Graphics Card Guide

[bigdawgfoxx]

Graphics Card Guide as of 4/04

This is a guide for those of you who are looking for graphics cards.

This thread will be updated weekly.

First, lets start with a little information on the two biggest leaders in graphics card production:

· ATI
ATI makes some of the best graphics cards available. ATIs' line of graphics card that supports DirectX 9 is the Radeon Series.

·Nvidia
Nvidia is the other leading graphics card company. Nvidias DirectX 9 version of graphics cards is the FX series.

· Drivers

ATI's latest set of drivers can be found here.
Catlyst 4.4 Drivers
Select your Operating System, Graphics Driver, Then your family of cards.

Nvidia's latest set of drivers can be found here.
ForceWare Release 50
Select Graphics Driver, Your familiy of cards, Then your Operating System.

· Graphics Cards

Here is a pretty extensive list of the newer cards produced by both companies.

· Low-End Cards

ATI
These cards will range in price from about $40-$100.

Radeon 7000 32MB
Radeon 7000 64MB
Radeon 7500LE 128MB
Radeon 8500 128MB
Radeon 9000 64MB
Radeon 9000Pro 128MB
Radeon 9100 128MB
Radeon 9200SE 128MB
Radeon 9200 64MB
Radeon 9200 128MB
Radeon 9200 256MB


Nvidia

GeForce2 MX200 32MB
GeForce2 MX400 32MB
GeForce2 MX400 64MB
GeForce4 MX420 64MB
GeForce4 MX440SE 64MB
GeForce4 MX440SE 128MB
GeForce4 MX440 64MB
GeForce4 MX400 128MB
GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB
GeForce FX5200 128MB
GeForce FX5200 Ultra 128MB
GeForce FX5200 256MB

· Mid-Range Cards
These cards will range in price from about $100-$190.

ATI

Radeon 9600SE 128MB
Radeon 9600 128MB
Radeon 9600Pro 128MB
Radeon 9600XT 128MB
Radeon 9800SE 128MB

Nvidia

GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB
GeForce4 Ti4800SE 128MB
GeForce FX5600XT 128MB
GeForce FX5600XT 256MB
GeForce FX5600 128MB
GeForce FX5600 256MB
GeForce FX5600 Ultra 128MB
GeForce FX5700 128MB
GeForce FX5700 256MB

· High-End Cards
These cards will range in price from about $170-$500.

ATI

Radeon 9700 128MB
Radeon 9700Pro 128MB
Radeon 9800Pro 128MB
Radeon 9800Pro 256MB
Radeon 9800XT 256MB
***
X800Pro 256MB

Nvidia

GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128MB
GeForce FX5900SE 128MB
GeForce FX5900XT 128MB
GeForce FX5900 128MB
GeForce FX5900 Ultra 256MB
GeForce FX5950 Ultra 256MB
***
GeForce 6800 256MB
GeForce 6800GT 256MB
GeForce 6800Ultra 256MB

· Benchmarks

Here I will display pictures of various benchmarks produced by Tom's Hardware.

I will not say which card is best for your money unless you PM me. Look at these benchmarks and see which cards perform best.

Here are all the cards in this guide performing in some of your favorite games.

Unreal Tournament 2003



Call of Duty



·High Quality Benchmarks

Here are the high quality benchmarks. By this I mean that Anisotropic and Antialaising filtering is on. What these do is smooth out edges that may be ruff or jaged. These are the benchmarks you should look at if you want your games to look increadibly good.

Unreal Tournament 2003



Call of Duty



Keep in mind that 30 frames per second is said to be very smooth with no jumping or jerkyness.

Tomshardware.com Source

It should be noted that the Nvidia cards with the XT symbol is the equivilant of the SE symbol. This is a lighter version of the card. It could have less pipelines, or slower memory and core speeds. These cards are slower then the non XT or SE cards.

· Graphics Card Reviews

Here are some of the places I recommend you looking if you want to see some in detail reviews on various graphics cards.

Overclockers.com
Tomshardware.com
Xbitlabs.com
Anandtech.com

There it is. There is the complete list of low-end, mid-range, and high-end graphics cards from the two leading graphics card companies in the world.

Suggestions/Comments/Updates? Please PM me.

[neevakee]

very nice i hope this eliminates a lot of the questions. The whole board will be talking about this one

[Dray_04]

Awesome bigdawg,

way better than my guide ..

lol, not that i spent much time on mine, but then we are both just trying to get an idea across to our peers

GOOD JOB

[abu_has_the_power]

good job both o ya. but i got a q. wat's the point that these threads are showing? so u get links to all the popular vd cards, ok... now wat?

[Dray_04]

it saves people asking the same questions such as "which card should i get, i only have so an so money, also what card will be good for my blah blah blah system, i really love playing blah blah so i wanna know which card is the best"

lol


...or sumthing like that

[peat moss]

Ya great after I bought mine too Ah pin both seems like video cards make the computer world go round B)




Hey kool can some one start a tweak guide for noobies now? Dwk I throw down the challenge . Just kidding bud

[j4y3m]

If I buy a Radeon 9800XT will it be able to play future games for atleast a couple of years?

[adamp2p]

Let me see here. Well nobody's going to have a problem with your intentions, big dawg; clearly they are good.

However, as far as a pinned topic goes, it is really hard to pin something that summarizes something as volitile as the graphics card market, which changes literally every day.

There are some instances where I noted that the links you provided were not really the cheapest available on todays market. Some of today's cheapest hardware can be found at allstarshop.com and zipzoomfly.com; but it really depends on what day of the week it is, if you know what I mean.

Another issue is the fact that a large proportion of the members of this forum do not live in the United States, and although many members do know the value of the US dollar as a multiple of their currency, it might not help those who do not.

Today the Sapphire Technologies Radeon 9800 Pro is available at allstarshop.com in the RETAIL form for $225 USD. However, in the UK, and most of Europe (who's currency is the Euro), the exact same Sapphire Technologies Radeon 9800 Pro costs significantly more than $225 USD. Sapphire decided to lower the price in the US because that is where the equilibrium price for that card is today. Different countries have different markets big dawg, so it might be a better idea to stick with summarizing what qualities a card has rather than its price.

Other than that, big dawg, it looks nice. I am just trying to point a couple of things out that came to mind while I was reading your post.

[Dray_04]

thats what i was thinking adam.

theres so many varibles for graphic cards these days, and theres really no point in putting up prices etc...

but like big dawg sed, if hes up to it, he'l update the list every week

good luck man

[atiVidia]

@bigdawg: u missed a card: actually a lot of cards: but why do I care....