Is This A Good Card?

[kazaaliterock]

hmmm okay i found another deals. should i sent the 9100 back and get this card? its a 9200 128mb. its $25 more.

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by kazaaliterock@20 October 2003 - 21:36
so the radeon 9100 pro im getting in 2 days is the same as the fx5200

performance wise, close. gfx 5200 has more memory, but speed is about the same. maybe u should save up for a new mobo and 9500 pro. really good but expensive.

and how much u pay for dsl? if it's over 40, u should get cable.

[kazaaliterock]

45 a month, i got a cable deal taht said 2mb connection for 40 a month. but i heard that if a lot of ppl in ur neighbor got the same cable ur speed is gonna be crawling.


i would do taht but im not gonna spent taht much on the maching im planning to upgrade. if im gonna buy a new mobo and gfx card im just gonna build a new comp. (planning to in the next months or so).

but is teh 9200se 128mb better then the 9100 pro 64mb. i heard that the 9000 and 9100 are faster then the 9200. but its only 25 dollars more and have dx 9.0 support adn twice as much memory. so should i stick w/ 9100 or send it back to get teh 9200 se

[3RA1N1AC]

Originally posted by kazaaliterock@20 October 2003 - 13:45
hmmm okay i found another deals. should i sent the 9100 back and get this card? its a 9200 128mb. its $25 more.

nah, the one you already chose should be fine. you're getting a 9100 Pro, right? due to a bit of complicated fiddling with the designs on the part of the video card companies, the model numbers sometimes betray their actual performance. a 9100 Pro should be just as good as (if not better than) a 9200 non-Pro.

Nvidia is guilty of creating the same kind of confusion by making some of their GeForce FX cards "Ultra" models and some of them non-Ultra, though.

DirectX 9 support is a nice thing to have, but to be honest i don't think any PCI card that's out right now is fast enough to use DirectX 9 hardware effects anyway. you could enable them, but it would just ruin your card's performance. even this year's AGP cards are having trouble rendering DirectX 9 effects at an acceptable speed. DirectX 8.1 hardware support is definitely "good enough," for a mid-range video card.

[kazaaliterock]

no just found out it was a reg 9100 . so should i switch?

[kazaaliterock]

i dont get teh whole dx 9 thing. my friends got a mx440 agp and he uses dx 9.0 w/ no problem. so just cuz it doenst say it support 9.0 doesnt mean it wont right?


hes play gta vice city which uses dx 9.0 w/ 50-60 fps on med setting at 800x600 fine.

so would the radeon 9100 im getting play the gta vc okay? or should i go 9200

[3RA1N1AC]

Originally posted by kazaaliterock@20 October 2003 - 14:06
i dont get teh whole dx 9 thing. my friends got a mx440 agp and he uses dx 9.0 w/ no problem. so just cuz it doenst say it support 9.0 doesnt mean it wont right?


hes play gta vice city which uses dx 9.0 w/ 50-60 fps on med setting at 800x600 fine.

so would the radeon 9100 im getting play the gta vc okay? or should i go 9200

check this out-- http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=445&pid=1591

i'd stick with the 9100. it generally rules. the only test where it does badly is on the jedi knight test-- but that's due to a glitch in the game, not because there's anything wrong with the card. either ATI or LucasArts will prolly fix that problem eventually.

as for directx 8, directx 9... a gf4mx is compatible with them because nvidia's drivers are written to comply with them. but "hardware support" means that the card accelerates all of the graphic effects that are specific to those directx versions. for example, a gf4mx or radeon 7000 could conceivably display modern pixel-shader effects (most well-known for creating a very nice shimmering effect on large masses of water, in recent games), but it would have to be done through the drivers and it would be incredibly slow. a geforce 3/4Ti/FX or a radeon 8500/9000/9500/9800 is designed to handle that effect through its own microchips, and speed it up to a point where it's actually usable.

Vice City is compatible with DirectX 9, but it contains no effects that are specific to DX9. so you don't need hardware DX9 compliance to see all of its effects. your card would display the exact same thing as your friend's card, but with better frame rates... and it'd prolly give you a bit of headroom to enable driver-based filters like Full Screen Anti Aliasing (to smooth the edges) and still maintain a nice framerate.

in contrast, Halo for example has some DX9 effects that you can only view with certain cards (unfortunately the DX9-specific effects slow the game to a crawl on nearly all cards, though)-- but the game still looks pretty darn good on a DX8 card like a radeon 9100 or 9200.

[kazaaliterock]

i luv u brainiac for posting taht link. i luv u . luv u luv u *give big sloppy kiss* lol.


but ne ways y is teh 9200 128mb slower then the reg 9100 64mb (the one im getting in 2 days woohoo)?


so the games taht need dx 9.0 could still run on a 9100 but w/o the dx9.0 features right? so basically i dont need a card taht support dx9.0 if teh dx 9.0 features dont matter to me.

[ToyotaSupra]

If your going to buy online and you live in the USA go to http://www.newegg.com they have awesome quality and fast shipping.

[3RA1N1AC]

Originally posted by kazaaliterock+20 October 2003 - 14:51--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (kazaaliterock &#064; 20 October 2003 - 14:51)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> so the games taht need dx 9.0 could still run on a 9100 but w/o the dx9.0 features right? so basically i dont need a card taht support dx9.0 if teh dx 9.0 features dont matter to me. [/b]

basically. it will be a year or two at least, before more than a handful of games require support for dx9 features.

<!--QuoteBegin-kazaaliterock@20 October 2003 - 14:51
but ne ways y is teh 9200 128mb slower then the reg 9100 64mb (the one im getting in 2 days woohoo)? [/quote]
like i said, it&#39;s the video card company messing around with the design. regardless of mhz (which is only part of the bigger picture), they&#39;ve cut something out of the 9200 that affects its performance.