Is this a decent graphic card?

Post by **Xest** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:48 pm

I'd imagine reducing to 1mb would get you in budget but I doubt you'd be able to run much

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:49 pm

Xest wrote:I'd imagine reducing to 1mb would get you in budget but I doubt you'd be able to run much

bah pwnd

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 1:16 pm

After spending waaay too much time reading tomshardware & seeing that the below MSI mainboard was specifically recommended for core2 processors as being considerably better than the Asus ones & seeing as how they also recommend the ati 1900/1950s as better value for money than the equivalent nvidia 7900/7950s I now arrived at the following config:-

Maus, KB, Floppy, DvD, etc, from old system

Case: NZXT Midi-Tower Apollo Silver,5x5,25" 1x3,5" 4x3,5 149.90
Power: Thermaltake Toughpower 600W,ATX 2.2, SLI, A.PFC, 140mm Fan 139.90
Board: MSI P965 Platinum, PCX, P965,FSB1066, DDR2,1394,SATAII,GLAN 209.90
CPU: Intel CORE2DUO E6300,Box775P,1066MHz,2MB,65nm,Fan 279.90
RAM: Apacer DDR2 1GB, PC-6400Major,240Pin,800MHz,CL5 189.90
Graphic: MSI RX1950PRO-VT2D512E,512MB,1400/600MHz ,DVI, TV-Out, DDR3 359.90
HD: 2x 160 GB,SATAII,Samsung HD160JJ,SATA-II-300, 7200/ 8.9ms/ 8MB 179.80
--------------------
Total CHF 1509.20
--------------------

Temporary 1GB RAM to (almost) get back within budgetary requirements

Tech-gurus please advise/criticize/flame/etc
TYVM

Post by **Xest** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 1:53 pm

I avoid ATI cards because they've always had buggy drivers to this day - many people tell me that's changed but I have experience of a whole lot of graphics cards at work (we support 10,041 PCs at last audit all of varying spec) and ATI cards are continuously problematic in terms of drivers. nVidia does have their bad driver releases ofc but they're few and far between.

If you ever intend to play anything Quake engine based (games like Prey, Quake Wars etc.) then ATI is a bad choice too as ATI only care about DirectX support, their support for OpenGL is abysmal which has in the past led to certain graphics effects in games outright not working.

I've always felt that ATI is sometimes fine if you're going to stick to DirectX based games, because some of their cards do perform slightly better and they are sometimes cheaper but on the whole I just don't see the point in spending say, £200 on a card which limits you when you can pay £220 for one that fully supports DirectX and OpenGL fully. ATI cards also run hotter and draw more power, however of course that's a minor niggle

Note however that part the reason I dislike ATI is because I'm coming at it from a professional point of view, ATI is very popular amongst home users because on the whole, most home users only do use DirectX stuff - the problems with ATI become even more apparent if you do any graphics programming or if you intend to run Linux etc. As an aside it may also be worth noting that ATI has been losing market share quite heavily to nVidia over the last 6months since their aquisition by AMD such that many AMD shareholders are talking about selling ATI off already so something isn't particularly right there.

If the MSI board is more highly recommended then go for it, can't see any reason why not, I've not used MSI really - I've used companies like Gigabyte but they're utter crap (half-assed support of the ATX standard causing some shut down problems in the past for example), the reason I stick with ASUS/aBit is they've simply never let me down, MSI may well be the same

At work we just use Intel boards and they're not too bad but they're more work than gamer oriented.

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 2:38 pm

I was going to go for the Asus motherboard, but tomshardware was quite emphatic http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/13/ ... _2_corral/

& with an MSI board it seemed logical to partner it with an MSI graphic card somehow...

I remember ATIs drivers were pathetic back in the days of 1-4mb graphic cards (ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro OMG!), but my daughter has an ATI & there's one in my lapburner & I've never had any problems with either of them or their drivers, unlike both my NVidia cards which regularly crash & whose new driver versions often seem to unexpectedly want to reconfigure my entire system

So I think you can be lucky or unlucky whichever you go for.

Does tomshardware still have a good reputation for being independant or is it in some way biased these days?

Post by **Xest** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:07 pm

OohhoO wrote:I was going to go for the Asus motherboard, but tomshardware was quite emphatic http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/13/ ... _2_corral/

& with an MSI board it seemed logical to partner it with an MSI graphic card somehow...

I remember ATIs drivers were pathetic back in the days of 1-4mb graphic cards (ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro OMG!), but my daughter has an ATI & there's one in my lapburner & I've never had any problems with either of them or their drivers, unlike both my NVidia cards which regularly crash & whose new driver versions often seem to unexpectedly want to reconfigure my entire system
So I think you can be lucky or unlucky whichever you go for.

Does tomshardware still have a good reputation for being independant or is it in some way biased these days?

Well I'm not basing my graphics cards comments on luck, I and many other professionals have had quite some hassle with them compared to nVidia, major players such as John Carmack, Eric Lengyel have criticised ATI's poor driver record and abysmal OpenGL support many times through the years and still ATI has done nothing to fix it. I'd have to ask if it really is your nVidia cards causing the crash or some other fault? I used to have a nVidia card in my laptop but since Dell swapped it I have an ATI X300 which isn't terribly old although is getting on a little now and even that, one of the newer cards wont run DAoC windowed properly where the old nVidia would - it's things like that that don't instill me with confidence in beleiving ATI have done anything to fix the issues with their cards.

Have heard some accusations of bias recording Tom's hardware in the past but not sure how well founded they are, I'm not terribly keen on their tests though personally, they're not extensive enough for my liking and this is the problem with a lot of tests. Many tests rely on FPS in specific games which is a rather silly measure when different games are sponsored by different hardware suppliers and in turn these games are better optimized for said hardware. Also, making a decision about where in the game you take the FPS measure is going to make a clear difference too, is it fair to measure FPS in an area that's making use of a feature that is faster processed on one card than another when the situation could be reversed elsewhere where the FPS isn't being measured? Many benchmarking sites don't even ensure they're running in a controlled enviroment i.e. making sure MSN is closed or virus scan is disabled - someone speaking to you on MSN can cause an FPS spike. Tom's is probably one of the better bets of course and in terms of tests, the 3D Mark tests are probably the best bet as it's harder for someone to cause unfair results but even 3D Mark has been proven biased in the past so who knows! One final note about hardware review sites is that they often get sent hardware to review for free, in the past some manufacturers have refused to send more hardware to review for free if bad reviews are given also which makes any review site hard to trust entirely, if they cut off their hardware supply then their site is going to die - again though Tom's is probably slightly better off here as they have the publicity to publish this but on the same note they're also in a position to keep certain manufacturers sweet and get away with it.

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 8:17 am

Hmmmm interesting reading the reviews.
Seems the ATI1950 runs considerably cooler than their 1900 series
Also seems if you're prepared to risk the traditionally bad drivers a lot comes down to what you actually want to play.

NV7950GT > ATI1950PRO by 8-12% in Quake4 & Prey
ATI1950PRO > NV7950GT by 4-6% in Fear & Call of Duty 2
but...
ATI1950PRO > NV7950GT by 20-100% in Oblivion (apparently

)

Since the only one of those games I ever play is Oblivion & the ATI1950Pro is 20% cheaper than the NV7950GT where I live too, I'm finding it kinda hard to be convinced to go for NV ATM despite your good advice

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:58 am

& here's another one for all you tech-boffins...
& it's one which always winds me up enormously...
Where in WindowsXP can I see what kind of RAM-modules I'm using?
I mean ... you have 100 trillion bits of mostly useless info over what hardware you're using but I've never been able to find out one of the most common & important bits of info without having to build my PCs out of where they're normally kept, open them up, remove the modules & read the incredibly-small-print on the label.
You'd think you could just read 2x512mb PC3200 (or whatever) somewhere in windows wouldn't you?

Post by **Xest** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:58 pm

Don't think there's anyway to tell, some BIOS' may tell you but I just open up the case usually.

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:46 pm

but if the BIOS can tell surely windows must be able to too?
I mean I can see virtually everything else about my hardware in windows including tons & tons of stuff which nobody would ever want to know even if they lived to be 1'000'000 years old ...