New card v Geforce 3

[iandredd]

I have been thinking about replacing my geforce 3 card because its getting old and the fan has died. My current budget is a max of £150 so I cant afford a top spec card like when I got the Geforce 3. Anyway I have been looking at the specs and as far as I can tell the Geforce 3 is still a comparatively fast card. I was thinking of getting either a XFX GeForce FX 5900 XT or a MSI GeForce FX5900. Should I just stick with the old card or get either of the new cards I mentioned, if so which one? Or should I get something different altogether? Sorry for asking so many questions.

[Howard]

You'll replace that ageing GF3 with a Sapphire Radeon 9800Pro from any of the fine retailers such as OCUK or Ebuyer. And you'll not even think of purchasing anything else

[chaoticone]

get a geforce fx5800 ultra if you can cheeper and almost as fast as the ati 9800 pro

[Howard]

And nowhere near as good with DirectX 9 as the 9800Pro

[streetster]

maybe you should hold out a few months for the r400 / nv40 chips to come out, might drive down 9800 prices further... but yeh if you want to get something now there's r9800pro with 2ns (ie 1ghz) memory for £155 on komplett...

mark

[ERU]

If you deffo want a Geforce get this 5900 from Mirodirect for £135

[Kezzer]

nah a 9800 Pro imho

[Wam7]

I've have to say with current prices of the 9800pro they're the best buys out at the moment. Shame you didn't get one a few weeks ago as Komplett were selling them for £135 inc! Still a very good buy as £155.

If you think you're GF3 is relatively fast at the moment wait till you see a 9800pro!

[iandredd]

Thanks very much for the advice guys, it's most appreciated!

[da_ging]

the best bang for buck card is the aopen geforce 5900 at dabs at the mo ,should happily overclock to 5950 speeds and is a nice £129 , or you can spend £20 more and get a 9800 pro for £150

[Howard]

That's not true, the 5900 isn't the best bang-for-buck card. The 9800pro is faster, and the ATi cards have much better DX9 handling. Don't bother with the 5900, get the 9800pro. It's well worth it

[da_ging]

the 9800pro aint that much faster and certainly does not beat the 5900 across the board they are pretty even tbh when all things considered (ie extra cooling needed to overclock 9800's + no default memory cooling + slow ram), although the new cats supposedly give better shader performance for the raddy but i aint seen any benchies to see if its true

whats annoying is i have yet to see a proper review that compares the 2 cards properly which is rediculous when you think about it as they are the 2 main beasts most likely to be bought

[Howard]

Yeah the amount of graphics card reviews comparing "even" cards is quite bad to be honest...

*hint to Hexus review team ;P *

[Korky]

lol 5800 nearly as fast as 9800pro! ye when it comes to team fortress classic maybe

[blockers]

Well any card you get now is going to run any game now completly flawlessly. Its when it comes to HL2/D3 that you people will argue lots, and we wont know how any card performs until they are released

[Korky]

hl2 is ati, doom 3 nvidia but my guess is 9800pro will still outperform 5800 at doom3 no matter how nvidiab0y they make it.