# Graphics Card Recommendations?

## Nick W

Hi all, 

I want to upgrade my gfx card. Currently im running an nvidia FX5200

My main reason is improved FPS for americas army My sys specs are as follows:

*  2600 Athlon XP

*  1GB RAM

*  2.6.3 Kernel

*  Nforce2 board

Can I get some recommendations as to which would be the best card I could get for my system? (and not have trouble getting it to work under gentoo....)

Many thx!

Nick

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## denstark

I know that a GeForce FX5950 is a nice card.... would probably run fine under linux.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=671805&Sku=P56-2722

You could always go with a different maker than pny, but the card itself is very nice  :Smile: 

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## Nick W

Thanks, 

What do you guys think of this Radeon Card?

Nick

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## benguru

Hi,

I like ATI, have them on both of my macs, but I have heard bad things about getting ATI's to work, so I would go with NVidia, they are very easy to setup.

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## ewan.paton

nvidia drivers are a thing of joy, the same quality and effort as directed at windows users, ati's drivers on the otherhand in my experiance range from piss poor to awfull.

if you can hold on the next generation of cards are taped out and should hit the streets soon, this will mean older cards get cheap fast and shiny new cards which will run doom 7 no problems by all accounts reported benchmarks are they run twice as fast as anything out at the moment

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## Nick W

Okay, that sound good. So, which nvidia card? for best gaming performance?

Nick

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## Plastic

It really depends on how much you are willing to spend. You can get a good deal on the FX 5900XT now if you know where to look. My favorite online hardware outlet is http://newegg.com/ (cheap or free FedEx shipping, cheap prices, good packaging, freebies...the list never ends)

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## Malakin

The Nvidia FX5900XT is definitely the best deal right now and since you're currently using an FX5200 you can just swap the cards and it will automagically work without doing anything else.

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## Nick W

Right, well The FX 5950 Ultra looks like the one!

Would the difference between the above and my FX 5200 be big? 

Thanks all

Nick

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## ewan.paton

 *Nick W wrote:*   

> Right, well The FX 5950 Ultra looks like the one!
> 
> Would the difference between the above and my FX 5200 be big? 
> 
> Thanks all
> ...

 

i would bet on a huge difference, 5200 was a terible card many of the 4**** cards were faster, google for benchmarks though to see if the extra cash is worh the performance

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## pandaxiongmao

 *benguru wrote:*   

> Hi,
> 
> I like ATI, have them on both of my macs, but I have heard bad things about getting ATI's to work, so I would go with NVidia, they are very easy to setup.

 

I really envy NVIDIA users...

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## Al'Capone

get nvidia i wouldn't touch ATI with a 12 foot pole, the reasoning is nvidea has more experience developing linux drivers than ATI has. so go for the proven tested solution.  :Cool: 

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## neonik

Yeah, go for nVidia. Its cards are definetely the best when it comes to Linux support and performance. They were planning to release a new chip somewhere in the first half of 2004...

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## Malakin

 *Quote:*   

> Right, well The FX 5950 Ultra looks like the one!

 The FX 5950 Ultra is only %18 faster then the FX 5900XT and yet at newegg it costs a whopping 2.73 x as much or an extra $303.50 depending on how you want to look at it. Since you're unlikely to notice the difference why not buy the cheaper card and either spend the extra money on something else for your computer or donate it to charity, some poor kid could have a brand new computer with that much money.

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## paranerd

 *denstark wrote:*   

> ....tigerdirect....

 

Lot's of bad luck with tigerdirect. Been happier with newegg. Just my 2cents

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## markedmann

Hey:

If you're looking to play games in linux, don't buy an ati card. I've got a 9600 Pro, and people I know with nvidia cards that cost hundreds less get the same framerates.  In windows, well that's a different story.  But I'm fairly certain that I won't be getting another ati card.

-Mark

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## Malakin

If you do get an FX5900XT get the "MSI FX5900XT-VTD128", it's super quiet. I had a Zalman fanless cooler here that I was going to put on it when I bought it but it ended up being so quiet that I can't even hear it so I didn't bother and this is on a quiet system.

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## olias2

ATi Radeon 9600XT vs. NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900XT

http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=295

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## nukem996

Im a big nvidia fan myself but I run ati on my laptop. I have on my gaming machine a nvidia FX 5900 ultra and it runs great. I use the closed source drivers so I dont know how the open sources ones run with it. But if your willing to spend the money its a great card.

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## bengi

I've just got a Abit Siluro fx5900 OTES for about £130 and it seems pretty quick

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## MadEgg

Just wait a few more weeks and get yourself one of them NVidia GeForce 6800 cards with the NV40 chipset. They're gonna rock and leave ATi miles behind.

I'm saving up to get one when it's available, I could use some upgrading soon anyway.

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## Souperman

 *olias2 wrote:*   

> ATi Radeon 9600XT vs. NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900XT
> 
> http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=295

 

Seeing that the article uses a Windows OS, how is this helpful?

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## neonik

GeForce 6800 Ultra review:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2023

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## ewan.paton

 *neonik wrote:*   

> GeForce 6800 Ultra review:
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2023

 

yep its certainly worth drooling over the mpeg4 encode/decode features make a reason to upgrade if nothing else and while people may bitch about needing a 480W psu tough, as far as im concerned the shouldnt spend a fortune on a card then cheap shit it on a power supply that came with the case and sound like a hurricane, its not like 550w psu's cost much these days anyway

it looks like with one of these cpu performance is going to be a botleneck again for a couple of years, now if only halflife2 and doom3 would shift their arses as at the moment most games are playable  on the cheapest cards on the market at the moment. if i was a hardware manufacturer i would be beating on valves door telling them  to get a move on because gentoo is the only thing that needs any of todays modern hardware

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## Aman9090

I don't see the point in upgrading. Your card is fine.

Honestly, my GeForce FX 5700 card is overkill. You will not get anything more than more frames per second on a higher card than even an FX 5200. The image quality/sharpness will be the same, and the features aren't much different.

The 6800 is even more overkill. The features are great on that card, but they won't be used or taken advantage of for another four years. My suggestion: If you REALLY must upgrade, make sure to not spend too much money, because the next-gen cards are already on their way.

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## linkfromthepast

I use GFX5900, GFX5950, and Radeon 9600, 9600XT, 9800 PRO 256, 9800XT everyday w/ gentoo.  They all work properly and from my experience you shouldn't have a problem with any.  So I would focus on the benchmarks for the cards instead of whether they will work w/ the OS.

BTW, Radeon 9800 PRO 256 and XT kick ass  :Smile: 

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## ewan.paton

 *linkfromthepast wrote:*   

> I use GFX5900, GFX5950, and Radeon 9600, 9600XT, 9800 PRO 256, 9800XT everyday w/ gentoo.  They all work properly and from my experience you shouldn't have a problem with any.  So I would focus on the benchmarks for the cards instead of whether they will work w/ the OS.
> 
> BTW, Radeon 9800 PRO 256 and XT kick ass 

 

mind if i ask what the hell you are doing that needs so many  highend cards i would guess multimedia lab but typicaly the dont run linux except for render farms and have homogenous hardware

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## CybeRDukE

i had a radeon 9600xt and setting up the card was no big deal, but the performance was lousy compared to windows (tested with rtcw). 

@linkfromthepast:

have you ever compared the performance of these cards under linux? it would be really interesting how fast the radeon 9800 pro is compared to the gfx5900 because they cost about the same.

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## DrACoNuS

6800 Ultra is sick! Wait for them to hit the shelves and get one, you'll be good for a loong time. The NV40 core is sekzy.

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## linkfromthepast

Actually we have compared them all just recently.  We compared the GFX5900, GFX5950, and Radeon PRO 256.  We didn't do the usual benchmarks which you can find on most hardware sites, but tested for our specific case, which is real-time render farm.

The major part measured in the tests was the latency (refresh rate) because it's a real-time system, we must maintain a certain refresh rate.  We chose specific positions and ran the tests with no AA, 2F, and 4N.

Overall the GFX5950 beat the 9800 Pro.  Bear in mind this is with relation to latency only (refresh rate/FPS).  Another interesting behavoir was that the GFX ran faster at 2F than with no AA.

BTW, 6800's should be on my desk in < 2 weeks  :Smile:   Fun for all.

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## linkfromthepast

Forgot to mention that the actual test environment was in a multi-terrabyte database.  Database meaning essentially a modeled world.

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## Nick W

Great thread, thx for all the info everyone!

I'm certainly going with the 6800 as I have to wait a few weeks anyway till a cheque clears, but, will it run on linux out of the box?

Nick

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## ewan.paton

 *Nick W wrote:*   

> Great thread, thx for all the info everyone!
> 
> I'm certainly going with the 6800 as I have to wait a few weeks anyway till a cheque clears, but, will it run on linux out of the box?
> 
> Nick

 

obviously 2d will work fine, as for 3d well based on nvidias track record i would imagine yes but runninng bleeding edge hardware can be problimatic under linux, nvidia drivers tend to be compatible across the whole gpu range

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## Malakin

Since the 6800 is a brand new design you might have to wait for updated drivers, I certainly wouldn't assume the current ones will work. Shouldn't take long for new ones if they're needed though. Will probably take at least a month before you can buy a 6800 based card and possibly significantly longer with the paper launches everyone likes to do these days.

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## ewan.paton

well last time i looked nvidia drivers were the same from the geforce 2 mx to the latest and greatest ones{1}, as the linux drivers are usually released at the same time as windows i think its safe to assume nvidia can be trusted to deliver drivers by the time you plug it into your board.

the 6800 definatly looks like the smart choice more because of the new features it suports than a few benchmarks showing it kick ass,i would love mpeg4 decoding moved from cpu to gpu but im not upgrading for a while

{1} thats 4 diferent cores

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## Malakin

 *Quote:*   

> well last time i looked nvidia drivers were the same from the geforce 2 mx to the latest and greatest ones

 In many places they'll have different code paths in the driver to deal with the different cores. Linux drivers support TNT1->FX5950 currently which is TNT/Geforce/TI/FX major cores.

mpeg decoding is nice but encoding is a killer feature.

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## Nick W

So, what is it about mpeg encoding that has everyone so excited? - What's the deal there?

Nick

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## ewan.paton

 *Nick W wrote:*   

> So, what is it about mpeg encoding that has everyone so excited? - What's the deal there?
> 
> Nick

 

well fps arent realy that useful as your eyes see at 25fps and there arent that many games yet that need it, the extra features are cool because of the potential features it alows in new games.

the mpeg4 encoding is just one of the extra features that can be used imediately, imagine captureing 120minutes of dvd quality movies to 700megs in real time or better, it effectivly means even standard hardisks can hold days of enternainment and when HDTV comes out it will have the features to deal with its masive data size

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## MadEgg

I've seen many ppl claim they can see the difference between 80 fps and 120 fps, which I personally think is bullshit. But you're going the other way.

You can definitely see, feel and enjoy the difference between 25fps and 50fps.

Everything below 30fps is definitely getting choppy and you will notice the difference.

And the FPS difference is even more clearly in Doom3 and Halflife 2, they will really use nearly all of the cars features.

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## Malakin

I can tell the difference between 80fps and 120fps and even if a game runs at an average of 120fps the minimum fps is very important and it still might drop to a quarter of that.

The encoding is nice for things like mythtv, you could play games while mythtv is recording a tv show, or at least use your computer without worrying about screwing up your recording.

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## Nick W

Got it, that makes sense, thx very much!

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