I'd stick with the Sapphire, last one of those HIS cards I got, a bearing went on the mammoth cooler and started annoying the hell out of me.
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I'd stick with the Sapphire, last one of those HIS cards I got, a bearing went on the mammoth cooler and started annoying the hell out of me.
I now need to sell my BFG 6800GS
The X1950 Pro isn't cheap, it's just not overcharging for the sake of a PCIe->AGP bridge chip. nVidia cards have been pricey for awhile now. Just look at the differences between AGP cards using PCIe GPUs and their native PCIe counter-parts.
I have seen such performance reviews (however they were old so not compaired with my 7800GS specifically), although 'inferior' is too strong a word, the 7800GS performs well, and granted if it had the same amount of shaders it would probably beat the X1950 Pro hands down.
I own both cards, and I have niggly gripes with both companies so I'm not biased towards either of them, and it's been my experience that reviews are usually biased, errornous, or just plain wrong. I'd rather trust my own eyes and brain if I can.
The performance of the two cards is near as hell the same... Personally i find that with ATI cards the image produced is slightly sharper but tbf it depends what game you are going to be playing. For example UT2004 and Call of Duty are best with nvidia cards and Oblivion or Prey are better with ATI. (i think :s)
Cheaper is always better when upgrading out of date systems IMO.