Upgrade Advice

[revvy]

<br><br><< <i>TCWO has a brand new PNY GeForce 4 Ti4600 they are trying to get rid of for $220. It's under the clearance section.</i> >><br><br><BR><BR>why go for a Ti4600 when you can pick up for a R9500 Pro for $20 less and get equal performance and even better performance with AA and Anisotropic filtering turned on!?

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

I have a Radeon 7500 right now, and I am planning to upgrade. Should I get a Radeon 9000 (C$170), or is the Radeon 9700 (C$550) worth the extra few hundred dollars?

[Juan]

What type of games do you play and do you want to be future ready?

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

First person shooters (new ones, like <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.unrealtournament2003.com/">Unreal Tournament 2003</a>), and yes I want to be future ready but I don't want to spend too much. Something that will last me a few years.

[CaffeinatedSoap]

Why are you using windows satan also i would go with the 9700 if ur gonna play ut2003. If you have the money...

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

ok... but then I would have to wait to get the money, but my Radeon 7500 works quite well with it (maybe around 40fps at highest detail, trilinear filtering OFF (whatever that is), detail textures OFF) so I expect the Radeon 9000 will do really good... Anyone wanna buy my Radeom 7500?

[Juan]

Why not wait for the 9500 or 9500 Pro. It will be ready for DirectX9 and is using the R300 core. The memory timing will be slow but decent. It competes with theTi4400. The price range is suppose to be $199-250(USC).

[computerfreke911]

<br><br><< <i>"Don't worry, it's INflammable!"</i> >><br><br><BR><BR>Isn't that from the simpsons... any ways i'd wait a couple of months cause when the NV30 chip from Nvidia comes out there probably gonna slash prices on the G4 line. As competition goes ATi will follow.

[Iceman]

Whatever you do, don't go for the 9000 cos the 850 is more powerful than it.

[Ed]

is that true? that's what I heard from my buddy when I got my 8500 LE, but I didn't believe him, why would they make a lower numbered one more powerful than a higher numbered one?

[Avid6eek]

GeForce 3 Ti500 is far more powerful than any GeForce 4 MX card, and the MX is a higher number

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

I missed the <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.gamespy.com/contests/november02/ati/">GameSpy/ATI Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo Tournament</a>! I could have won a Radeon 9700!

[Juan]

The 8500 is faster than the 9000 Pro but about the only difference is the memory speed and core speed. Both cards use the same core but the 9000 core is only 275Mhz.

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

I guess the 8500 is faster. Look at these (average) benchmarks in 3DMark2001:<BR><BR>11324 ATI RADEON 9700/PRO <BR>8055 ATI RADEON 8500/LE <BR>6809 ATI RADEON 9000 <BR>5136 ATI RADEON 7500 <-- This is what I have now (288/382.5). Not overclocked it was 4789 3DMarks.<BR><BR>Full chart is <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://service.madonion.com/servlet/Index?pageid=/orb/componentcompare">here</a>.<BR><BR>Maybe I will get the 8500...

[revvy]

hmm.. maybe it might be better if you went the way of the R9500 Pro.. it's peformance rivals that of a GF4 Ti-4600 and you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it!

[Avid6eek]

TCWO has a brand new PNY GeForce 4 Ti4600 they are trying to get rid of for $220. It's under the clearance section.

[Avid6eek]

Point taken. After looking around I found that the GeForce 4 Ti4600 is faster that the Radeon 9500 Pro in games that aren't AA heavy. Once AA is turned on the Radeon clearly takes the lead. Being as how more and more games are going to incorporate AA, the Radeon 9500 Pro is the better choice.

[@COMPUTER_HACK]

I'll do some research on the Radeon 9500.<BR><BR>I'll start at <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.ati.com/">ATI's website</a>.

[Avid6eek]

At the present time it is obvious you should pick ATI over nVidia. ATI's boards are cheaper, and better performing. Just keep in mind that the GeForce FX (GeForce 5) will be released in less than a month, and those cards are going to put ATI back in their places as the second tier GPU maker. Of course it is going to take longer than a month until you can actually get your hads on one of those cards, but you'll have a lot of benchmarks you can look at then to decide if you want to wait. After all, your Radeon 7500 isn't all that bad and could easily last you til then......just an idea.

[revvy]

shiznit, are you sure that ATI will be relegated to the "second tier GPU maker" status? Who's to say that ATI won't release a R300 refresh (let's say "R350") that will perform even better than the upcoming GeForceFX shortly afterwards?

[Avid6eek]

I knew this statement was coming before I even checked out the forums today. First I would like you to notice I said "going to put ATI back in their places as the second tier GPU maker." I didn't say they were a second teir card maker now, but for the past few years have they been??? Absolutely....They've been eatin nVidias dust for quite some time now. The Radeon 8500 was their first real punch into upper level cards. After reading ATI's latest press releases today, and other articles, it appears to me anyways, that this coming year should in fact be the year of ATI, as compared to nVidias dominance last year. nVidia GeForce FX cards shouldn't be available until February/March. Around this time ATI will be releasing the R350. Some suggest that this will be called the Radeon 10000, but I think ATI will wait until they have a totally new Core (R400 for August 2003) before they make that jump, so this coming spring we should see maybe a Radeon 9800/9900. Since the R350 will only be a refresh I don't think it is going to wipe the floor with nVidias FX line, but hopefully it will perform better, if not comparable. It would be really nice if next year the big dogs were AMD and ATI. It's nice to see the little guys kick some ass every once in a while.

[revvy]

yeah, you're quite right on ATI eating Nvidia's dust. I admit that I'm an ATI "fanboy" as they're Canadian and they're the underdog and such, but I also have an open mind. Simply put, ATI is throwing in everything except the kitchen sink to position themselves as the dominant player in the graphics industry. Undoubtedly, they're putting up one hell of a fight, but not without its flaws (ie motherboard compatability issues accompanied by AGP 8X issues etc). So as you can see, I"m not totally blind to what's really going on. On the matter of not releasing an R300 refresh in the form of R350, I absolutely believe they will release it in order to maintain their position as performance leader. They'll probably couple an optimized R300 core along with DDR-II memory (or GDDR-2 as ATI would like to call it as they've been co-developing it), as it is not only a battle of graphics industry dominance, but a battle of marketing as well. People remember who comes in first, and along the road.. who the hell would really remember who was second a couple of years from now? Who released the first DX9.0 supported card? Answer: ATI. Who released the most comprehensive DX9.0 family? Answer: ATI. Although ATI can be considered an "old dog" of the industry, they've certainly learned new tricks from their adversaries: the Nvidiots.. err. I mean Nvidia Corporation <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">

[Avid6eek]

Who released the first fully compatable Direct X 9.0 Card??? Nobody.....ATI's R300 is compatable, but not FULLY compatable with every function of Direct X 9.0. What about nVidia's GeForce FX....it'll be compatable, but not fully compatable.

[Avid6eek]

ATI is going to stop selling Radeon 8500 Cards!!!! Actually they are going to rename the EXACT same cards Radeon 9100's. The 9000 is supposed to represent Direct X 9 Compatablity....so much for that plan. Looks like a big marketing skeem to me.

[revvy]

ok wait, I'm getting lost here, what the hell do you mean by ATI's R300 not being fully compatible with DX9.0? I know that the Matrox Parhelia is only HALF compatible, whatever the hell that means (probably not fully floating point architecture). But I KNOW for a fact that the R300 is FULLY DX9.0 compliant as I refer to this excerpt from Anandtech: <BR><BR>"<i>As we originally hypothesized back at Computex, the R300 is a 0.15-micron chip but it is also fully DirectX 9 compliant. Being DirectX 9 compliant means that the R300 pipeline is fully floating point from start to finish, which increases the transistor count of the chip tremendously. The combination of a fully floating point pipeline and features such as the chip’s 8 rendering pipelines give the R300 a transistor count of over 110 million transistors. While this is less than what we’re estimating for NV30, it’s definitely higher than any currently available GPU. Note that the Matrox Parhelia is an 80M transistor chip, also manufactured on a 0.15-micron process.</i>"<BR><BR>http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1656&p=2<BR><BR>and yes, it is a marketing scheme.. no.. it's marketing WAR.. I thought I mentioned that to you and everyone else already???<BR>with renaming the 8500 to 9100, they're just simply getting rid of excess inventory as they try to cover EVERY MARKET segment.. from the el cheap customer, to the high roller, while assuming the average video card buying is SOMEWHAT knowledgeable of the computer industry.<BR><BR>Dood, if you're gonna make an argument, BACK IT UP, or else your arguments are meaningless without some support!

[Avid6eek]

This reply is a work in progress because I have to find the article I read where I got the information from. First I would like to take the opportunity to discredit your source of information being as how the article was written over 2 months before the actual cards were released. We all know ATI likes to "fudge" numbers....the example I refered to in a previous statement about the 8500 being renamed the 9100 as if to misdirect consumers into thinking it also was a Direct X 9 Card. You also made reference to what you must consider what it means to be Direct X 9 compatable...may I quote "Being DirectX 9 compliant means that the R300 pipeline is fully floating point from start to finish." That is only one requirement <b>out of thousands</b>. True, it is the main requirement, and the Radeon 9700 meets it, but I know for a fact that it doesn't meet them all because Direct X 9 hasn't even arrived yet, and was still being tweak even after the Radeon 9700 was released. Living up to all of the requirements is what I mean by Fully Direct X 9 Compatable, not just meeting most of them, as the 9700 Does.<BR><BR>Hmmm....I'm looking all over and I can't find what I want to. I did find a lot about Direct X 9.1. Since I can't back up what I said, I guess for now I'm going to have to conceed to what you say about Direct X 9 compatability. Maybe I was reading to fast and what the article said was it wasn't completely 9.1 Compatable. I'll give in for now, but I'm going to keep looking around.

[zogmool]

Well, from what I've read, I gather that the Radeon 9700 is fully compatible. "First to fully support DirectX® 9.0 and the latest OpenGL® functionality" -from ATI's website.<BR><BR>The GeForceFX is said to have features that go beyond the requirements of DirectX 9. I think it has some features developed by 3dfx, too.

[Avid6eek]

The last place you can go for performance information is a manufacturers website. They always inflate figures, or use "theoretical" figures. As for the GeFroce 4 FX....where do you think the "FX" came from...ummmm 3D<b>fx</b>.