Video card help

[Redjack]

I recently had a birthday and intend to use money received to get a new video card, but need some advice as to which to get. My budget is limited so the following is what I am considering.

FX5900XT 128MB
FX5700 Ultra 128MB (EVGA Version as it uses DDR3 memory)
FX5700LE 256MB
FX5700 256MB
FX5600 256MB

Of these cards which do you think would do the best job in Doom3 and games of a similar nature? Which is faster?, and how important is the extra video memory in regards to the various cards? I cannot afford anything better then these as my ceiling for getting a card cannot exceed $180USD, and preferably it should be a fair amount less. I am just trying to get the best I can with the money I have, and upgrade from my GeForce3 Ti200 64MB card as I want to see some of the effects programmable shaders provide.

P4 2.4Ghz (533MHz)
640MB DDR ram
240GB HD over three drives
latest drivers for vid card
(in case you wondered on my specs. Yeah I know it is not the latest or greatest, but it is what I can currently afford)

[warmonger]

don't like nvidiot, but 5700LE 256. it's likely it can be safely o/c'd to 5700 spec. did the same thing with a radeon 8500LE and had no probs at all

[Bloodshedder]

I'd stay away from any card that has LE or SE as a suffix. Your best bet out of the choices given would be the 5900XT. Have you bothered looking at any ATI cards?

[AirRaid]

I'd say the 5900XT from that list too.

[Redjack]

So the FX 5900XT would be the best bet?, what is different between the XT version and the regular FX 5900? No comment was made on the amount of video memory, does that mean it is incidental to the card's performance?, or is the 5900 just that better?

As to ATI cards, I've never owned one but had a friend that had a bad experience with one with "fire" in it's model name. I've also heard that they are slow in releasing new drivers and that some of the drivers have problems. I don't know about Doom3, but UT is optimizied for Nvidia, otherwise they would not advertise it in the game itself. Besides, I am not sure if I could get a comparable ATI card for what I can afford to spend. I will look into it, but in the mean time what ATI card is comparable to the 5900XT?

[Sephiroth]

ATI cards are nice. i have the 9600XT however if you plan to use linux, or unix. always get Nvidia, for now, as linux drivers sucks.

9800pro cards are down to a decent price, but for me i wish i had bought a 5900 or something.

[Bloodshedder]

The XT is simply a higher clocked version (both core and memory clocks) of the regular 5900. Video RAM will have some importance in the equation, but you're better off choosing a faster card (e.g. the 5900XT) than a slower card with more memory (the 57 or 5600's with 256MB). If you could find a regular 5900 or an XT with 256MB, I'd probably go for that, as new high-end cards are moving towards 256MB as standard.

As for your problems with ATI cards: the FireGL is a professional-level workstation card not meant for gaming. As such, it doesn't have a lot of bearing on this situation. And opposite to what you may think, recently ATI has been releasing drivers much more often than nVidia has, often times every couple of weeks.

You also might mention exactly what you can afford to spend. An ATI Radeon 9800 Pro would be roughly equivalent to the 5900XT.

[Redjack]

Well Bloodshedder if you had read my original post in this thread, you would have seen that $180USD was what I was prepared to spend. Possibly a bit more if the card warrents it, but I would prefer to spend a bit less if possible. It was not the FireGL card my friend had, it was the card ATI had out when Everquest first came out, the card made his computer crash everytime he tried to play it due to bad drivers I guess.

Does the 9800 Pro have eqivillent shaders as the 5900XT?, because the whole point of getting a new card is so I can play Doom3 and similar games with the options turned up better then what I currantly have using my ancient GeForce3 TI 200 64MB card. I've seen the 5900XT with 256MB of memory, I think, but the price is much higher then what I can afford. Unless of course I find it somewhere for a decent price. You would think that they would lower the prices on the FX series now that they have the 6800's out.

[Redjack]

Are Chaintech and Gigabyte good manufactures of video cards? There is only a $2 difference in price between the two, and the gigabyte has more software included, but I still would like to know if one is better then the other?

[Bloodshedder]

Redjack said:

Does the 9800 Pro have eqivillent shaders as the 5900XT?

Of course it does. They're both DirectX 9 compatible, and are pixel shader 2.0 compliant. None of the nonsense between the X800 and the 6800 with pixel shader 2.0a vs. pixel shader 3.0. A Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB will set you back about $140.

Either Chaintech or Gigabyte would be a decent choice for a card maker.

[AirRaid]

Ew Gigabyte.

Chaintech or Sapphire. :P

Although Sapphire tend to be a little more pricy I think. The Gainward of ATI cards. :P

Edit: To back up my "ew Gigabyte" statement, I've read a couple of "big graphics card comparisons" in PC magazines recently, putting a bunch of similar cards from different manufacturers side by side, and both times Gigabyte came out near the bottom. I'd pick the Chaintech card. How do you think Gigabyte can afford to bundle all that extra software? ;)

[Mogul]

As biased as this will sound at first, I really believe it's true. I used to be a pretty anti nVidia, what with the cheating on the benchmarks, and them being "sell-outs" and all that garbage -- but really --

ATI is seriously falling behind at this point. nVidia is absolutely the way to go -- especially if you're going to be spending your time with DOOM 3 engine games (like Quake IV, or the new Wolfenstein [unofficially announced by Tood H] for instance).

I was just reading a hardware magazine five or six days ago, and they gave nVidia's 6800 Ultra a 9/10, while right below it, whatever the hottest ATI card is at the moment, they gave it a 6/10.

Also posted there was a list of benchmarks done with both cards, and of course, the nVidia smashed the ATI by a difference of 30+ fps on DOOM 3. Oh, and the ATI was $30 more than the nVidia.

It does make a differnce what brand you buy -- and at this point, nVidia is definitely in the lead.

[Bloodshedder]

Although what you say is true for high-end cards like the Geforce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X800XT, the performance difference is very small when comparing both companies' previous generation cards: the Radeon 9x00 series and the Geforce FX series.