Looking for a new Video Card

[Bubblehead]

I have a PC3200 with 1.5 Gig memory and plenty of disk space. I had an ATI 9800 Pro video card which went out on me after a year (cooling fan froze up). I replaced it with an ATI X1600 Pro which gave me nothing but headaches. Had problems with the driver (which I was told need to be upgraded monthly). Had problems with support regarding the installation of the Catalyst Control Center. I finally got it working fine until this morning when my monitor showed nothing but verticdal multi-colored raster and eventually went black. After a visual check of the components, and re-inserting the card but still no joy. I replaced the card with an older video card (Nvidia GeForce FX5600) which I saved and voila! everything worked. So the X1600 conked out only after a month use. I returned it and got my money back.

Now I have to make a decision. My Nvidia card seemed to be working fine however I would like to upgrade it while AGP cards are still available. I am leery about getting another ATI product. I'm concerned about the fact that the X1600 driver needs to be updated almost monthly (I was told this by the support group) to resolve "issues".

I have about two hundred dollars to burn. I would like your suggestion for a "cost-effective" replacement card. Needs to be an AGP as my mobo has no PCI-E slot.

By the way, I found specs on an FX 5500 however the FX5600 (256MB) was not listed.

Bubblehead

[ctjoyce]

I have a PC3200 with 1.5 Gig memory and plenty of disk space.

And that is my quote of the month PC3200 is a RAM speed, do you mean a AMD 3200+?

I had an ATI 9800 Pro video card which went out on me after a year (cooling fan froze up). I replaced it with an ATI X1600 Pro which gave me nothing but headaches.

Odd the X1600 is a very good card. Not for gaming in the least, but for general use, a good card.

Had problems with the driver (which I was told need to be upgraded monthly). Had problems with support regarding the installation of the Catalyst Control Center.

The person who told you it needed to be updated monthly is on crack. Also are you firmiliar with Cat Remover? You have to remove all ATi software before installing the new driver.

I finally got it working fine until this morning when my monitor showed nothing but verticdal multi-colored raster and eventually went black. After a visual check of the components, and re-inserting the card but still no joy. I replaced the card with an older video card (Nvidia GeForce FX5600) which I saved and voila! everything worked. So the X1600 conked out only after a month use. I returned it and got my money back.

I don't think the card is dead. I think its a user related problem, not hardware

Now I have to make a decision. My Nvidia card seemed to be working fine however I would like to upgrade it while AGP cards are still available. I am leery about getting another ATI product. I'm concerned about the fact that the X1600 driver needs to be updated almost monthly (I was told this by the support group) to resolve "issues".

Ive got my issues with AGP, but the driver problem is odd, any whoever was providing tech support is smoking some strong crack. But the nVidia 6800XT or 7800GS should suit you quite nicely.

I have about two hundred dollars to burn. I would like your suggestion for a "cost-effective" replacement card. Needs to be an AGP as my mobo has no PCI-E slot.

Again the 6800XT or 7800GS should work fine for you. With your system setup most likely the 6800XT is going to be the better bet.

Sorry if I sound condisending, but I'm in a punchy mood

Cheers
Cameron

[Bubblehead]

AMD 3200+ is correct.
When I pronounced the X1600 video card as dead, to verify, I took the body to where I bought the card (Fry's Electronics). They tested it and found that the rigor mortise has already set in.

The 6800XT sounds good. Any particular manufacturer (PNY, EVGA, etc with good support? By the way is 6800XT the same as the 6800 Xtreme?

Bubblehead

[ctjoyce]

6800XT is the Extreem, and eVGA is the best. Also due to the 3200+ I wouldn't suggest you look at the 7800GS as it will bottolneck on your processer. Not enough L2 chache.

Cheers
Cameron

[Sukhoi_37]

If you are looking for a 6800XT, check these out.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150157
This is the XFX model with GDDR3 RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130268
This is the eVGA model with 256MB DDR RAM(Newegg doesn't have 256MB AGP models for some reason  ???)

The XFX Model is faster due to higher memory clocks (1000MHz vs 600MHz) and it has more RAM (256MB vs 128MB)

Both have a 256bit memory interface.

I would get the XFX model, as it has more RAM that is higher clocked. Whichever model you choose, you should see nice a performance boost in FS.

[ctjoyce]

This is a case of the classic, throw lots of cheap RAM onto a card, and clock it higher so as to preform the same. In actual tests, the cards preform the same.

Cheers
Cameron

[cheesegrater]

In case of 6800XT I would go with XFX because of the warranty.

[Bubblehead]

I went ahead with the EVGA 6800XT. I ordered it from Newegg.com. It came out to $166.32 out the door with $20.00 rebate from EVGA. Will this card show noticeable improvement over my existing FX5600? By the way is a 256M card better than a 128M? If it is how come some are cheaper after all as they say you only get what you pay for.

Bubblehead

[cheesegrater]

Well, thats because memory isn't everything. If I slapped on 512 MB of memory on a Voodoo 2 do you think it would run faster?

[congo]

All memory is not the same.

Also, different video cards use memory on different interfaces.

I've noticed that most Americans are inclined to believe that memory amount on a video card is what matters, which I find interesting.

The potential raw speed of the memory chips determine their quality, faster memory costs more. Fast memory chips are almost exclusive to high end/high priced video cards.

Video card designers put enough memory on their cards to cope with it's designed performance, adding more memory doesn't help much, but using faster memory will.

Video card performance is mainly determined by it's core specification, ie. the graphics processing chip which determines it's genre, or type, say, a 128mb 6600GT for example. You can throw as much memory as you can onto an older GPU such as a 5900 and it wont make a bit of difference because the card is limited by the GPU type fitted.

We have brilliant design engineers who create fantastic and powerful GPU designs, they build these wonders and then the marketing buttheads get a hold of them and start crippling them so they can demand more for the uncrippled chips and less for the crippled ones and offer a product range like their good professors in university taught them to do, much to the disgust of the engineers who actually design the great chips. I wonder how they must feel, being forced to downgrade some 90% of their creations for the marketing boys!

Memory performance is measured in different ways. Say you have 2 types of memory that both run at 500mhz speed...... the memory timings and latencies (latency is wait time between signal cycles within the ram), then come into play to determine the memory performance.

Memory latency is measured in nanoseconds (ns) and the lower the latency, the faster the ram chip is. So, a video card fitted with 128mb of 1.4ns ram will outperform a 256mb card with slower 1.7ns ram because the data is moving through the memory interface faster.

Video card makers are making cards for a profit, the entire industry is geared towards maximising those profits and keeping the average consumer in the dark about how it all works, relying

[Fozzer]

All memory is not the same....etc...etc...

Fantastic, no messing about read, congo... ...!

...and not a spelling error in sight...
...which makes it even more delightful.... ...!

LOL... ...!

Paul... BFG nVidia Ge-Force 6600 GT 128 Mb... ...!

[cheesegrater]

This is a case of the classic, throw lots of cheap RAM onto a card, and clock it higher so as to preform the same. In actual tests, the cards preform the same.

Cheers
Cameron

So, GDDR3 RAM is cheaper than DDR?

[congo]

It may be cheaper, the bus interface is newer tech on ddr3, (I haven't studied it so I'm not sure of the details), the thing is that the quality of the chips used is still variable within the ddr3 spec, the better cards will use lower latency (and more expensive) ram chips.

The newer technologies allow cost savings to the manufacturers, the cards are cheaper to produce. Coupled with higher performance, they are able to keep prices high and this maximises profits.

This was blatantly evident when the 7900 series was released. The cards were released prematurely onto the market where 7800 series were still relatively new and very expensive. Retailers were stuck with a large volume of costly 7800 stock.

Instead of hitting the market cheap as expected (the 7900's did appear on the streets cheap in limited quantities at first), their price was and still is quite high due to demand and their good performance. This would have been extremely profitable in light of the cheap production costs, but there was a hiccup with stability issues that dampened enthusiasm over the card.

The 7900 series also cemented another business practice. Instead of selling a 7900 model or small range of models, nVidia started selling "speed binned" chips to it's manufacturing partners apparently. Speed binning is the sorting of chips according to how well they perform and is common practice in CPU manufacture. This is now done with GPU's (it's merely an extension of quality control testing), and manufacturers like XFX buy several grades of speed binned chips for their range of pre-overclocked cards.

In this way, the manufacturers control the overclock potential and either charge more or hope there product achieves more sales volume because of the higher "guaranteed" performance. Incidentally, this backfired in the 7900 series because of stabilty issues related to those cards. I stopped following the debacle and I'm not sure what the real cause of it all was.

It would make a lot of sense to use the highest quality ram (low latency speed binned ram chips) on the high end pre-overclocked video cards.

In the past, you relied on LUCK to get a fast GPU and a visual inspection of the ram chips on the video card would reveal the ram's latency if you could decipher the codes on the chips themselves, as manufacturers will vary the chips used on cards depending on what is available at the time.

In this way, you greatly increased your chances of finding an overclockable card if you bought one with fast ram chips fitted.