Hey, I’m looking for a graphics card that supports most if not all of the current OpenGL extensions, and won’t somehow be outclassed in a major way any time in the near future. Definitely fragment programs / shaders / whatevers, and all the “standard” stuff which I don’t have on my GeForce 2. I’m looking for under or around $100, possibly going up to $150. Is the GeForce FX 5200 a good buy? And what are these odd packages I see being sold (they have weird high-tech names like Centrifica (just made that up, but it is sort of like what they are, I cant remember), and they say “GeForce FX 5200” or “Radeo 9200” on the box… why don’t I just get the original one without the weird name?)? Anyway, I don’t think I want to go Radeon, because I’ve heard some bad things about coding for them, and I’m not exactly going professional anytime soon so I’m not going to worry about what an NVidia can overlook that a Radeo can’t. Unless somebody can tell me otherwise.
If i were you, nowaday, i would buy a radeon. I don’t think it’s more difficult to program on a radeon and the vertex_program_arb and fragment_program_arb are well defined with new radeon(the same way than on nVidia).
But nVidia is still good…
>>I don’t think it’s more difficult to
>>program on a radeon
is it difficult to program a geforce ???
in your pricerange, i would recommend a radeon 9600 (the one with 256MB); don’t buy that GFFX5200 - you will screw up ! its the slowest vs/ps-hardware available.
Originally posted by sebh: Sorry, what i want to say is that It’s the same type of prgrammation for the two card. OpenGL don’t change if you change your 3d Card
Indeed, it will. Try to use GL_NV_register_combiners2 on a Radeon, I think it will be funny…
The GFFX5200 is quite good because fully programmable, cheap, but very very slow.
Radeons seems to be more interesting nowadays.
You’re right, each one have specific extension but OpenGL don’t change!!!
MoreOver ,as you said, ati is faster than nV(particulary with vertex and fragment program due to precision.)
PS : Learn an extension is a bit easy. The problem is the implementation of the effect.
I’ll be going with the Radeon. If FX is slow… well, I’d prefer not to have slow. I don’t really like slow. So I’ll go with the Radeon 9600 with 256 MB of RAM. Any real considerations against this decision?
i think you would get a better deal going with the radeon, they are really good cards, nvidia just manages to *usually come out with the latest support for directx and opengl, or they did in the past when i had one of each. You should do a search for benchmarking test on the two, to find out which one is really faster in a real world test. It is a very popular benchmark to do.
>>Try to use GL_NV_register_combiners2
what is that ? no one claimed that it’s possible to use NV-extensions on ATI-cards !!
have you ever tried to build the electrics out of a BMW, and into a Mercedes and then to drive ??? no ??? that’s the same goofy thing…
The current best mid range card is the Radeon 9600 Pro. Newegg has one(PRO+128MB) for 150. A good alternative could be the Geforce5600Ultra( the 400 Mhz Core + 400Mhz Memory version). There are several sales that with rebates will take you down to about 100. A great deal.
Avoid like the plague 9200 <, 5200+5200Ultra.
Also if you can possibly find a 9500Pro(150-200). Pick it up, great performance, full directx9.0. Still the best mid range card ever made in my opinion.
I’ve expierenced a number of software incompatabilities with the Radeon cards, but never with my GeForce4 5900128MB, or even with my crappy old GeForce4 420064MB! nVidia is the way to go. Too bad you fell victim yo the NME.
[This message has been edited by Andrewinator (edited 12-09-2003).]
Every couple of months, both ati and nvidia come out with a new card. ati’s is always a little faster. but ati’s radeon cards don’t work well with some games I bought (Jedi Knight 2, SimCity 4, “Enemy Territory” mod for “return to castle wolenstien” [ironically, return to castle wolenstien worked fine], and some others.) So I have to recomend the GeForce FX 5900. THAT is the way to go!
Woah, woah… GeForce FX 5900 is WAY expensive! When you say slow, what do you mean “slow”? And when you say “does not work well with”, what does that mean, also? I don’t play PC games very much, but I don’t want to ever have to deal with compatability problems, so unless they really aren’t that big a deal I don’t think I’ll be going with the ATI =(. Are there patches or anything that can fix the problem?
So, FX 5900 is out of the question for price. FX 5200 and Radeon 9600 are about the same range, so those are my two current options. Is the 5200 so slow that it would hold me back in terms of or cause unreasonably low performance, and are the 9600’s compatibility problems so severe that it will limit my capabilities?
Thanks everyone for the help =) I knew I could count on the OpenGL community for something like thes!
Hi
i also need a graphics cards with the need very much like the original poster of the message…( i dont need an expensive one and also not the one with compatibility probs so much that it gets me off from game prog even before i start thinking about it seriously )
but i im just starting it as hobbiest ( but cant say about future cause if you get hooked you get hooked! ) and so lets see waht the GURUS here have to say about this …
Radeon 9600 ROCKS!!! It’s fast, cheap and supports pixel and vertex shaders. Plus more than 4 dang textures, which is a plus. My school is chunking our old computers in our cmps lab and we’re getting all new ones with Radeon 9600 pros, we’re all very happy.
yes, it’s true, that “ATI cards possible could have some problems one some systems under some circumstances one some distinct OS version one some driver version on some goofy-system installations” - YES - BUT: do you like to say that this can’t occur with nVidia ? yes ? laughing
I’m not silly,