The Graphics card I have now, is well pathetic.
(Sapphire Radeon 9200SE 128mgb)
Sure, its 128MGB of processing prowess, but i may as well put a gig of ram in a 300mhz cpu. For games on my PC, It comes down to running Halo 1 on the very lowest settings, Splinter Cell 1 on the very lowest settings, Prince of Persia 1 on semi-lowest settings and when I buy Half-life 2 I will end up taking drugs to make it seem like its running fine.
The rest of my cpu’s specs are well above standard, so they are not a concern.
www.futureshop.ca (I am Canadian, all Canadian $$$) has a great sale going on and guarantees the lowest prices.
I will not buy the most expensive card out there nor will I buy anything other than an ATI card.
I’ve narrowed it down to the following:
ATI Radeon x700 Pro 256MB - $299
ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB - $299 (on sale)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - $349
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9600XT 128 MB - $199 (on sale)
ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB - $299 (although I found this card at Best Buy for $259)
Right now, the x700 is probably what i’d buy. Can anyone make any suggestions? Other make of card? Other well known stores? why one card is better then the other, and if it really matters?
Something I noticed while reading the specs of the x700 is that the ‘clock speed’ is: “430mhz (860mhzDDR)”. What the heck? how can they double the number and claim its that speed?
First of all, most cards (and regular computer memory as well) these days have Double Data Rate (DDR) memory - that means the memory on the card can transfer 2 bits at the same time, so DDR memory running at 430mhz has the same effective bandwidth as nonDDR memory running at 860mhz.
Note that the “128mbg” refers to the amount of memory on your card - 128 megabytes; it has nothing to do with processing ability, just like the amount of RAM you have has nothing to do with how fast your processor is.
Generally with video cards, there are 3 things that determine how fast it is:
The first is having enough memory to fit the game into memory; if the game’s video data doesn’t fit into the memory, then the game will really slow down, when it has to use much slower main RAM. Most games today use less than 128mb of video RAM, so adding more won’t help all that much - even Doom 3 & HL2 don’t go over 128mb unless you run at 1600x1200, max settings.
Secondly, memory bandwidth, or how fast the memory is. This is determined by how wide the memory address bus is (your 9200SE has a 64bit bus, which cripples it next to the regular 9200’s that have a 128bit bus; high end cards have a 256bit bus) multiplied by how fast the memory is - like that 860mhz effective RAM you mentioned.
Third, there is how fast the GPU is (measured in mhz), how good the GPU (this various from design to design) and how many pixel pipelines the GPU has - the Radeon 9200, for example, has 4 pixelpipelines, meaning it can do operations on 4 pixels at once; higher end cards like the Radeon 9800 Pro have 8 pixel pipelines, and the uber cards these days have 12 or 16 pixel pipes.
Finally, while the Radon x700 Pro is a very good card, and the fastest that you listed, but it is only available in PCI-Express form. PCI-E is the new slot factor that is going to replace the PCI/AGP bus in current machines like yours. So you are going to be limited to AGP video cards; the Radeon 9800 Pro is the fastest AGP card you listed; - go with the AIW version, as it comes with a built in TV-Tuner, and seems to be cheaper at the web site you want to buy from.
Thank you Random Letters if it wasn’t for you I would of bought the video card that would not fit in my cpu!
I didgo with the 9800 AIW and WOW. It installed no problem and the games I have all run on the highest settings smooth as butter, I can’t beleive what I was missing.
Now, if fucking Steam ever finishes its decrypting of HL2, I can go and play that.
Anyone know how long this will take on dial-up? since I placed disc 1 of 5 in, its been around 2 hours installing.