Graphic card working on it's best ?

[Skull]

I'm planning on buying a GeForce FX Ultra, but I'm afraid it wont work on it's best, because my motherboard doesn't support 8x AGP (or whatever it's called), it supports only 4x...so, my question is, how much better could the card operate if I had a better motherboard ? and what is actually slower with the card when my motherboard doesn't support 8x..?

my motherboard is a MSI 266a (i think), my cpu is an amd athlon xp 2100+ (1733mhz)

 

[Shockwave]

AGP 8x is a nothing special at all...Its like 256 meg video cards they are useless at this point in time.

AGP 8x yeilds one average only a 1%-4% increase in performance than that of agp 4x. Its really a joke right now and its more like AGP 5x than 8..lol

Funniest thing is this..

People go out and by a G4 TI4800 and think its the greatest card because its AGP 8x. The card is actually a G4 TI4400 with AGP 8x support. A Ti4600 cost about $50 less and outperforms the Ti4800 by about %15...lol


(i used to be all hyped up about 8x then the reviews came out on it and it really is nothing special right now)

 

[SidewinderX]

To answer your question, 8X AGP cards work jsut fine on 4X mobos.

 

[A.A]

The difference between AGP 4 and 8 is minimal.
Don't by an FX card.

 

[Skull]

OK, thanks for the replys
Good, now I don't "need" to buy a new motherboard =)

Don't by an FX card.

GAH! why ? :\ I haven't notice anything wrong with them .. only that they accupy an AGP and a PCI, and a pretty loud fan.. other than that it's better than radeon 9800 in benchmarks.. :bounce:

 

[Shockwave]

buy an FX card is my recomendation..I used nvidia for two years, tried ati and have a 9500pro right now, great card, but nvidia just looked better and smoother

 

[xXSMGXx]

Originally posted by Shockwave
buy an FX card is my recomendation..I used nvidia for two years, tried ati and have a 9500pro right now, great card, but nvidia just looked better and smoother

This 9500 is exactly why you didnt like ATI..trust me my friend has 9500 and his CS is not working and it glitches a lot and he is not happy with it.

Get a card above 9700 and you will forget about Nvidia

 

[Shockwave]

der my 9500 is better than alot of peoples 9700pros after i tweaked the hell outa it. Get from around 13,500 on 3dmark2001 to 14,500. And around 4500 on 3dmark2003.

I get 99 fps in dod and hl mods..theres no problem with the card. Nvidia is just smoother even at the same FPS as a ati card

 

[Skull]

............................................hmm

:E

 

[Shockwave]

I would trade my 9500 for a 5600ultra just because of these reasons.(plus ATI's horrible drivers)

 

[xXSMGXx]

Originally posted by Shockwave
I would trade my 9500 for a 5600ultra just because of these reasons.(plus ATI's horrible drivers)

Provide an example of its badness. Maybe then ill believe you

 

[Shockwave]

badness of the ATI card? theres nothing wrong with the card. here are some reason though

ATI has known of the problems with half life and mods with there cards for a year now, they have done nothing to fix it, and whenever they have fixed one problem 5 other arose.

ATI does not have digital vibrance like nvidia

Nvidia has a huge selection of drivers to choose from, I only play one game so this is good for me to search through them all and find the best that works for my card and game.

Nvidias overclock better

Nvidias draw less power since they use .013

Quincux AA is better than ATI's 6x AA(Quincux on NV cards is the only good AA out of all there other options to choose from)

"Catalyst_Maker" has said he has no clue what to do to fix the problems with half life/radeon cards

ATI isnt doing anything impressive latley other than overclocking the 9700pro and calling it a 9800pro.

Nvidias AF is better, since I game at high res's i dont really need AA anymore and AF quality is more important to me.

99fps on a Nvidia card is twice as smooth as 99fps on a ATI card for some reason(hence the problems with radeons and half life)

Those are some of the reasons why im going back to NV. The ATI is great but not good for what im doing with it.

 

[Murray_H]

ATI has known of the problems with half life and mods

To be honest, thats not really a big issue now that HL2 has been announced and they used the ATI 9x00 series to show the game off.....

 

[Shockwave]

Ya and watch closley..They dont have AA on in that demo and it still drops down to about 20fps in a couple areas.

 

[Murray_H]

:S how do you know AA wasnt on?

Anyhoo it probably wasnt super-optimised, but more optimised than the Doom 3 alpha was

 

[xXSMGXx]

I havent had a single issue with CS 1.6... and btw i dont even remember what is 1.5 like.

 

[Shockwave]

the optimised thing is crap..Nvidia was HL2's sponsor until april 2003. Nvidia didnt get the 5800 out on time and they couldnt say "optimised for the ti4600". So they went with ATI. HL2 has been on nvidias site for 2yrs now as a game being developed under there technology. Then somewhere around march ATI put it up on there site also.

As for the other comment

You cant tell when AA is on and off?

 

[Murray_H]

I meant optimised in general, not for a specific gfx card

And no, i cant tell

 

[Shockwave]

I wish i was you then cause i wouldnt have run AA and therefore I could use my 9500 for the next 2yrs and get decent fps...lol

 

[Murray_H]

I dont use AA for 2 reasons

1) In reviews of most GFX cards, the reviewers zoom in about 600% onto an area just to show that the AA is on and working well. This to me seems pointless as i dont have a 300 inch monitor and i sit a reasonable distance away from my comp

2) My comp is crap and dies when an AA option is even contemplated

 

[Shockwave]

AA differences can be seen more without zooming than not

 

[$pazmatazz]

Originally posted by Shockwave
ATI isnt doing anything impressive latley other than overclocking the 9700pro and calling it a 9800pro.

The 9800 is more optimized than just overclocked. The shader unit (SmartShader) was supplemented with a so-called "F-Buffer," which theoretically allows shader code of infinite length. SmoothVision was increased to version 2.1 as opposed to 2.0 on the 9700. Hyperz III was also optimized to give you Hyperz III+.

Along with that, like you say, the clock speed was increased from 325/310 to 380/340.

 

[pinkerton]

too many threds about video cards. It really, really, doesnt matter what you get, you will be happy with either 9800 or 5900. And i like ati drivers, they are funny.