I'm somewhat familiar with the FX series, but not with the ATI range. I've just upgraded my FX5200 to a FX5600 (because I got one on the cheap), but I'm always on the lookout for an improvement. Clearly I can compare the technical difference between cards in a given range, but often much of the technical info is meaningless - OK Card B can handle 27.2 billion doodleflips per sec more than Card A, but what does that mean when I'm playing CS on a 1024-res TFT? Upgrading the FX5200 means I now know how pants it was... but how much better are higher cards in the range, and what will it mean to a p/t gamer like myself? Also, how do I compare the ATI cards with the nVidia? Incidently I'm a Tightwad [tm], so I've no interest in a card that cost £300! Cheers
Humm I might miss my guess here, but this is just a pile of poop waiting for someone to step in it. You might get less passion and more reason asking if a person supports the Iraq war. And the field of benchmarks and architectures is a full of landmines that could set off anyone passing by. Generally speaking though unless you devote great effort into the filed, the only true test is if you, the user, is happy. This will prevent the normal ATI / Nvidia war that would normally erupt. If that’s not good enough, the next best thing is to look at reviews for games you like / own / parallel those you are interested in. They should give you a clean caparison to base your decision on. If those reviews stop including your favorite video card in the benchmarks (like the FX series), then it means you are far enough behind that if you’re not getting a new video card, don’t bother getting any new games. But really, your best bet is to go by the summaries of the professional reviews.
it means you'll probably get frame limited to your refresh rate ok time to get serious. Ask youself "do i really need to upgrade?" if your only playing CS and older games, then your probably fine with that card. Want to play NeedForSpeed:Underground with all the graphics on high? then maybe its time save up the $$$ and get something better Comparing ati and nvidia card would be as simple as finding some reviews which bench a whole lot of cards. (and use games like farcry, NFS:U, etc, instead of synthetic benchmarks like 3dmark)
Or basically take the ATi number and subtract 4000 Gets odd with the 5900/9800 series but it gives you the vague idea. My laptop which can't run any new games at any resolution runs CS at 60FPS at 1024x768, so a 5600 is plenty for that...
Well I'm OK for now... CS runs fine on my laptop (S3 Savage), so it flies on this machine. With the 5600, I can now run Morrowind on maximum settings, so that is OK too... But I suspect I'll have to compromise on quality quite a bit when HL2 comes out or if I bother with Doom3... I think I'll play it by ear... and wait to upgrade until I have to... Cheers
Sometimes it's the little things that you notice when you make upgrades, or in my most recent case, a downgrade. Let's just say using milkdrop for winamp visualizing does not perform anywhere NEAR as good with a 5200~
