Opinions Wanted 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 vs. nVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS

[Fisher999]

Friends: I need your help again!

What are the opinions on the advantages\disadvantages for the STB-3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP versus a good GeForce 2 GTS board (non-Ultra or non-Pro). I can have the Voodoo 5500 for around $200 and a Gigabyte GA-GF2000-D (Geforce 2 GTS w/ 32 MB DDR SDRAM) for around
$171.

System:

Asus CUSL2 Mobo
Intel PIII 800 EB
256 MB Mushkin High Performance Rev 1.5 PC-133 SDRAM
Two Maxtor 10GB 7200 RPM ATA-66 Hard Drives
Pioneer DVD-115
Sigma Designs REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD-Decoder Card
ATI TV Wonder TV Tuner
Linksys LNE-100 TX NIC
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! MP3+
Samsung 900 NF 19" Monitor

Windows 98 with SE updates

Uses: MS Office Programs
Gaming
A/V editing

 

[Deeko]

Oh man, this hasn't been beaten to death or anything...oh well...

GF2: Fastest, many report poor 2d quality
V5: Good speed, great quality, best FSAA, glide, promising HSR
Radeon: you didn't mention it, but you should have. Almost as fast as GF2, great quality, great DVD, several DX8 features other cards don't have.

 

[Marty]

If you are using it for alot of 2D tasks, I'd say go with the V5. With a few exceptions, its pretty much accepted that the GeForce line of cards has crappy 2D. I know that some GF2's are better than others, but I don't know which. Maybe someone can point those out. I would choose between one of the higher quality GF2's and a V5.

As for gaming, it really depends on what you play. If you are heavily into fps like Q3 (except UT, Deus Ex), the Q3 is probably your best bet. For any kind of simulation, I would recommend the V5. The differences between the cards, however, is minimal. Each offers more than acceptable performance in nearly all applications. It comes down to personal prefferences and bias, and a judgement of what features are more relevant to you (FSAA vs T&L).

Marty

 

[Fisher999]

FPS tend to lean towards GeForce 2 GTS only in Direct 3d? What about OpenGL?

SOOOOOOOOO, the V5 has better 2d quality?

The V5 does Full Scene Anti-Aliasing with better visual quality OR with less of a
performance hit?

It's been a while since I've read anything on V5. V5 does not do Geometry Transformation and Lighting (T&L), correct?!?!?!?!???

How important is GLIDE support with games these days?

The RADEON is manufactured by ATI. That's unfortuneate. FPS are low. What merits does the "Charisma Engine" offer that the other two can't lick?

 

[Fisher999]

ttt

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Uh ? The radeon is faster than a gts in 32 bit color. The v5 fsaa is beter quality and less of a performance hit. 2x fsaa is equal to 2x2 GeForce fsaa. 4x beats the crap out of all.

 

[NFS4]

How about ttse (To the search engine).

This has been explained IN DETAIL hundreds of times here. If you go to the video forum, you see that this question has been asked and answered recently.

 

[pillage2001]

Since when the Radeon is as fast a GTS?? Maybe that can be said if you're using 32-bit color in high resolutions.

 

[Deeko]

Well, that is what most people who buy a high end card will be doing.

 

[Pete]

OK, CompuGeek: first off, start living up to your name, and look through the General Hardware and Video forums for the past two days for about 101 threads on V5 vs the world. I'll be nice and sum up some broad conclusions, but you really must inform yourself first.

V5 is generally acknowledged to have crisper 2D than GeForces; however, many have said the Elsa line exhibits less of an image quality problem than other manufacturers. The Radeon is supposed to have better 2D than the V5, but there's a slight chance that it'll exhibit problems if you pair it with a Trinitron monitor. Check Rage3D for more info on that.

V5 has better FSAA with slightly less performance drop off than a GTS, but remmeber GTSes are faster to start with, so they might end up with equal framerates. Note that V5's implementation is supposed to be more compatible than GTSes or Radeons.

Radeon is supposed to have the most vibrant 3D image quality of the three, with V5 next. The Radeon has supposedly more DirectX 8-compliant features than the other two, so it might be a little more future proof. The GTS also sports some nifty features (pixel shaders). Both the Radeon and GTS have T&L, but its value is limited unless you play the very, very few games that take advantage of it (MDK2, Sacrifice), and even then it doesn't make a significant difference.

All have decent drivers for Win9x; the Radeons are questionable for Win2K, but I'm not sure if they fixed that yet. Still, ATi has a reputation for poor driver quality, and it probably won't go away until they prove themselves with one more product after the Radeon. But for Win98, they're all good.

DVD: ATi is the undisputed king, the GTS has some acceleration, and the V5 has none. But this shouldn't matter on a P3-800.

Glide: if you don't have any games that prefer it (Ultima X, Deus Ex, Unreal anything, Tribes), then don't worry about it.

Basically, the GTS is the speed demon with a few flaws in terms of pristine image quality. The Radeon is geared toward image quality and DVD, but also has good speed, especially in higher (memory bandwidth-limited)resolutions where HyperZ helps out. The V5 has compatibility with everything, superior FSAA, and good speed on its side.

That's the short summary, go look at the many 100+ post threads for the details. And the V5 and Radeon 32MB can be netted for less than $140 each--search Hot Deals.

 

[Fisher999]

Pete: Thank you for all your help and I apologize for not "doing my homework" but I've been busy,
have a "disaster situation" concerning a "bum" (defective retail-boxed) ATI Rage Fury Pro for a system for my brother's law practice. Instead of sending the "Rage Fury Pro" to Canada for a second time, I'm considering dropping my Gigabyte GA-GA2560T (standard 32 MB SDR SDRAM GeForce) into his system and upgrading my system to a better videocard. But I have to move quickly. That's why I posted here.

Thanks Again!!!

Greg

 

[BFG10K]

Pete:

DVD: ATi is the undisputed king, the GTS has some acceleration, and the V5 has none. But this shouldn't matter on a P3-800.

Your post was good but this statement is a little misleading. nVidia are a close second to ATi in DVD playback, and also manage to edge out ATi in a few of the tests.

Also acceleration is only one part of it. There's also image quality to consider.

 

[lsd]

<< The radeon is faster than a gts in 32 bit color >>


Please. Take a good look.
If your going to get a GF2, i suggest a visontek GF2 beacuse they can be had for about $150. The visionteks are basically Elsa gladiacs which probably have the best 2d in the gf2 family.
If your really really really concerned about 2d quality i'd say get a voodoo 5.

 

[DaveB3D]

Look at it like this:

V5 has better image quality
V5 is slight (ie. a couple of fps) slower than the GTS. The performance difference is basically non-existant
V5 has better 2D and 3D image quality
V5 is more stable and compatible

 

[jmcoreymv]

Dave: I agree with u that the 2d is better and it is SLIGHTLY slower then the gf2, but how do u figure its more stable and compatible?

 

[NFS4]

<< V5 is more stable and compatible >>


That's kinda easy when you don't support the full AGP spec and don't have to deal with shoddy AGP implementations in VIA boards.

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with Dave (except for the 3D image quality which looks pretty much the same to me among the two...with ATi's Radeon being the best of the three).

 

[DaveB3D]

I reviewed hardware for nearly 3 years and I have a butt load of experiance with both of them. So I'm simply basing it on my experiance.

 

[DaveB3D]

The V5's image quality is better for several reason:

1) 16-bit color is a substitute for 32-bit many times because of the post filter (so best 16-bit quality in the industry)
2) FSAA is of higher quality than anyone
3) LOD bias allows texture adjustment to give the cleanest and sharpest texture quality.