Let's start with a new video card

when i first took a look at shaders, i soon realized that my anemic gforce 4 440mx wasn't going to do the job. since i really didn't have the budget for a new card, i simply put my attention elsewhere.

i still don't have the budget for a new card but am seriously thinking of buying one anyway... so please keep in mind, that the less i have to pay for this, the better it will be.

Questions:

in order for me to jump into the shader pool, what would be the bare minimum entry-level type card that would provide good access while remaining affordable?

is there a current advantage towards either ati or gforce?

would the bottom of the line cards do what i need ...
ie: gforcefx 5200 or ati 9200 ?

i've been reading through the posts in the shader forum and have been piecing together as much info as i can, and i apologize if this topic has been covered before... i just haven't found it

I personally prefer ATI cards... The ATI 9200 is generally about $100 (USD) at most stores in the US. Don't know about Canada though, although you could always order directly from ATI.

That card should be sufficient to get you into the shader realm.

@ Alkai - hey, thanks for your input... i'm considering this card at the moment.
i've been reading about the various versions of vs's and ps's and just want to make sure, that the card i settle with will do (most) everything for me.

if there are any notable deficiencies in the 9200 i'd really like to hear about it 'before' i spend the cash.

Better off to spend a few bucks more for a 9600.

As opposed to buying a video card which has limited support for DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2, you get one that fully supports both. If you went with the 9200, you would need to buy a new card again next year (DirectX 9 is on the forecast page - so it will get here eventually), where with the 9600 - it should be good for a couple years to come. Depending on what stores (online or local) you can get to ship to you - the price difference is only $20 or so.

you are right. i have a 9600pro and am very happy with it. its worth the money

@ myrlyn68 and ello -

this is 'precisely' the info i was looking for - thanks!

9200 isn't good, if you want a better card for less money buy an old 8500 or 8500LE :]

Hi,
hey where has nvidia gone in this thread guys
I recently read about the new GeForce FX 5900 XT; it's a slower version of the top model 5900 thus cheaper, but provides better perfomance than any other graphics card in this class! I think it is about 150€ or possibly 200€ ...
It is 100% dx9 capable which means PS 2.0 and VS 2.0 so - give it a chance

Yep, but pocorev said he's on a budget, so something cheap but good.
Also I'm not too keen on buying new cards any more ever since i got screwed over with Geforce4 MX. It was the first Geforce 4, I payed 200$ for it, and a year later it was crap, now I can throw it away lol.

Also not many people have cards with full dx9 support, so programming for it is kind of pointless - For Now! :]

Isn't the NVidia GeForce FX 5200 100% DX9 compatible also, with all the pixel and vertex shaders?

You can get it for around 60 to 80 dollars. It is a pretty good card, and for someone on a budget it is probably the best deal.

ya but Radeon 8500 is way better and u'll get it cheap as hell, and who needs SX9 anyhow ( for now ) :]

Well, he wants to do it for pixel and vertex shaders, and the 8500 may not support all of the newer ones.

If you want to make serious games, I would recomend the 9600XT or even the 9800 or 9800 Pro. Great prices at www.newegg.com

came from geforce to ati
the ati9600pro has a good performance
and cool price - in germany ~160 €.
if you buy it second-hand is about ~120 € thats fair!

I would recommend ati 9800 pro card. They are very cheap right now.

Or... if you like taking chances... I bought 9800SE with a 256-bit memory bus (you know that its a 256-bit card if it has L-shaped memory chips) and i modded it to 9800 Pro using Omega enhanced Catalyst drivers. Works like a charm (not to mention i only paid 120 euro's for it ).

hello,

I'm going to buy a new video card.
After reading your posts and looking at the prices I came to two video cards:

Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
and
Radeon 9600

which one is better??

as my PC is not the newest one (AMD Athlon 1333 MHz, 256 MB DDR RAM) I think that better video cards are not for me...


thank you in advance
Elena.

hey... i've started a wild fire here

ok - here's what i've done.

i started out by buying the geforce fx 5700 with 256 ddr ram.
it was on sale for only a couple dollars more than the 5200 version so i couldn't resist. at first blush i was quite impressed with the card - THEN - i '3d benchmarked' it and was considerably 'underwhelmed' with it's score - 1325 compared with my buddies 5000+ on his radeon 9800 pro.
next, i installed and tried to play far cry (awesome game btw), on the bare minimum for video settings, i was still running into some fairly serious fps issues (especially on indoor levels).

frustrated with all of this, i payed an extra $100 bucks and bought the 9800 pro (yes, my budget has taken a serious butt-kickin)

this card is everything that folks say it is! fast and beautiful. far cry sails along at the 'high' qualilty video settings with no framerate problems.

i love a happy ending

Hi there, definately don't buy a ATI radeon 9200, but buy a radeon 9600 (256mb) instead!! It's not that expensive and it has lots of shader support for games......

edit: oops, so you've bought yourself a even better gfx card huh?! Well the 9800 is superb too! Currently I'm running a P4 3 Ghz. with ATI's 9600 256 mb and FarCry, Splinter Cell 2 etc. run very very nice indeed!! I wouldn't recommend anyone buying a NVIDIA card actually, my dad has a FX 5700 256 mb, and it's sucks compared to my radeon 9600 256mb and I mean some serious quality differences here !!!!!

Cheers!

Hi I currently own a Geforce FX 5200 and a Radeon Wonder 9800 PRO. Of course Radeon is better, but if I were to buy a card now if I did not have a good card, I would still buy the Geforce FX 5200, only 80 dollars for a 128 MB RAM one, and it's great, works with all the new games. But Geforce FX 5200, so cheap and you'll be happy, I garantee it

Or you can always buy a radeon 9600XT, they're cheap as dirt now!

Other cool and cheap cards - Nvidia FX 5900XT - kicks ass, but radeon rules

Radeon 9700 card - best buy today, also can be modded to 9800 pro

I would reccomend a radeon 9700 card.. or a 9500 pro or plain 9500 because they can also be modded