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Graphics Which Card...

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by PaulW, 22 Feb 2004.

  1. PaulW

    PaulW What's a Dremel?

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    Just wondering which one you would prefer, and why?

    GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

    or

    ATI Radeon 9800XT or PRO...

    I've read reviews, but there not the best, its better to find out of end-users which is what & why you chose what you did!

    Cheers!
     
  2. J3mZ

    J3mZ What's a Dremel?

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    If youve got the money, 9800XT is definetly what you want. If you cant/dont want to spend that much, 9800pro is the card for you. I would of said 5950U, but for its price, and half attempted dx9 features i wouldnt recomend it. Great card for Dx8 though :rolleyes:
     
  3. PaulW

    PaulW What's a Dremel?

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    9800XT can be watercooled can't it? as my rig i'm working on is gona be fully watercooled!
     
  4. Mace

    Mace Ohh, it stings.

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    Any card can be watercooled.... Although with watercooling, you can OC your 9800PRO to higher than a 9800XT will get with air cooling (especially if you're willing to buy a vapochill system :p) I'd rather save 200 some dollars and buy a 9800pro than a 9800xt for a tiny bit of extra performance anyways..
    Especially since the new series of radeons are bound to be released within a few months, your 400 dollar card will be at 200 some, most likely.
     
  5. cderalow

    cderalow bondage master!

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    you'll have trouble finding a block for a 9800XT... mainly due to the stock cooling covering the ramchips etc... i've been looking for a good one, and have yet to find one
     
  6. J3mZ

    J3mZ What's a Dremel?

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    The thing with o/c'ing the 9800pro is you'll have to do a volt mod in order to clock the mem substantialy higher. If your willing to do that go with the 9800pro. The 9800XT already starts out at a higher memory clock, and has a higher voltage (i think) so the mem can clock higher without a volt mod.

    And yes you can watercool both cards.
     
  7. timread

    timread What's a Dremel?

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    If you're looking for silent running then take a look at the Sapphire 9800XT Ultimate - it uses a Zalman ZM80C-HP fanless heatpipe cooler (although there is also an optional 20dB/33dB fan that goes with the package).

    That would be a silent, but not watercooled, option :thumb:
     
  8. sadffffff

    sadffffff Minimodder

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    the 5950. I like to try to stay away from ati. I don't like the shoddy drivers and the laughable way the cards lock for a second as they swap ram. Oh and the way they sell their cards bothers me too - selling a broken 9700 pro as a 9500? To be fair though the newest ati cards i use are a radeon 9100 (which i admit preforms disturbingly well except for driver/ram swapping issues) and a mobility radeon 7500 (same stuff with ram swapping and compatibility issues). I have never had these issues with any nvidia card. I have used a tnt2 ultra, geforce2 mx400 pci/agp versions, geforce 4 ti4200 and a geforcefx 5900.
     
  9. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    every part of the PC component industry operates this way, intel 3.2s which dont make the grade are sold as lower speeds
    3200+ cpus which dont perform are sold as 2500+
    PC3700 ram which doesnt stack up can be sold as PC3200 ram

    hell, a 5950Ultra is architecturally identical to a standard 5900, the only difference being the bios

    the fact that PC parts are graded is the main reason that overclocking works in the first place, it also keeps costs down as the company can still make a bit of money out of a batch of, say 9700s which went wrong, otherwise they would have to be binned at *huge* expense

    and, while still definitely not up to nVidia's standards where drivers are concerned in my opinion, ATI drivers have gotten *much* better since a year or more ago
     
  10. hypocrisy86

    hypocrisy86 Banned

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    I'd definitely go with the XT, goood quality :thumb:
     
  11. sadffffff

    sadffffff Minimodder

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    I see a difference mister tad. In processors that dont make the "grade" they simply operate more slowly. The 5900 core and the 5950 core have the same fetures. One just operates more slowly and is given less and cheaper ram. In the 9500 -> 9700 deal the 9500 had features disabled because they were broken. 2? pipes didn't function correctly on some cards so they disabled them.

    Personally I don't think it's right. And if Nvidia or AMD or Intel sold a broken piece of equipment but disabled the broken part then shame on them too, I just haven't heard of something like that yet. If this is the deal with the 5900SE card then I wonder if nvidia sells them to resellers knowing that they wont operate correctly unless they disable part, or if they simply sell a batch to a reseller and they made the decision to disable part of the card. If you have a link to an article detailing this I would be interested.

    It would be like if there was a truck that could carry, say, 5000lbs in the back. But there are some trucks that can only cary 3000lbs. due to the metal in that batch. They are given some lesser tires, and a worse paintjob, and they are sold at a cheaper price. I don't see a problem with that. But I would see a problem if they sold an identicle truck that had a hole in the back portion of the bed (or looked like it could develope a hole), so they roped off that portion and sold it as a truck that can hold 2500lbs.

    Sure it works like a truck that holds 2500 lbs but the thought that you have bought a broken truck(video card) really bothers me
     
  12. djgizmo

    djgizmo 1337 pimp

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    No they disabled them to make it so there was a difference between the 500 dollar cards and 200 dollar cards. They maybe came from a batch of gpus that didn't pass all the tests, but the cards definitely still work with 4 pipelines of the 8. It was cheaper for them to just use the same gpu in all cards than to engineer two entirely different gpus. So what. The cards were still a good deal. So what if half the rendering pipelines were disabled? And with a bit of luck, those people could reenable them. I get 9800PRO performance out of my 9800SE which i bought last fall for 230€ including tax. It was a gamble, i could have ended up stuck with 9600pro performance, but with higher memory bandwidth, but instead i got the full performance. So what? The card was a good deal whether the pipelines were disabled or faulty or not. Get over it.
    You don't understand, that if the batch isn't flawless, they're not fit to go into 9800PROs, so rather than letting a bunch of partly perfect gpus go to the trash, they can put em in cheap cards with less performance, and like half of those will still get full 9800PRO performance out of it anyway.
     
    Last edited: 25 Feb 2004
  13. sadffffff

    sadffffff Minimodder

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    If youre fine with getting a broken video card for $287.60 (crap!) then good for you. I am not. You say "partly perfect" I say half trash.

    But this is getting waaay off topic, so I digress...
     
  14. djgizmo

    djgizmo 1337 pimp

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    Well the thing is that part of the batch is perfect, but some of them are defective. Who cares if some of them have broken pipelines. It doesn't matter cause they're disabled anyway. What is the difference whether you buy a card that only ever had 4 in the first place, or if you buy one that has 8, but only 4 of them are activated, and there's a chance that the other 4 will/won't work if you try and enable them. They may be broken, but it's not like you have to stare at some broken pipelines all day. What's the problem? Look at it this way: at the time; if you wanted an AIW 9800PRO, you could buy it for ~400€, or you could buy an AIW9800SE for ~230€ with ~50% chance of it being just as good, and ~50% chance that it's a bit better than a 180€ card(at the time). Think, you have a ~50% chance that it's worth 170€ more, and ~50% chance that it's worth 80€ less. It made sense at the time, it also made sense for ATI cause they had a bunch of GPUs that they needed to unload.
     
    Last edited: 26 Feb 2004
  15. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    Errr... that's pretty standard practice for pretty much all chip makers... be it RAM, CPU or GPU. Otherwise yeilds from slilicon wafers would be very low, and prices would be very high. AMD do it and Intel do it too.
     
  16. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    It's always been the case. I dont see what the problem is. Time for one of my renowned analogies. If Ford designed a new car who's flagship model had a computer to control the instrument panel for instance... what would be wrong in installing chips that failed the tests on certain instruments into a lower model? If the chip that controls the little display that monitors door locks and bulb failure failed the quality tests, why not install that chip in a lower model that doesn't even HAVE the door lock module? If it works perfectly for all the functions of the lower model, why throw it away and increase production costs that YOU AND I will foot the bill for? Makes no sense. So.. if for instance, if a FX51 has a fault with the memory controller, wwhy not sell it as a A64 3400+? That's the only difference.. on the die anyway... different package i know... but little else. Would it affect teh quality of the product you eventually buy? No.. I think it's just the thought of buying something "faulty" that you can't get your head around. Corsair do it with RAM... well.. ALL manufacturers do, but a case in point is COrsair. If modules fail the tests at a rated speed, they sell it as slower RAM, and conversely, the opposite is true. My XMS4000 RAM is read as PC3700... why? 'cos that's wht it is.. it's just PC3700 that can run at 500MHz at the rated timings.. so effectively it IS 500MHz RAM. Just 'cos it wasn't PLANNED on being so doesn't mean it isn't.

    Mr G
     
  17. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    ANyway... back on topic:

    The 9800XT is only marginally faster, and simply not worth the extra cost.. especially as it has limited longevity anyway, as PCI Express is just around the corner. The 9800 Pro can be clocked at higher speeds, thus negating any performance gain. The 9800 pro is available with 256Mb is that bothers you as well... although it shouldnt, as there are almost no games that use DX9 yet, let alone 256Mb of RAM. By the time there are, you'll be hankering after a new PCI Express card anyway.... I know I will. I could have bought either when I built this rig, but chose the 9800 pro for that reason. I'd save cash.
     
  18. hypocrisy86

    hypocrisy86 Banned

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    Radeon 98000 Pro 256 DDR2 :thumb:
     
  19. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    98000 pro? Not fair.. you're clearly living in some otherworldy quantum dimention that allows you to bring back cards that haven't been invented yet! (hmph!) :nono:
     
  20. youngvboi

    youngvboi What's a Dremel?

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    lol :hip: wat bout Asus radeon 9800 XT pack with two fans :jawdrop:
     
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