ATI Radeon 7500 vs. GeForce3 Ti200

[AirRaid]

I'm thinking of getting a new Graphics card. I won't have the money for a bit yet, but I've got my choices down to two cards which are in my price range. Which card would you say is better? Advantages/Disadvantes etc.

I know this has nothing to do with doom... except that I'll be getting Doom3 when it comes out, and I'll definately need a new card for that... Gimme your views. Please.

[elbryan42]

GeForce3 - Super fast, super expensive, very compatible, no hassles, no tweaking

Radeon - Super fast, not as expensive, but you'll be tweaking most of your older games just to get them to work.

I prefer ease of use to speed and price myself. It all depends on your preference. GeForce 3 is still too expensive IMO, but if someone were to give me one or the other, I would pick the GeForce3 over the Radeon.

[Crendowing]

GeForce 3 is still too expensive IMO

No fucking shit! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather NOT be quadraplegic yet. (bad joke)

[AirRaid]

Well, I can get a GF3 Ti200 for about £180 now, and a Radeon 7500 for about £120. These prices are just from dabs.com - I could probably get them a fair bit less if I looked around. Anyone know any really good online computer parts places? Preferably one that will deal in pounds...

[Katarhyne]

Well, neither of these will run Doom 3, so I hope you realize that. The Ti200 is moderately faster, but nothing you'll really notice unless you have an AthlonXP or a high-speed P4. The newer Radeons (with the exception of the 8500, actually) have much fewer compatibility problems than the older ones did, and the 7500 is a beast of a video card; and cheap to boot! I like it a lot. It's really a great card.

On the one hand, on the OTHER hand, you have the Ti200. It's fast. It's not real expensive. It's a castrated Geforce 3 with lower quality control and cheaper RAM. What do you want? There's not much to say. It's very compatible.

Personally, I'd take the Radeon 7500 over the Ti200, just because of the slightly improved 2D image quality. The 3D image quality is similar, before you take into account things like Trilinear filtering and Anisotropic filtering (which I can go into, if you'd like). It comes down to this:

If you like IQ
-and like to fiddle with settings:
Ti200
-and like to leave things the way they are:
7500

If you like speed
-and like to fiddle with settings
7500
-and like to leave things alone:
Ti200

So there you go.

[Zaldron]

Well, neither of these will run Doom 3, so I hope you realize that.

To reinforce that fact, in order to prevent people from doing the stupid mistake of buying one of these video cards just for DooM 3, I'll also mention that not even a high speed P4/AthlonXP would really affect the game's performance.

The rendering modules are based around the card's GPU, the CPU has little to nothing to do with this, as it's being used for advanced physics and the AI.

ALSO, if you're planning to upgrade your comp for this game, make sure you get the <BEST> motherboard possible. The last thing you need for DOOM is a bottleneck on your hardware, and that's likely to happen in the piece that ties everything.

[Crendowing]

Ya know, the reason I think it's taking so long to make this game is because the guys at id are thinking about the general public at the same time. There ARE other game players besides computer geeks, of course. Will the general public know how to use it when it comes out? It's all about the common sense and business of the matter.

[elbryan42]

I'm personally waiting to upgrade until Doom 3 comes out. This way I'm sure that I'll be running it at full speed. I can have that much patience. A P2 300 is good enough for me now. (OK, and I'm very poor at the moment too. ;) )

[spank]

I wonder if any of those cards would benefit my meagre K6/2 at 300 MHz at all.

[Katarhyne]

Both would, a little. They both have powerful (albeit the Ti200's is more) T&L engines onboard. And, when you upgrade your CPU/motherboard, you'll have a decent video card to use.

Or you could just get an Nforce.

[spank]

/me hmms.

Wouldn't the nForce imply a new processor too? I'm trying to acquire the least things possible at once.

[Katarhyne]

Yeah, but you can get an Nforce and a 1Ghz Duron (Morgan core) really cheap!

[spank]

/me hmms again...

That's an interesting idea... maybe I should check for availability here.

[AirRaid]

Thanks Kat! I'm probably gonna go with the Ti200. I do realize that these cards wouldn't really run Doom3, but I live 6 to 12 months behind the rest of the gaming world, cos I'm poor, and I can't keep up with the new technology. :(
Anyway... I have an Abit KT-7 Motherboard at the mo... which is OK. If I can afford it I might get a Duron 1.2 at the same time as my new gfx card... although I just saw that for an extra ten bucks or so I can get an Athlon 1.2... So I might as well...
About the anisotropic filtering etc... I'm always ready to learn stuff like that... so go for it, if you wanna.

[Katarhyne]

I feel like crap. Careful with those Jack-in-the-box Chicken Fajita Pita thingies.

Anyway, cool. Ti200 is a nice card. I have one. ^_^ I haven't used it much, but my friend Ashley (who usually plays on that machine) says it runs really fast. Which is only to be expected.

Yeah, NunoC, the Geforce2MX built into the Nforce isn't really that fast for 3D stuff but it's plenty fast for most stuff out there, and it has a fully-functional AGP slot so you can disable the onboard and put yourself a nice NV30 or R400 or whatever in there when Doom comes out. ^_^

The 1.2Ghz Duron can be faster than the classical 1.2Ghz Tbird, because it uses the Morgan core, which supports SSE, and also runs about 20% cooler, which means it can be overclocked more. Just a thought.

[AirRaid]

I feel like crap. Careful with those Jack-in-the-box Chicken Fajita Pita thingies.

I could'a told ya that... :P

The 1.2Ghz Duron can be faster than the classical 1.2Ghz Tbird, because it uses the Morgan core, which supports SSE, and also runs about 20% cooler, which means it can be overclocked more. Just a thought.

Interesting... Thanks for that.

[Katarhyne]

HOWEVER

It's also worth noting that the Athlon has a 133Mhz FSB as opposed to the Duron's 100Mhz FSB. And, the Athlon has 256K of cache. It really depends on what you're doing. The Athlon will be faster, more often.

[spank]

I'm afraid of onboard addons though. AFAIK they're a hassle (the Mach32 on my old Unisys AAAAARGH).

[Katarhyne]

WHEN ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING TO GET OVER ONBOARD STUFF! ONBOARD STUFF OWNS YOU!!!

In all seriousness, if you're building your own computer, you have NO legitimate reason to worry about onboard components IF you plan to use them. If you don't plan to use them then that's all fine and well but they can be very helpful and very cheap. And if you want to upgrade later, just disable them, no problem.

I like the nForce because it comes with ethernet, the Xbox's sound chip, and decent integrated video.

[Zaldron]

ONBOARD STUFF OWNS YOU!!!

MWHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA HA HAH AHHA HA HHAHHAHAHAH AH HWHAHAHAHAHAHHAha h AHahahahahhah oh oh AHWAHAHAHHAHAMWHAHAHAHAHH HAHAha hahH HA HA%#)#UH =(#JT=NSHAHAHAHAHAH%#=A%( 093393m;: .........AHAHHAHah h hah h hehehehehehee hihih hih hoh oh jahahahah.

No.

[AirRaid]

ROFLMAO!

I've has nasty experience with on-boards... The quality of them was OK, but THEY WOULDN'T DIE! Windows still detected them after they were disabled.