Well i'm getting a new computer soon, and I have a choice of the following cards, and I don't want to get one that wont run FS good. Any input on these are greatly appreciated!

128MB DDR ATI RADEON™ 9800 Pro Graphics Card with TV-Out and DVI or 128MB DDR ATI RADEON™ 9800 Pro Graphics Card

128MB DDR GeForce FX 5200 Graphics Card with TV-Out and DVI

256MB DDR ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT

EEEEEEK scrap the FX5200 off the list straight away!! my old GF4 Ti4600 out performs em lol.

As said the 9800XT is the best and the 9800Pro its little brother.

My brother has a 9800pro, he upgraded from a fx5600 256ddr (Think it was only 128bit though).  He has noticed a big improvement though still cannot run everything maxed out.  The clouds still hurt FPS a little. I do not know what the 9800XT performs like though it should be better and be able to handle a little more. 

If your gonna buy any of these two try and wait a bit, with the new generation of cards coming out prices should drop a little, either that or try and stretch to purchasing a X800pro or 6800GT    Only thing is I gotta feeling you may have to wait a bit for these cards as many people have them on pre-order already.

Usually with graphics cards though your limited by how much you can afford, if you can afford it get the 9800xt or newer gen card if not then get the 9800pro which can be had rather cheap nowadays.

dont forget the 5950 ultra it matches the 9800 xt or there abouts

I have the ATI 9800 Pro 128 and burned up two cards. I eventually replaced the fan and heatsink with better quality parts.

As far as performance I'm running P4 3.2GHz w/Hyperthreading, WIN2K, Video card above, Soundblaster Live (Upgrading soon) and a WD 1220GB HHD, 7200RPM

Keep in mind my FPS are locked at 24.
 I get 10-13 at KSEA, Wa
   15-20 at KLAX, Ca
   24 at KSFO, Ca and
   24 at KSAN, Ca

I have Megascenery in So. California and No. California.

Joe

I need to add: This is with most sliders set to high, others on normal. Weather on Fair Skies. During Summer Day

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Well said!

My FX5600 died recently, , thankfully, my #2 machine has an Asus 9520 FX5200 fitted and I fitted it to my #1 pc.
Frankly, I was surprised to find I hav'nt had to alter any of my games settings to fix performance issues - there were'nt any! - Questioning in my mind the logic of paying 3 times the price (at the time ) for the supposedly better FX5600.......

My advice to you is to get your new machine with a basic FX5200, wait 6 months and then pick up one of the recomended cards listed by others here for a fraction of what they cost currently.

Why? PCI express cards will be current very soon, AGP cards will become obsolete overnight prices will reflect this considerably in a few months time.

Hey - Its your money not mine.......  

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So you've never even seen a 5200?

Yes I have on my friends system  and it SUX!  Its nothing against you the card just cant handle much. 

You are totally right that the Ti4x00 series doesn't fully support DX9 BUT, myself and my bro have exactly same spec except for G-card.  My ti4600 would run fs9 far far far smoother that his fx5600 256ddr job. 

I was a bit gutted coz i told him to get it as it should be better than mine lol, but after a while we did some research (Someone did post some benchies on here recently) and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  The fx5600 was quite a few down from my aging GF4 ti4600.  That explained y i was running smoother and then I appologised to him for recommendin it   

On the DX9 note even though it doesnt fully support it all reflections and effects in fs9 work.  Also on 1280x1024 I can run a bit of Anti Alias which I am sure the FX5200 could never handle with AI and clouds without runnin like a slide show. 

On the system that I saw the FX5200 on he now has my brothers FX5600 and it does run much better but his system spec is higher than mine bar the FX5600 and in all benchy tests we run I score better???

Again its nothing against you guys its just the fx5200-5600 dont perform well at all.  From the FX5700 up things get a lot better. 

The thing is the original question was he has a choice of various cards and out of those I would not choose the FX5200.  Yes I know we dont all have lots to spend on a G-card but I am guessin this guy is willin to pay a bit more so he has a good setup.

The FX5600 with Anti Alaising & Anisiotropic filtering enabled will out perform a ti4600. - The reason I bought mine instead of an Asus 8460 Ultra (which cost £100 more!) in the 1'st place!

I run FS / CFS with the above (Quality Settings some would call it) and the performance is better than the ti4600 I tried before I bought my 5600.

Overall, I like my 5600 (well, the replaced one anyway!) and my 5200 still runs Far Cry etc quite happily on my #2 p4 1.8.

Obviously, I don't like Ati - once bitten, twice shy.....

Ok ok ok, I dont wanna start a G/card war lol.

Hell the best advice for g/cards is buy the best one you can afford!!

If you can hold on and get one of the new X800 series or 6800 series.  I'm sure you would have no probs runnin FS with one of these, least I hope not 

But surely if the FX5600 sucks then so does the FX5200?

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If performance were solely dependant upon the card, then I might be inclined to say yes.  But it doesn't.

Yeah lol I think thats what I was gettin at that the fx5200 wouldn't be as good as the fx5600 I just put it in my own odd ball way 

I can only go on what I have seen. I dunno why my bro's MSI FX5600 didn't work as well as my Gf4 it just didnt ???  He has same mobo as me but has an xp3000 barton cpu I only have an xp2800 barton.  So technically he should run better than me as he had a faster cpu and a newer g/card.  Admittingley my friend with the FX5200 only had a athlon 1333Mhz i think but still had 512 ram (same as i used to have) and same fsb.  I guess I was tryin to slate em quite bad just my experiences with those two cards hasn't been very good 

I think ATI had the hold on Image Quality in the last round Nvidia FX5*00 and ATI 9*00 series.  Most screenies I have seen on here last year the ATI's seem real nice, dunno why they just look that way to me.  I personally have never had an ATI but am quite impressed by my bro's new 9800pro.  I think things are a lot closer with the new gen cards commin out though so things could get more interesting  8)

I have heard of the FX5600 having a lot of problems. The best cards in the FX series are probably the FX5200, 5900, and 5950. I've heard good things about the FX5700 too.

For thoses who still doubt the power of my lower-midrange PC, I've now tested demos for Battlefield 1942 and Star Trek: Elite Force 2 and they both run fine. Going to try the Far Cry demo later although it says it requires a min 1ghz CPU. We'll see about that. I prefer to test cards and drivers in games and not bench mark. That gives a more accurate picture of what it can do.

If you really want to see the power of nVidia, components are everything. Well the same goes for any graphics card. My ECS K7S5A mobo really likes nVidia cards. Try running  them on an nForce 3 mobo and then you'll see their real power.

Far Cry, perhaps the most graphically intense game on the maket ran surprisingly smootly. 3DMark03 can bite me with its lies. Of couse, I don't know what people see in Far Cry. Too bloody for me.

If you re-benched those cards with 3Dmark03 all the GF MX series would crash and burn.  Also the FX5200 can barely run it over 2fps and only gets a few hundred points.  The Ti range struggles aswell as it is accelerated for older programs and not newer ones.

I get 12000 in '01
4100 in '03. 
I believe the higher scores are due to overdrive and the higher clock memory i use. (Although it is not o/c'ed)

Congo the main difference that the fX5900 provides you is that you should be able to apply some AA an AF.  The FX5900 should handle this better than your ti4200 or my ti4600.  I can run AA and AF but not to much.

Try 4x AA and 4 or 8x AF.  The fx5900 shouldn't take to much of a hit with those unlike our older cards.

I hate to tell you guys, but benchmarks lie. I ran 3dMark03 on my Duron 950. I think I got 940 points. That's low. I upgraded to an Athlon XP 2000+ which is almost twice as fast, 860 points. I think they're just a ploy to get you to upgrade to expensive stuff. (I noticed Alienware sponsors Futuremark) How could my score actually drop with the same drivers, same IQ settings, and a faster  CPU? (<- rhetorical question)
Strangely enough, I did quite well on PCMark04.

I found that it was the CPU holding me back. I've got better frames in FS, smooth CFS3. Even the Far Cry demo runs smooth as a baby's bottom. These are all with 61.21 drivers which I found are best with the FX5200.

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I don't know what XT stands for, extream I guess but the cards with that lable are hardly extream. XT cards are much slower than their regular and Ultra counterparts. You would have been better off buying a FX5700 or a regular FX5900.

So that explains it. They make it sound like it tests the everything involved in 3D games.

Here are my 3dmark scores:

3dmark2001 = 18208
3dmark2003  = 6890

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The FX 5900XT is a crippled version of the  FX 5900. It generally uses slower RAM but the nv35 GPU chip is the same. The PCB design is usally modified from the other reference FX 5900 cards. Depending on the manufacturer or luck, it may even turn out to be a performance card with quality components onboard.

The stock clocks on the 5900XT are: GPU=390mhz / RAM=700mhz.  Mine clocks fine at 450/900 and runs reasonably cool at that. Going to 460/900, I see the temp rising. Winfast provide the overclock utility for my card.

Even at stock clocking, the FX 5900XT isn't very far behind it's standard FX 5900 counterparts.

Any FX 5900XT  card blows away all FX 5700 cards, that's just a fact, the FX5700 GPU just isn't in the same league.

And yes, Gixer, it does handles the AA, AF and higher resolutions better.

I noticed your system overclock Gixer, I too just upgraded to a XP2800+ and obtained 364mhz FSB with no apparent heat rise, scored just over 16,000 3dMarks in '01 with the card overclocked as above. I had to add a case fan to blow across the video card. There are no heat sinks on the Video cards RAM chips, but the RAM is running cool enough, it's the GPU that is warming up.

Look at Leworthy8's score with his overclocked XP3200+ !!!  Well done!

Yeah, I was whining a bit, the FX 5900XT is an ok card, I just expected too much in FS9...... lol, when wil I learn!

I generally don't think overclocking a video card is a good idea at all, but remember, the 5900XT is a clocked down version of a very fast GPU. It begs for it.

If the 5900XT comes with fast RAM chips, then it's a bonus. It usually ships with either Samsung or Hynix 2.8ns RAM. Some cards are found with 2.2ns Hynix chips (the good stuff!). Someone wrote that Hynix has a high yield of fast chips, and that many Hynix 2.8ns chips are re-labeled 2.2ns chips. My card has labeled 2.8ns Hynix, yet it clocks (so far) to 900mhz with no cooling or excessive heat. I'm not sure how fast the ram will go.

There are several better cards of course, it's just that these are relatively cheap at the moment and have a bit of punch.

Getting off track here so I'll post a thread in Overclocking Gixer, thanks.