Either Niverda Geforce3 OR ATI 9000 Radion Pro ???????? .......regards Gerry

 

[boyRacer]

GeForce3 then... 🙂

 

[Darein]

On the cards, like others have said, it depends on what the features are. I personally am an ATI fan, but if the nVIDIA has TV-Out and or DVI go with that.

 

[Compudork]

I guess my only suggestion is not to get to obsessed about the numbers (frame rate tests, etc) when comparing these two cards, you can't really go wrong with either one. My vote would go for the Geforce card because I've had good experiences with them, but never owned an ATI. GOOD LUCK!!

 

[Zippydoo]

Also, if anyone knows....

I have an asus gf2 which supports hardware monitoring.... i'm looking at an ati alternative. do ati cards have hardware monitoring built in?

 

[FishTankX]

Some models of Tyan cards do.

 

[psianime]

I would pick the geforce since nvidia (the delightful company that makes those niffty GPU chips) has really good driver support for their cards.

I havn't used an ATI since I bought my geforce 2 GTS ages ago...

Also, before you buy anything... ask us on here for the price your friend wants to sell you his used parts for. You can compare prices with sites like newegg.com to make sure you arn't getting ripped off.

-psianime