What model Nvidia to go with...ti4600,ti4800...

[XRdirtHead]

Its been a while since Anand posted their video guide.....

 

[XRdirtHead]

Heres what pricegrabber had to say.
4200-$ 130.00 LINK
4800-$ 169.00 LINK
4600-$ 197.00 LINK

The 4800 should overclock to the 4600 speed so I'm thinking 4800 for 169.00 would be best in the long run.

 

[Shamrock]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Ketchup, may I just ask WHY you are making that upgrade?
5800 non-ultra Vs 9700PRO
Price = same
normal speed = about same
AA/AF speed = 9700 winnar
The 9700pro is the better card and same price, why get a 5800?
Plus, the cooler on the 5800 will probably be louder, even if not that much louder.
Plus, regular driver updates with ATi.

Screw the crap driver argument, I went from 42.86 to 30.82 and they were pretty equal. "Upgrade" to 43.45, and lo and behold, really jerky performance in games. Yeah, go nVidia.

Sorry, I just want a 9700 pro and have a Ti 4400, so I would like other people to do the same, cos it's what I would do

no, let's NOT forget the driver debate. Tom's Hardware said it best when he reviewed the GFFX 5800 Ultra. "I always am nervous wondering if the ATI card is going to work with the game I install" And for once, I can believe him. I had an ATI card once...just once. ATI has improved their drivers yes, and yes they are fast, but if you have to nervously wonder if it's gonna work, then why buy it? to boast that your card is faster? pphhtt...Quality is what matter, NVidia cards are easy to install, drivers are easy to install (no tweaking to get it to work right with every game), and NVidia doesnt have THOSE BIG GRAY lines going across your screen. Something ATI cant fix (at this time) some 30% of owners have it. The only fix is to get a High end monitor Like The best Viewsonic, Sony or Mitsubishi. That's $900 I dont have...

PLUS, Ketchup said he wanted the NON Ultra, so the nosie shouldnt be a problem.

If you want a BIASED opinion, Get an NVidia card

If you want an UNBIASED opinion, If you're a novice, get an NVidia card, if you're an overclocking tweaker guru, get an ATI card.

 

[XRdirtHead]

Thanks Shamrock...I too only had one ATI card and that was enough for me. I have 4 computers at home for my family and I like to keep them all the same as much as possible. Nvidia is the only one for me.....

 

[Rogozhin]

I don't agree.

I had only two probems with the games I play. One was with morrowind and z buffer error on only certain parts of the game world and the other was with mafia and flashing shadow textures when set on high. Other than that all of these games worked witout problems.

Ghost Recon (IT and DS)
UT 2003
Nascar 4
NWN
dungeon siege
IL-2
Forgotten Battles
Jedi Knight 2
MOHAA
Spearhead
Splinter Cell
Comanche 4
Ground Control
Black and White
Rallisport Challenge
Asherons Call 2

With the Nvidia card's I've owned I've problems in IL-2 and rallisport challenge. So it has been about the same with driver problems.

I honestly don't believe that either company makes perfect drivers, so in my mind they are darn near equivalent.

Cards I've run from both companies.

Nvidia
TNT2
geforce 2 mx 400
geforce 2 gts
geforce 4 ti 4200
geforce 4 ti4400

ATI
radeon 8500
radeon 9700

I prefer ati. I like the IQ and the ability to run high degrees of AF, and with the 9700 AA, at the same time. I never did like digital vibrance for the nvidia cards. And i never liked the control panel for the nvidia drivers (had to use rivatuner to control vsync, aa, and af).

I prefer ati's DVD over nvidia's

I prefer the price to performance ration of ati.

I prefer the whql udated drivers of ati.

I prefer the dx9 compiant drivers of ati.


But If you really want to buy a geforce 4 then I would go with a 64mb gainward 4200 golden sample.

Rogo

 

[1ManArmY]

So what you are saying is if you dont want any headaches trying to get a game to run go with Nvidia, if you are willing to tweak your card and jump through hoops to your game to run get an ATI. How difficult is it to remove existing drivers when attempting to take advantage of new updates that somethimes lower your performance?

Im dazed and confused and twisting in da wind.

 

[Ketchup]

But If you really want to buy a geforce 4 then I would go with a 64mb gainward 4200 golden sample.

Rogo

O that's nice of you, suggest a card that will seem pretty darn slow in a few months because all the latest games require 128 MB of video memory. If you like ATI, fine, but don't go sabotaging the guy because he prefers nVidia.

 

[NYHoustonman]

People seem to forget that one computer does not represent them all. Who cares if you haven't had any problems, when so many others have? I, for one, have had absolutely no problems with my ti4400 or mx420. A Gainward ti4400 wouldn't be a bad buy, as long as it's a golden sample, as they can be overclocked to 4600+ speeds quite easily. Really, though, your best bet is probably either the 4200 128MB or the 4600, if you are sticking with NVidia, as the performance difference isn't really huge, and there is almost no difference in AA and AF performance.

 

[BenSkywalker]

XR-

While my initial reccomendation stands(hold out for the 5600U), how long between vid upgrades is typical for you and what are you upgrading from? If you are moving from a GF2MX to a GF4Ti then it is a huge boost, although if you wait longer between upgrades then it is likely that the DX9 feature set of the GFFX board would pay off for you in the long run. On the flip side, if you are moving from say a GF3 then the improvement will be small, although the lack of DX9 features is likely to be less important to you if you upgrade more frequently.

 

[XRdirtHead]

I have four computers at home for myself,wife and two children. There is one Geforce 4400, two have Geforce3 ti200's and one is a Geforce2 64mb.
Of course the Geforce2 is out the door.
CPU's are all AMD. One is a XP 1800, two are XP 2100's and one is a XP 2200.

I did find the Gainward 4800se Golden Sample for 200 bucks....maybe that would be best in the long run....looks like a pretty trick card....
LINK

 

[loafbred]

I just settled on this one today. Its default clock is 260/550, AGP 4X. New Egg and GameVE have it priced at $145, retail box.

Link for card

Edit: had price $10 too high.

 

[XRdirtHead]

Thanks Loafbred,
I think I'll wait a week and make my purchase next week.

 

[loafbred]

I forgot to mention something funny on that Asus product info page - they have the GF4-MX logo shown with the product. Two hours after I ordered mine for 145.99 from New Egg, they dropped the price to 142.99.

 

[1ManArmY]

tough decisons to be made.

 

[XRdirtHead]

1ManArmy,
Its not easy trying to keep 4 computers updated with fresh parts...........gets expensive!

 

[1ManArmY]

expensive but enjoyable hobbies.

 

[hollowman]

You should buy my GF 256 DDR. It will be a hell of an upgrade for you.

 

[XRdirtHead]

LOL..what is a 256 DDR...

 

[hollowman]

It's the best card ever made.






















Like a million years ago.

 

[XRdirtHead]

sounds like a classic....I had one like that before...think it was a voodoo something or other....

 

[loafbred]

I installed my new Asus Ti 4200 today, and am very happy with it. 2D quality is better than my Gainward GF3, though I haven't tried 1600x1200. I rigged a 38 cfm 80mm fan to blow up onto it, and am running at 300/650. The memory was good up to 670. I haven't tried higher than 300 core.

 

[XRdirtHead]

cool....have you tested it with 3d mark test yet....

 

[loafbred]

I got 11,641 in 2001SE. I have Athlon XP @ 10*185, KT333, 512MB CL 2.5. I used the "driver cleaner" utility from Driver Heaven before swapping cards, and used 43.45 driver. It's working great, especially in OpenGL games.

 

[XRdirtHead]

Nice! I don't think I have my present computers tweaked to run as good as they can. I don't know crap about setting up the bios and the memory to run at peak performance. I have plenty of air flow in my computer cases so I could over clock my cpu's and graphics cards but I don't know enough so I don't touch it. I have crucial pc 2700 with the new Asus A7n8X Deluxe's running AMD 2100 and 2200 chips. Whatever is the stock bios and default setting is just how I leave it.