Which Graphics card wold be the best choice for my system?

[EdibleAutopsy]

I'm planning on either buying a " ATI Radeon 9700 pro " or a "Geforce 4 TI 4600"

Also is there any difference in quality between the ATI and Gigabyte versions of the radeon 9700 pro ?

And also , which is the best make of geforce 4 TI 4600 ?

heres are my specs.............

P4 1.9 GHZ
768 MB PC 133 RAM
MOTHERBOARD .........GIGABYTE GA8IDMNF (COSMOS)
GEFORCE 2 MX 400 (CURRENTLY)

Any Help would be appreciated , as I really cant decide which i should go for.......................thanks

 

[Torghn]

The radeon would definatly be better, but it's also more expensive.

The Gigabyte and ATI cards seem very close.

 

[ramazorg]

I don't think there are any games right now that you need the chip as good as the new Radeon.. I'd sugest getting a gf4 for now and when new games come out that recquire really killer card then get geforce 5 or 6, which should be out by that time..and by the way I could sell you either gf4 ti4200 or ti4600 for a cheap price.. email me at mikeandr@rogers.com if interested

 

[Rucsac]

Edible...!

Read some reviews and you'll see that anything other than 9700Pro will pale....

You gain quality in picture too, according to all the reviews I have read.

It'll cost you about £90 (UK) more than a ti4600, but I have also read that the ti4600 is no where near as scalable as the 9700Pro, so that will be good for future CPU upgrades you may have planned...

If you think the prices have dropped on the ti4600's now, wait until the new GF comes out, everyone will want rid of them, I am not dissing Nvidia, I currently have one of their cards installed in my PC too, but logic suggests go for the latest, oh and by the way, all the game framerates will increase, never mind all of this wait for new titles stuff, if you can afford it, do it.

DX9 will only prove to make the card even more powerful in future games than it already is, again not my words, but those of website tech reviewers...

All the best

Wain

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: ramazorg
I don't think there are any games right now that you need the chip as good as the new Radeon.

there are no games out right now than "need" anthing beter than a geforce2 mx 400, wich he already has. it is when you start wanting to turn the grapics up that the faster cards become important. this is where the 9700 shines, the geforce4s do not even offer some of the settings the 9700 does. furthermore, at the max settings the gefroce4 can run many games will not run at playble framerates with those options turned on were the radeon 9700 will run the same way just fine. not to mention it will look beter doing it and you can turn the driver options up another notch for even beter image quality on top of that for older games that dont need need the power of then 9700 or lower resolutions where it has more room to work. also as Rucsac said the immage quality even without the special features is beter and the dx9 copatiablty is just a bonus that will come in handy down the line. as fpr gigabyte vs ati, realy not much diffrence except for the packageing, software bundles and the extra cooling to assist in overclocking, not that you need to overclock anyway. actualy the saphire oem is the best deal i have seen at the moment and agian prety much the same thing as the orignal ati.

 

[EdibleAutopsy]

Thanks for all your replys ............... I've decided to go with the Radeon 9700 pro..............

 

[shurato]

Define NEED.... a geforce2 mx400 will not be able to run the latest games right now at a suitable frame-rate. If you like running games very choppy then I guess there is no "need" for anything better.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The ATi card has alot better 2D quality than Nvidia's and you can run games just as fast (faster most of the time) with MAX Anti Aliasing and MAX Ansiotropic Filtering enabled. Just a little more money for faster card with better quality picture.

You might also want to know that Gigabyte and ATI have the SAME CARD. The only difference being the software bundle and the Gigabyte having ramsinks and a faster spinning fan on the Core because of the smaller HSF.