OT- Advice on new video card

tesco samoa · #1 June 29th, 2004, 01:58 AM

ok so i need a new video card

looking around and reading reviews...

so what would you get.

my only concerns are for video in and out.

that would be s-video and or dvi for hdtv support...

if that would take two cards so be it...

Abdiel · #2 June 29th, 2004, 03:44 AM

all advice for video cards is useless without knowing what you're going to use them for.

Play Doom 3? now... look under Nvidia or ATI

Play SEIV? V? a $30 one with S-Vid I/O would do.

Or something in between, Tiberian Sun? (heh)

Scale your price range according to your usage, and you should be cool.

Abd.

Fyron · #3 June 29th, 2004, 03:46 AM

Just don't buy ATI... really poor quality. Sure, they are half a percent better in benchmarks, but they have really poor drivers that make them end up worse than other brands anyways.

Baron Munchausen · #4 June 29th, 2004, 04:31 AM

nVidia based cards seem to be the best choice for heavy 3D usage. They are always close to ATI cards in performance, but the drivers are much more reliable. If you are not a heavy 3D user, I think Matrox still wins all the awards for best 2D image quality and their implementations of multi-monitor ability are usually the best as well. Their drivers are pretty good in my experience. Matrox is a very good brand for business and other practical applications where 'productivity' is the determining factor.

Abdiel · #5 June 29th, 2004, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Just don't buy ATI... really poor quality. Sure, they are half a percent better in benchmarks, but they have really poor drivers that make them end up worse than other brands anyways.

LOL really? My laptop, the one I'm using now and playing SEIV on, and some 3D games like Dungeon Siege and Painkiller, runs on an ATI Radeon 9k. So far so good

I don't understand the thing about the drivers. They work fine? What do you think is wrong?

Abd.

mac5732 · #6 June 29th, 2004, 05:51 AM

Hey Old Snake, I posted a thread awhile back on video cards for a new comp I'm looking at. The majority of answers were Nivida Geoforce over ATI ones.. apparently the drivers are more friendly with more of the games then ATI.... from what was said. The thread is still around, probably back 2-4 pages if you want to look at it...

psimancer · #7 June 29th, 2004, 09:17 AM

ati drivers interact badly with games compared to nvidia drivers ( i have a radeon 9600 all in wonder
it fights me on almost every graphic intensicve game i have
(neverwinter andf warcraft 3 come to mind))
however i have video recording capabilites that i consider unmatched

Paul1980au · #8 June 29th, 2004, 10:22 AM

Graphics cards seem to be trailing the progress of the graphics demands of the games adn the hard drive and DVD capabilities coming through now.

tesco samoa · #9 June 29th, 2004, 12:22 PM

well i would only get 128 megs... and a mid level.

i will most likely stick with a nvidia chip

right now i had a geforce 3 v8200 which is 3 years old... so it is going to be an improvement over that.

The card will mostly be used for tv - output.
games i play are not very graphics intensive... and if they are i turn the graphic stuff down...

Thermodyne · #10 June 29th, 2004, 12:39 PM

http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage....130-194-10.jpg

eVGA nVIDIA GeForce FX5700 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/VIVO, 8X AGP, Model "GeForce FX5700 Personal Cinema (128-A8-N331-AX)" -RETAIL

That's if you want NV.