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GeForce FX5200: Worth buying?
- Thread starter Tarrasque Wrangler
- Start date
Tarrasque Wrangler
First Post
After a somewhat fruitless trip to Best Buy (8 million people working there, not one will help me), I'm still left with the following question: Will any of this help me with anything other than gaming? I mean, I like computer games, but not enough to shell out $150 for if it only does that. As I said before, I do a lot of video editing and viewing on my box, and anything that'll speed that up would be great. And yeah, I know a basic RAM upgrade will work too, but I was looking into a video capture card when I saw the All-in-One and thought it sounded cool.
Goobermunch
Explorer
Well, since we're throwing out unsupported assertions . . . I've never had any issues with my Radeon cards. Apparently, though, nVidia has some driver issues with Half-Life 2. (Anandtech (and a number of other sites) got a chance to try out a recent version of the code for a day . . . by pooling data they were able to evaluate a number of different cards).
I don't do any video editing. However, I doubt that a high end video card will help with that. Generally speaking, the GPU handles realtime 3d animation tasks. The processor handles things like .mpgs and the like . . . I think.
If that's your target application, I would think more RAM will have a greater effect than a better video card.
--G
I don't do any video editing. However, I doubt that a high end video card will help with that. Generally speaking, the GPU handles realtime 3d animation tasks. The processor handles things like .mpgs and the like . . . I think.
If that's your target application, I would think more RAM will have a greater effect than a better video card.
--G
Goobermunch
Explorer
Double Post.
--G
--G
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Tsyr
Explorer
The issues with Radeon drivers are not unsupported, they are just so fussy that it's hard to track them down. For example, several versions of the Catalyst drivers are known to sometimes cause problems if run on certain cards in windows XP, in certain games. NWN is one such game. Not all card and versions of the drivers cause the problems.
Psionicist
Explorer
I work as a hardware editor, i review video cards for a swedish website, exactly like Toms Hardware and other international websites does. I currently have the following cards on my desk, as we speak:
Radeon 9800 XT
Radeon 9800 Pro
Radeon 9700 Pro
Radeon 9600 XT
Radeon 9600
Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
Geforce FX 5900
Geforce FX 5900 XT
Geforce FX 5700
Geforce FX 5600
Geforce FX 5200
And a couple of older ones such as Geforce 4 etc.
I have benchmarked and tested all of these cards with the following drivers:
Catalyst 4.1
Catalyst 3.10
Catalyst 3.9
Forceware (Detonator) 53.03
Forceware (Detonator) 52.16
The test rig i use to test video cards has 25 GB of games installed, including Neverwinter Nights.
The problem with NWN everyone speaks of, is minimal, and I wouldn't base my decision on it. Anandtech has some good information on the subject here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1896&p=26
NWN was created when everyone used NVidia hardware such as Geforce 3's and Geforce 4's, therefore Black Isle/Bioware implanted some nVidia specific optimizations to improve anti-aliasing (you can clearly see this in the configuration program where you can set the AA slider to Quincunx, which is NVidia only). Now, everything is different. ATi is larger than ever. Most newer DX 9 games are created by game developers with Radeon cards in their development rigs. This will lead to some problems with NVidia hardware. It has always been like this. Unfortunately, no video card driver is perfect.
That said, I think Radeon is generally a better choice at the moment. Sure, there are exceptions (The Geforce 5900 XT is a great $200 card), but ATi simply offers better performance and less problems (such as driver cheating) when it comes to the newer generation of games. If you only want a graphics card to play older games such as NWN, go for a Geforce 4. If you want something that will work just fine in the future, Radeon is the way to go.
Radeon 9800 XT
Radeon 9800 Pro
Radeon 9700 Pro
Radeon 9600 XT
Radeon 9600
Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
Geforce FX 5900
Geforce FX 5900 XT
Geforce FX 5700
Geforce FX 5600
Geforce FX 5200
And a couple of older ones such as Geforce 4 etc.
I have benchmarked and tested all of these cards with the following drivers:
Catalyst 4.1
Catalyst 3.10
Catalyst 3.9
Forceware (Detonator) 53.03
Forceware (Detonator) 52.16
The test rig i use to test video cards has 25 GB of games installed, including Neverwinter Nights.
The problem with NWN everyone speaks of, is minimal, and I wouldn't base my decision on it. Anandtech has some good information on the subject here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1896&p=26
NWN was created when everyone used NVidia hardware such as Geforce 3's and Geforce 4's, therefore Black Isle/Bioware implanted some nVidia specific optimizations to improve anti-aliasing (you can clearly see this in the configuration program where you can set the AA slider to Quincunx, which is NVidia only). Now, everything is different. ATi is larger than ever. Most newer DX 9 games are created by game developers with Radeon cards in their development rigs. This will lead to some problems with NVidia hardware. It has always been like this. Unfortunately, no video card driver is perfect.
That said, I think Radeon is generally a better choice at the moment. Sure, there are exceptions (The Geforce 5900 XT is a great $200 card), but ATi simply offers better performance and less problems (such as driver cheating) when it comes to the newer generation of games. If you only want a graphics card to play older games such as NWN, go for a Geforce 4. If you want something that will work just fine in the future, Radeon is the way to go.
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Destil
Explorer
I'd just like to point out that this is a problem generaly caused by the game makers (BioWear comes to mind), not ATI. They use nVidia exclusive hardwear calls in their games from time to time, instead of following the standards laid out in Dirrect X. (IN addition to NWN, KotoR has similar issues in a few places as well from what I've been told, haven't had a chance to play it myself)Tsyr said:
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