Video Card

mohaps · Post by **mohaps** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:19 pm

Hi all,

I am going to buy a new video card.. in the $250-$350 range absolute musts for me is DirectX9.0c (shader Model 3.0) support and OpenGL2.0 support.. I own both NVIDIA and ATI cards as of now and am happy with both

any suggestions???

eXodus · Post by **eXodus** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:25 pm

I don't know much about ATI (and I live in Canada eh) but if your choice go to nVidia you'll have to go to the 6000 series to get model 3.0 support.

While the 6600 are superior to the last cards of the 5000 series, the 6800 is still in your price range.

You might want to have a look at this :

http://www.techonweb.com/products/produ ... 302&src=FG

katoun · Post by **katoun** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:47 pm

ATI has mucht beter cuality but it's not that fast in renderinf meny poligons.
NVIDIA reders mucht faster but not having that bood cuality like ATI
ATI is made specialy for shaders(big) and hase a mucht faster antyalising.

mm765 · Post by **mm765** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:54 pm

if youre thinking about using linux at all, nvidia is clearly the way to go (much better drivers).

Joe_Oliveri · Post by **Joe_Oliveri** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:59 am

I find with ATI you get more of a bang for your buck. How ever Nvidia has really good support and drivers.

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:18 am

Mohaps, go for Nvidia; in that price range you can get a 6600GT or perhaps a plain 6800.
6600GT review:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=159

and they're also right about linux; I tried to set up an Ati card and it was a total mess, I had to return it and get an Nvidia, the drivers work sweet in Linux.
Not to mention my experience in Windows with ATI; the 3 cards I've tried gave me nothing but problems, bad drivers, weird artifacts and one of them burned in front of my nose after simply plugging it into the AGP slot.

or perhaps ATI cards don't like me.

anyway, it's the eternal fight.

AlexL · Post by **AlexL** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:30 am

I have to agree with the majority here, nVidia is the better way to go (in my opinion) I've never had any problems with it, as compaired to when I had an ATI card. But then again another reason I prefer nVidia over ATI is I've had more experiance programming with their extentions then ATI's

Murphy =P · Post by **Murphy =P** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:56 am

I've had three nVidia cards. A VisionTek GeForce2 GTS, a GeForce3 (don't remember the brand), and a VisionTek GeForce3 Ti500.

All three developed a problem after between a few months and a year of use: very small untextured polygons that appeared and disappeared quickly would be white instead of their assigned colors. The easiest place to see it is in some of the particle effects in Quake 2. This would seem to be some sort of breakdown in the GPU. That sort of thing usually happens with overclocked cards, but none of mine were. Also, the fans on the two cards that I'm sure were VisionTek both failed within two years.

Also, the nVidia drivers had a long standing bug which caused Windows (XP for sure, not sure about other versions) to bluescreen when they tried to put the monitor into standby mode, though I understand this has been fixed.

On the positive side, all three nVidia cards performed true to their specifications and I have never had driver problems or complaints except the standby issue.

So, a semi-negative report, but I can't compare with ATI, since the last ATI card I had until this new one (which I haven't had long enough to review) was Rage 128 based.

phatsk8r15 · Post by **phatsk8r15** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:38 am

http://www.bfgtech.com/6800OC.html#BFG Tech. They make the fastest Nvidia Graphics cards, and they're cheap too. Falls smackdad in your pricerange to get a BFG Tech Nvidia GeForce 6800 OC. I'll be getting one in a few weeks.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:59 am

if you are looking at 6800GT tech this card from ASUS

is a good deal

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=324522

BFG is ok but I'm hearing too many cases where the card fails in 6 months or less. They also seem to be not honoring there lifetime warranty on OC models.

any 6600GT card is a good bang for the buck card

Pr3t3nd3r · Post by **Pr3t3nd3r** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:46 pm

After i got my self an ATI card now you tell me that i sould buy NVIDIA

... anyway i bought an old card ... i belive it was constructed last year. LOL

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 9:06 am

hey, sorrry if this sounds too noob...

Is it needed actually shaders 2.0 for the artist producing the normal maps?

I ahve read several tuts , but just vaguely, on the main proccess using different tools....

I know Melody free tool -which also does the LOD versions, plus some other things- requires shaders 2.0, but the free tool called ORB, which have here (the site went misteriously down some time ago, dunno why) , which even can be used for doing displacement maps....seems to not require shaders 2.0 cards....

I know I'd need that card for displaying normal maps (as far as I know!) ingame , but..is it *really* needed for the artist making the normal maps? I mean...I can do simply the hi res model, the low res cage around it, and find a way to paste the UVs from low cage to hi cage, or similar (havent got into this yet, you see) ...seems then the part I'd be missing is the checking it all together...but...if ORB doesnt require these cards...May then I check it with just a gf TI4200 128mb?

You see, trying to decide bout an ati 9550 (found a very nice price at a local shop.I'm a windows only user (well, also linux user, just use win lately...)) , and a dvd burner, the cost is identical, lol...

I'd really love to start making normal maps (and hoping coding tech evolves enough as to make REAL displacement, like the one I made years ago in real rendering...it actually dispplace really, in card, even in geometry cotours...based on the tga u made from an uber high res model...)
I like modelling in high(just takes such a load of more time...I think this is gonna stop many small companies in aiming to AAA anymore...to huge dev time for artists, to many hours...man, 5 guys doing a character in a month...too much...), and in low poly: I'd like to use the feature in my tests, at some point..