So what Video card would you get if looking at one next 60 days?

[madara]

I guess its time to retire my Geforce 3 Ti 500. I need great replacment that would help with massive slowdown on Everquest raids I getting even with showspell effects off. Since i refuse to ruin game by turning off nice rez, models etc I guess I need all help I can get.

So what card should I be looking at getting for me EQ, MMORPG habit? As you can tell I skip few generations as long as I can, that Ti 500 cost 350 when came out and I got it. I can not do that often,he

We not in transition period where better to wait a few months again are we?

2.5 P4 1gig 1066 RDRAM, etc
thanks
madara

 

[Schadenfroh]

budjet?

 

[Ronin]

5900 Ultra if you wanna plop down the cash. If not, 9700 Pro. Both play EQ fairly well

 

[Finality]

Whens the next gen cards coming out? I have been out of the loop for so long now......

 

[Ronin]

Q4 of this year is when you'll see the R400 and the NV40 (pretty close to Christmas, I imagine).

 

[Lyfer]

Radeon 9700 OEM for $199 @ mwave.com, worth checking out.

 

[henryay]

I'm using the Geforce 2 GTS and i'm going to probably buy the Geforce 5900 Non-Ultra.
5 years and finally a new card =)

 

[squidman]

Whats an EQ?

Id say 5900 is the waste of money. 1,2 x the performance of the 9700 non-pro, yet 3x the price??! Idiotic! People get fooled by the price thinking it would perforrm as such. Laughable.
9700 non pro, or Pro would seem like the best choice. Its price matches its performance. Right now, theres as a certain treshold of productivity, which all the cards have reached.
9700 or 9700 Pro is the way to go. I have upgraded to it from GF2 Gts i've bought 3 years ago, and am quite happy.

 

[Serp86]

I TOTALLY agree.

by the way, EQ is everquest, i imagine.

 

[Lynx516]

Do not by the FX5900 or any FX cards at the moment. I may get flamed for this but looking at the evidence coming out at the moment it looks like nVidia are cheating in virtually every time demo out there. Look at this link http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6459 for more information on the suspected issues.

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by: Lyfer
Radeon 9700 OEM for $199 @ mwave.com, worth checking out.

Thats seems like a great deal ! IMHO a Radeon 9700 non-pro is the lowest priced card with all the necessary features to be considered close to state of the art.

 

[bigben]

The 9700's are dropping in prices in a big way right now. Look for one of those soon, but feel free to hold out for a couple of weeks or check out the Hot Deals forum and some how buy a video card, luggage rack, and toaster and make 15 bucks....

ben

edit: example of a good deal

 

[GaryShandling]

Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB. Da BoMbA!!!

 

[mchammer187]

9800 or 9700 NON PRO

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: mchammer187
9800 or 9700 NON PRO

Why do you recommend Non-Pro?

I'm not familiar with Everquest - you mention slowdowns when casting spells, if I'm reading that right? Does this involve a lot of lighting effects and transparency? I had a Geforce4 Ti4200, and it would slow down a lot in the game Giants, when it had to do transparency like from small energy burst spells. The Radeon 9700 Pro that I have now handles this with no problem at all.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: mchammer187
9800 or 9700 NON PRO

Why do you recommend Non-Pro?

I'm not familiar with Everquest - you mention slowdowns when casting spells, if I'm reading that right? Does this involve a lot of lighting effects and transparency? I had a Geforce4 Ti4200, and it would slow down a lot in the game Giants, when it had to do transparency like from small energy burst spells. The Radeon 9700 Pro that I have now handles this with no problem at all.

the only difference is the clock speed

that is why the non pro is like the 4200

the pro is like a 4600

you save a lot of money going for a non pro with almost the same performance

 

[mchammer187]

dp

 

[Compddd]

Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. Dont get the Nvidia, looks like they've been cheating in almost everything.

 

[limsandy]

Woooow, you gotta check your spelling and grammar, madara......


~limsandy

 

[madara]

Wow,thanks alot everyone! Ton of great info.
Boggle, why go out of your way make post just for grammar?
I dont know what world you live in but can be many reasons for it.
One being neurological diseases. Sigh, sad.
Anyhow, thanks muchly everyone else for great posts

 

[GullyFoyle]

It seems Best Buy is clearing out 9500 Pro's for $149. This might be a cheaper alternative to the 9700, with basically the same technology.
You have to be lucky to get one of the leftovers, though. I got this from the hot deals forum.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I just recently quit EQ, but in terms of Video cards for this game on raids, get the bigest one you can afford and make sure you have at least 1 Gig of ram, this game at least on raids will bring even a state of the art system to its knees w/ high particle effects on, mostly just because there are so many player models all on the screen at once, also they released a new Graphics engine for the game when Shadows of Luclin came out and at first it sucked but fairly recently they updated it and it can really reduce lag and improve performance, to enable the new Engine open you eqclient.ini and add a line called UseUmbra=TRUE under the defaults section. As long as I left particle density on low I was able to get decent frame rates w/ my system on raids w/ around 60 people max, however EQ looks awful w/out AA and on Raids I have to turn it off, so if you want AA and good framerates, I'd deff. check out the fastest card you can afford. Just my 2 cents and Hope this helps....