Hi all.
I am currently planning on buying a new VGA card. I have narrowed it down to one of the following cards:
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
Nvidia Geforce FX - 5700 Ultra
What is your experience with cards using ATI or Nvidia chips?
I don’t wanna hear about problems in the past, but only how do the cards work now. (Problems / No Problems with current games)
And also which brand should I look for?
Hope you all can help 
Ramsgaard [DK]
It really depends what your looking for. If you want AA and AF then ATI is the card. If you do not plan on using AA or AF then either brand will work.
I would get the ATI 9700 over the ATI 9600XT and the NV5900 over the ATI 9700. Now I use the 9600 pro and still get crappy frame rate when arties are going off in ET(pub servers) but all the other games I play like UT2K3 and BF1942 run great with all the eye candy @1024x768.
c-ya
ATI cards are really good, and not super expensive, but the support for the cards plane suck… {sometimes u cant play a game and u have 2 wait for updated drivers etc.}
I have always sticked with Nvidia cards, Nvidia has in my opinion better support, and therefore its a better card for playing games {IMHO}
Take the NVidia, no problems at all. Also far better Linux support, in case you need it.
I would go with the 9700pro, easy choice.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1910
Practically anyone will tell you ATI drivers are vastly better than they were 2 years ago. I think anybody would have a hard time proving ATI’s recent drivers are any worse than nvidia - benchmark or IQ diehards seem to like arguing nvidia deliberately break their drivers for common benchmark games. The exception is Linux, which ATI dont seem interested in at all.
ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
its definitive the best Graphic Card ever!
i have a Radeon 9600pro and its better than my sucky Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB!
go ATI, gogogo!
PS: i switched to ATI because Nvidia is going to suck. they sell a Geforce FX 5200 and its not better than a Geforce4 Ti 4200!
or a GeForce4 MX 420 (or so) and its not better than a GeForce2 MX 200!
i just say: WTF?
ATI is nicer 
9700Pro is sexy…
Mine works very very very well, powering 2 monitors at the same time too!
Else, get yourself a… 
Thanks for the answers.
The new Geforce FX 5700 Ultra and the new ATI Radeon 9600 XT are almost at the same level when reading all the tests on Toms Hardware, Anandtech and other sites.
The price is almost the same for those cards in Denmark.
I haven’t found any 9700 Pro cards yet. But I guess it will be more expensive than the other two cards.
Any particular brands that are better than others?
What about the noise levels from the coolers? Which brands have silent coolers?
Anyone had problems with a card in their computer?
My 9700pro cooler produces less ‘noise’ than my casefans, so it’s fine 
no problems since I bought it -> 6+months ago.
I got a Sapphire 9600Pro four months ago, and after just a few weeks the fan started making a horrible noise (like a bad bearing or something). Sapphire had delivery problems so I got a Connect3D 9600Pro as replacement, and everything was fine… until last week. Now the fan on the new card is making the same noise, although it only lasts for 30 seconds after power on. :disgust:
I guess it’s just bad luck, but damnit, why does it all have to happen to me?
:banghead:
:banghead:
:banghead:
first off you cant compare 9600 to 4200, as the Nvidia equvilent is FX5600
and also everyone knows the FX5200 sucks lol my Ti4200 is better and its cheaper so just ignore then 5200
i got price list today and if your buying from a actual shop Nvidia are cheaper / may differ online, also nvidia drivers are fine if your running the fx rage just sucky for older cards
Like you said, toms hardware help with the choice.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/index.html
ATI, by default, just displays colors better. Nvidia kinda been cheating with their drivers, doesn’t display some details/lighting effects. ATI doesn’t cheat with theirs.
Just be very careful buying. Some are calling cards one thing, Like 9600 Pro or 9600 XT but are really 9600 standard cards. This seller shows the comparison between them.
http://www.compuhq.com/ati10ra96xt1.html
In the US, shopping here can help:
Just be careful of some of the shady ones there…
The bearings dry out, and tear themselves up. Cheap fan + high temp + dust = short life. Seems to be especially true of chipset and video card fans.
I seem to end up replacing my vid card fans old pentium one style fans. You can stop the horrible noise for a while by finding the bearing and putting a drop of oil in it. usually it is under a little plastic plug and/or a sticker. At your own risk, of course. :moo:
i had an 5600fx 256meg. i realy realy hated it… the card scored 3k less 3dmarks 2001… than my older ti4200. I sold my 5600fx for £80 (cost me £140) and bought me an 9600pro. Well the diffrances is quite extrordinary… in halo my 5600fx totaly sucked… nor even playable framerates most of the time. and with the 9600 it was playable and only slowed down on an odd ocasion. I can also play ET with 2xfsaa and 8x anascopic filtering @ playable frame rates, and it looks better than my 5600fx with the same settings. I used 2 like nvida but there FX range come second best to ATI’s latest cards. Get an ati u wont regret it.
btw just so u know u can get an 9800SE. thay are alot cheaper thana 9800. and the reson for that is thay have 4 pipe lines disabled. But u can soft mod them (with drivers) to run as a real 9800 with 8 pipelines. The 9600xt is nice but isnt that much faster than a 9600pro. 9700’s are alot better than 9600’s and aparently if u look around arnt that much more exspencive.
Read the reviews,
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/5700/index.htm
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/fx5950ultra-9800xt.html
Also
Tomshardware accused ATI of cheating.Of course the fact that those same allegations were part of a presentation given by nVidia in its own ‘Editor’s Day’ is purely coincidental I imagine.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031023/nvidia-nv38-nv36-19.html
and the refute
http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=2416&head=1&comments=1
Nvidea cards are just not very good, sorry Nvidea
which card did you choose Ramsgaard [DK] ?
nice post =ABS= SparhawK
tbh when ever i hear someone going to by an FX card i try and stop them because of the dissapointment i had with mine… theres nothing worce than spending cash on something that dosnt do what it says on the tin :P.
i payed more cash for the 5600fx than i did for my old g4 ti4200. To me the G4 is the best card nvidia has ever made because it did was it was ment to and did it exstreamly well. I realy do hope nvidia can get there act together so we once agein have 2 think hard on what card to buy :D.
I expected it to work more than a a few weeks though (my place isn’t thatdusty), but I guess I’ll have to get a new one on the warranty every month or two. :disgust:
Anyone here using a heatpipe solution for their GFX card?