Questions for new card

[denis]

Hello guys

It’s time for me to buy a new card and I want your help to decide what exactly. Now follows a list of question

1. NVIDIA or ATI? So far I’m with ATI because of some rumors in the past about quality of the fx series. Also I don’t want this fat piece of hardware to take 2 slots

2. 9700 pro, 9800 or 9800 pro? Similarities, differences, etc. I’m not a high-resolution freak that want to play games in 1600x1200. 1024x768 with antialising is good for me. I definitely want to play dx9 (doom3 Yeaaa) games so I do want a full dx9 support. Best value - performance

3. NVIDIA fx series full compatibility with dx9? What about ATI 9700 and 9800?

4. Quality of drivers. Mainly for win2000

5. Will my system be able to handle a card like that? Athlon 1800+ at 2000+ 512 DDR 266. FSB 133? Or the cpu will slow the card?

6. Tweaking?


If I remember something else I’ll drop a line

Thanks for your help

 

[Tagrineth]

1. NVIDIA or ATI? So far I’m with ATI because of some rumors in the past about quality of the fx series. Also I don’t want this fat piece of hardware to take 2 slots

ATi all the way, then!

2. 9700 pro, 9800 or 9800 pro? Similarities, differences, etc. I’m not a high-resolution freak that want to play games in 1600x1200. 1024x768 with antialising is good for me. I definitely want to play dx9 (doom3 Yeaaa) games so I do want a full dx9 support. Best value - performance

Well, first off DOOM3 isn't DX9, really. It's excessive abuse of DX7... with DX9 shaders thrown in to speed things up.

And second, not one of those cards will likely be able to handle a true DX9 game at 1024x768 with AA at all. Apparently HL2 gets 60fps on a 9700 Pro at that res without AA or AF... so basically it's a personal judgment call here.

3. NVIDIA fx series full compatibility with dx9? What about ATI 9700 and 9800?

Considering the DX9 spec is designed around ATi's R3x0 architecture...

4. Quality of drivers. Mainly for win2000

ATi still has more OUTSTANDING bugs than nVidia... but nVidia has more flaws in general, especially these days with them cutting so many corners to get the FX line's performance up.

5. Will my system be able to handle a card like that? Athlon 1800+ at 2000+ 512 DDR 266. FSB 133? Or the cpu will slow the card?

It'll slow the card in low resolutions, but it won't make a difference really. Basically it just gives you more headroom to crank the res and/or AA without any performance loss compared to lower res.

For comparison, I have a Radeon 9500 Pro in my P3 800, with 133 SDR FSB and 256MB single-channel PC800 DRDRAM.

6. Tweaking?

www.rage3d.com I use Rage3DTweak.

 

[denis]

I though doom 3 was gone be a true DX9 game. But I’m thinking if developers can create that kind of graphics with a mix of dx 7 and 9 then games purely in dx 9 would be unimaginably realistic. Half life 2 is pure dx9?

What chips are gone full support dx9? What kind of features does the current cards don’t support. Any link for that info?

thanks

 

[faraday]

yes well, but doom3 is being made by THE carmack himself, it's not code, it's art. 8)

As Tagrineth so creativly stated, "It's excessive abuse of DX7... with DX9 shaders thrown in to speed things up" , I was actually unaware to date that it actually had any Dx9 shaders, so its a very beefed up version of a Dx7 game, sounds more promising than HL2 for me!

As for realism the only feature i remember seeing that really caught my eye on Dx9 was HDR (I think its part of the Dx9 spec, if I'm wrong please correct me), theres at least one very good demo showing it off, basiclly dynamic lightning and reflex effects, looks awesome and I think HL2 will take advantage of this, whenever it comes out.

And yes, HL2 is a Dx9 game althou it also has a 'mixed mode' , using PS 2 and 1.4 combinations to increase performance on nvidia hardware without sacrificing too much image quality.

 

[Tim Murray]

Doom 3 uses fragment programs (the GL equivalent to shaders) to reduce the number of passes needed to a level that wouldn't make today's hardware explode.

Doom 3 will almost certainly run better on NV3x hardware than R3x0 hardware. There will be an NV path that uses the NV_fragment_program extension rather than the ARB_fragment_program (or is it ARB2_fragment_program? what do I care, I can't code), which basically means it will used FX12/FP16/FP32 instead of constant FP32 like ARB2/ARB_fragment_program. There will be a visual quality hit, but according to Carmack, the only way you'll be able to spot it is by examining screenshots very closely.

Plus, NV3x cards were basically designed as Doom 3 cards, or so it seems. Heh. UltraShadow, anyone? (HAH! I just wanted to laugh at that. Funnier than the F-buffer.)

 

[vnet]

Well, first off DOOM3 isn't DX9, really. It's excessive abuse of DX7... with DX9 shaders thrown in to speed things up.

How can the use of DX9 shaders "speed things up"? Isn't it rather the opposite, it slows things down ?

 

[Stlr22]

Heyya Denis!

I'd like to know what your running now actually.

As far as running the next wave of games (Doom3, HL2) in 1600x1200,I'm not sure it's as clear cut as to what hardware combo it's gonna take to do that. I will have to suggest upgrading your overclocked 1800+ to something higher. My current combo is a 2000+ with a Ti4200. Up untill now I've been able to set games at 1600x1200, the exception has been Halo. Running the next round of GPU's in your current setup is a bad idea in my opinion. Having a "9500 Pro in a P3 800 system" is a waste.

Ya gotta match things up right.

Tweaking?....I have no clue.

Drivers? I know Nvidia has a good reputation for *stable* drivers. Dont rule out ATI either.They've come along way themselves.