please explain

[shiato storm]

i am wondering something...
i see several sites showing graphics cards for sale from the meagre 32Mb right up to the powerful 256 or more Mb...and in varying models.
now I noticed a radeon 9200 256Mb for around £80 (tv out and dual monitor) where as a 9800 of 256 is several times more expensive.
in what way is the 9200 256 different to the 9800? assuming i know very little about how things work - what is there to stop a mod on an £80 card to give it an expensive feel.

just hope some one can clarify that, cheers

[Byatt]

well, there's a few horrible obstacles in your way to transforming a 9200 into a 9800 Pro...

the 9200 (256Mb version) is equipped with slooow, non-bga ram modules - they simply cannot go anywhere near as quickly as the small, quicker RAM on the 9800 cards...

The 9200 is also built around a completely different graphics processor (or gpu) and card architecture (things like pixel pipelines, for instance, where the 9800 has 8, the 9200 only has 4) to the 9800...not only that, but the core on 9800 cards is clocked to a much higher speed, and can/will do more work for each of those clock cycles than the 9200 would.

This also means that the 9200 just doesn't have the circuitry to fully support directx9.0 (different pixel shading units on the card itself).

I've tried to keep that relatively simple, I don't think I've succeeded tremendously well in explaining because of that...sorry if I have.

[SilentDeath]

heres teh simplest way of explaining it without me thinking about it, some of it is bound to be wrong:

9500 and + are the only ati cards worth buying. 9500np could be soft modded with 10-20% chance of sucsess. 9700np was best value, clocking v high and can outperform a stock 9800pro.

the 9200 was the 9100 which was also the 9000 which, before that was the 8500 which had many variants. its the 8500 and a few cards b4 that had teh driver issues that gave ati bad reputation (which should all now be fixed). teh 9200 is slower than the original 8500, and it doesnt do dx9...

there is no point in a 256mb version of anycard less than a 9700np (256mb v of these dont exist though) as teh cards simply are to slow to make use of it, and tbh the 9800p cant make much use of the extra 128mb yet, and thats only a few fps difference in very high res with all the eyecandy.

Austin knows about everything about ati cards atm, do a search as he described them all in a different thread somewhere few days ago

[shiato storm]

ah cool. i actually do understand about a reasonable amount of technical details on graphics cards: pipelines etc. but it was just confusing to see a 256mb card at such a low price - me thinks of old steam engine puffing out lots of heat and steam but going not very fast... i take it this is the same for all graphic card types.
so its more the quality of parts used that determines architechture of the card - which determines the overall accessability of the memory thus speed at which it can go.

p.s. i have a 64Mb Geforce2 mx400 - ANYTHING is faster than me!! but want decent buget card...

[Tom]

best budget is a gf4 ti4200, can be had with careful shoppin for around 50 quid. Is on parr with 9600 pro at brute power, but doesnt support dx9 and doesnt handle AA and AF as well. They clock well, often surpassing 4400 speeds

next is the 9600 pro showing a small performance boost over the 4200, and can also clock reasonably well. The 9500 pro is a better card, but is very hard to find now. the 9600p can handle aa and af a lot better than 4200 and obviously support dx9, but it comes at a premium as the cheapest ive seen is £120 from ebuyer (tyan tachyon).

the 9700 and further are high end cards. The 9800SE seems good value for money if u can find one, as it is based on the 9500 core but clocked faster. 9700s altho hard to find can be bargains if u can find them.

i would stray away from the GeForce FX series at the moment, they have been a complete flop in my eyes, especially after seeing the Half Life 2 benchmarks. nVidia tried to rectify the piss poor performance by reducing image quality to increase FPS, but the reviewes spotted this straight away.

ATM ATi is the way forward, or nvidia + its gf4 ti4200 if ur lookin for bang for buck

[SilentDeath]

i expected u would understand but i just cba to type it...

the thread austin done/posted has teh technical stuff of why which ones are faster are...

if u wanan cheap budget acrd id go for a gf4ti4200 128mb version, u could get away with the 64mb one but i expect slightly high performce loss from that... the 128mb one costs about £60 new and teh 64mb one ive seen for £45 new, take off £15 off either if u get one second hand

[shiato storm]

ah, now i've found a ti4200 and there are a couple of versions, as mentioned. is there a difference between the 'turbo/extra' types over the non-extra ones?...or is it all a bit of a muchness

[shiato storm]

i also found a GFx 5200 128ddr at £45...i'm guessing lower grade components?...or should i simply stay away from FX cards for the mo.

[Austin]

As pretty much covered the newer series of cards (eg 9200 vs 9800) offer faster speeds, more features and are more efficient.

Regarding the 4200 cards (well any cards really) completely disregard the 'Turbo', 'Enhanced' type stuff as most of the time it's just meaningless garble, Gainward are the worst for this. The only things to really note are the official family designations such as MX (slow), SE (slow), TI, ULTRA and PRO. You can't even take the official model name as 100% gospel as 4600 is faster than the 4800SE, just as the Rad9000-9200 are slower than the Rad8500. Also note the bottom end of the next generation are often slower than the high end (or even mid-range) of the previous generation. For example the GF3TI200 is faster and superior in 3D compared to the whole GF4MX line, also the GF4TI4200 is faster than the GF-FX5200-5600. I've already covered the 9000-9200 vs 8500 scene but another ATI example is the Rad9600PRO vs Rad9500PRO and Rad9700 (even nonPRO) vs Rad9800SE.

What you should look at first is RAM size. 128MB is what you should consider although a GF4TI4200 64MB is easily better than a GF-FX5200 256MB or Rad9200 256MB. The original AGP4x 4200's (denoted 4200) had the 128MB version with slightly slower RAM than the 64MB but having more of it did make it up back then and easily does so now. However modern AGP8x 4200 (denoted 4200-8X) should have the same faster clocks, so the 128MB version is easily better. The AGP8x in itself is pointless, so don't worry if you have an AGP4x mobo. You should also consider capabilities (eg DVI, TVout, VIVO) and bundle (DVI-to-CRT convertor, games, leads) and of course price. There are enhanced 4200 cards which use the improved 8 layer design and fast BGA RAM, these are easily as good as the 4600/4800 if you o/c them (which they are designed for). These are ...

1. Albatron P Turbo
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1226&page=1
http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/v...atron_Ti4200p/

2. Suma Special Edition
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1022073316
http://www.overclockers.ru/news/news...&id=1022012270

3. Asus 4200 Deluxe (not quite as special)
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx

Do consider the extra price these cards demand, if they are similarly priced to a Rad9600PRO (£130ish) then the Rad is easily better in all categories. A std 4200 is still a very good card and tend to o/c to 4400/4800SE speeds at least.

The GF-FX5200 is better than GF4MX, Rad9000-9200 and GF3TI200 but is way inferior to the GF4TI4200. The FX5200ultra is quite a lot better and just behind the FX5600 ... but even the FX5600ultra (£150ish) can struggle to keep up with GF4TI4200. The only FX it's worth going for is the FX5200 when on a very tight budget as it beats the competing Rad9000-9200, otherwise the GF4TI or Rad9600PRO+ are easily better solutions than the rest of the FX range.

[shiato storm]

oooh so much info.
thank you very much