graphics cards

PAPILLION

i'm not sure if this is the right forum to post. sorry if it isn't

which card would be the best buy?

128MB Sparkle GeForce FX 5600
£123.48

128Mb Gainward Geforce4 Ultra/650-8X XP Golden Sample £128.59

or

128MB ATI Radeon 9700 RTL (Sapphire)
£164.23

would really appreciate the input.
ta

i_am_dogboy

have a look at www.anandtech.com or www.tomshardware.com for reviews with plenty of benchmarks, in my opinion the radeon 9700 is the best to go for, its faster than the other 2 but the fx5600 has a better feature set

i've also heard that sparkle cards are pretty crap compared to asus, gainward or one of the other geforce card makers, if that helps at all

Dingatron

The 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 RTL (Sapphire) £164.23 is the llamas pjs as far as I'm concerned. It'll run any game on the market without breaking into a sweat. Also DX9 compatible for when we see DX9 games. Komplett have it for around €270. The 9600 is €220 but is more like the old 9500. Maybe a software hack to bring it up to the 9700?

PAPILLION

cheers.

at the end of the day, anything will be better than my ati rage fury 32mb lol

when you say it has more features, do u mean like pixel shading and things?

however, i suppose what im looking for is the card that will make my games look good and run smoothly.

i suppose ATI have the better driver backup too?

Dingatron

ATI are releasing new drivers virtually every month, fixing bugs and also increasing preformance for the radon cards. Downloaded the cat drivers 3.0-3.2 and have found them better each time. Also third party drivers from omega which are also pretty good.

i_am_dogboy

Originally posted by PAPILLION

when you say it has more features, do u mean like pixel shading and things?

the performance difference will more than make up for the features, i think the geforce has slightly more advanced shaders but the 5600 is slower than a radeon 9600