Graphics Card

Hi', There,
I am using a, Creative Geforce 3 Ti200 64DDR. Agp Graphics Card.

And have the urge to replace, also £140.00p. burning a hole in
my pocket.

What can members advise ?,
as out there its like a jungle.

1 Ati. or 2 Nvidia ?.
128DDR minimum, 256DDR preferred if possible or suitable.
"Don't forget, its my money your spending, so don't get to ambitious".

I would like to point out that at this moment in time I do not play
Graphics intensive games.
Just thought an upgrade would be nice.

Over to you Clever Bods.

:D

System. Amd.2000+ Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Kingston 512Mb. 2700
G3 Ti200 64DDR Agp.

With Thanks from Harry. :confused:

Lot's of people have invested in these ATi Radeon 9800SE AIW (All in Wonder) cards that have come onto the market as of late. Using third party drivers, (Omega, I think?) you can soft mod (some of) them, so they will run at a normal 9800 AIW speeds. They can then be overclocked to >9800 Pro AIW speeds.

I actually have no idea of the technicalities, but the rate of success seems worth the pennies. If your softmod is unsuccessful (ie, you get chequerboard effect, etc), you still have a cracking card. If I had the cash.. I'd buy it just for the remote control that you get! :)

Btw, should have posted this in Find Me a Bargain, although I'm sure it'll be moved soon enough.

Hi', Theo,

Many thanks for your reply,
and the Hexus forum tip. "ooooagh".

But knowing me I would end up having to replace, the new card that I bought to replace.

Lol. :D

Harry.

For around £140 the Radeon 9600pro / 9600XT is incredible value. Excellent card.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Howard
For around £140 the Radeon 9600pro / 9600XT is incredible value. Excellent card.

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Or you can get the ATI AIW 9800se 128mb which is faster and has AIW which keeps the cards value over time ;)
-if it also mods to 9800pro then thats a bonus :D

You can get the softmod drivers HERE. It won't damage the card in any way to try, you will know it dont work if it shows artifacts & if it don't work just reinstall the old drivers.

Whats thd performance like on a 9800se AIW if the softmod doesn't work, compared to say a 9600XT?

I think its very similar as it is based on the same core, both have 4 pixel pipelines and 128bit memory.................................but dont quote me on that?

Hmmmm digit life suggest that the 9800se's dont seem to perform that well(UNMODDED!):

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...k-p4-1280.html

From the graph, it looks like the 9600XT (with NL2) seems pretty good bang for buck - you can get them for £120ish @ komplett .

Quote:

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Originally posted by silentphoenix
Hmmmm digit life suggest that the 9800se's dont seem to perform that well(UNMODDED!):

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...k-p4-1280.html

From the graph, it looks like the 9600XT (with NL2) seems pretty good bang for buck - you can get them for £120ish @ komplett .

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Depends on memory bus.

Quote:

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Originally posted by silentphoenix
Hmmmm digit life suggest that the 9800se's dont seem to perform that well(UNMODDED!):

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...k-p4-1280.html

From the graph, it looks like the 9600XT (with NL2) seems pretty good bang for buck - you can get them for £120ish @ komplett .

---

That full articlehas the 9800SE leading on only 4 benches narowly, where as with most benches it is down around 5% with a couple loosing by as much as 15%. Which is strange, as most other comparisons Ive seen has the 9800SE lead in DX8 benches mostly.

Prehaps Digits were using a driver not overly favoured by the SE.

Cat among the pigeons time.....

If you're not after anything that's 3D graphics intensive then what about a Matrox card? As far as I've seen they are simply the best for 2D work and have always had outstanding DVD performance too.

/retires to await a flaming... :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by Deckard
Cat among the pigeons time.....

If you're not after anything that's 3D graphics intensive then what about a Matrox card? As far as I've seen they are simply the best for 2D work and have always had outstanding DVD performance too.

/retires to await a flaming... :D

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I was going to say GeForceFX as Nvidia have better driver support (apart from there little slip up of the forceware ones) and seem faster in 2D but hadn't thought of Matrox ... that is probably your best bet, esp if you use multi monitors!

i would say the new geforce fx5700 got really fast ram giving it bandwidth of 14.4gb which i belive over shadows the 9600 which is about 9 gb iirc(correct me if i'm wrong ) kustom pc gave it a really good review they were very impressed i'm tempted myself.

should have added thats the gainward fx powerpack ultra 960 golden sample, (stupid name i know but looks one hell of a midrange card) they reviewd 139.99 www.scan.co.uk

I've been a big fan of nVidia over the years but the current range of FX cards seems to lack something. In real world gaming under DirectX 9 the FX cards perform very poorly and so they will date very quickly once Halflife 2 et al come out.

If you look in the Bargain Hunt forum, there's a thread about Radeon 9700 Pros going for £150. If you're quick, you might be able to grab one.

From what I've seen, the 9600pro seems to great value, you can pick one up from cpucity.co.uk for about £120 now.