[Newbie Question] Which Video Card Should I Get?

[VIAN]

Another site, pretty irregular benchmarks. In the Enemy Territory benchmark the 5600 Ultra beats the 9800 XT. Amazing. Who do you trust.

 

[GDP]

I ended up ordering the Sapphire 9600 XT.

Thanks guys!

 

[VIAN]

good choice

 

[Pete]

nVidia is more than fully DX9 compliant and that is the reason it runs slower in DX9.
One does not presume the other. For instance, the FX line is based around using FX16 most of the time, whereas ATi's cards are based around using FP24 all the time. The latter is faster, and you can argue it's also more compliant in that it's focused on full-precision performance. True, the FX line offers more flexibility, but at lower precision. It's a trade-off.

I think the Wolf:ET benchmarks vary so widely because the maps themselves vary widely in terms of effects and, thus, performance. For me, the beach, radar, and railgun maps tend to show much lower framerates than oasis and gold rush. Unfortunately, most sites don't tell us which map they use for testing. Still, the FX series, like the GF series, excels at older titles, particularly Q3, so it's not surprising they shine in ET.

 

[VIAN]

Well, I don't understand latter or former and I don't bother looking them up because they are dumb words and mean something else.

nVidia has FX32fp, FX16fp, and FX12fx. So it does have higher precision and flexibility. I don't know, though, that it uses the higher precision. I based my claim of it being slower on that. ATI has 24fp and possibly another one.

 

[Pete]

Enjoy this, because you earned it, VIAN:

 

[VIAN]

thanx

 

[Cerb]

VIAN: it's been shown pretty well that the 32-bit precision has little or nothing to do with being slower, but rather that the Radeon has more registers. Newer drivers are narrowing the gap, but chances are it will remain, and that NVidia will make some major changes in their next set of cards, and take the crown away from ATi (which will be a good thing...competition).

 

[VIAN]

Yeah, not having enough registers is a pain.

 

[BFG10K]

The geforce FX is a powerful card - more powerful than any 9x00,

but rather that the Radeon has more registers

The other main problem the FX line has is that it has a large SIMD design which relies on instructions being perfectly scheduled at all times for it to achieve its full potential. Unfortunately for nVidia something like that simply isn't possible.

 

[VIAN]

I love your sarcasm.