What is it with me and graphics cards?

Had my good ole GeForce3 Ti 64 for 3 years or more and it's given sterling service, even with a little bit of overclocking for all that time. But I wanted something a bit quicker and got a 9700Pro off ebay a while back. That let me down a couple of months ago after what, maybe 8 or 9 months - so I went back to Good Old Faithful.

Then last week I decided to splash out on a brand new HIS 9800Pro IceQ - you know, the one with the great big fan that's been voted top for overclocking. It arrived Friday and even though I should have been working I couldn't resist dropping it in and giving it a spin ...... er like nearly all day.

Bit disappointed - benchmarked SLOWER than the old 9700Pro in 3DMark2001SE so I started off a bit sick. And didn't see ANY improvement in FR over my Old Faithful in heavily populated areas, but graphics were nice and sharp.

Then what do I see this morning when I fired up Cyril Pioffet's Gazelle - a bunch of pixels not changing colour. Upper left, 3 or 4 in a row with spaces between, sometimes fewer but never less than 1.

Anyway, I've already got a Return Number so it'll be going back on Monday. Meanwhile I'm back with Good Old Faithful. Maybe I oughta think about sticking to NVidia, I dunno.

It's a funny old do, with graphics cards... ...!

I previously had, (have), an nVidia Ge-Force 4 Ti 64 sooper-dooper card....
Changed it for my current nVidia BFG 6600 GT OC 128....

The result in 3D Mark 01 is better, but a marginal difference in the Flight sim, regarding frame rates, (but slightly smoother)...!

The performances seem to be very close now between cards, and it's often difficult to notice the difference... ...!

Paul.

Everyone raves on about the FX5700's, and it's only because the market is flooded with the junk.

My last (until very recently) card was a FX5900 and it was as fast as a 9800pro until you started filtering, where it falls down by comparison. The FX5700 simply isn't in the same league due to it's inferior GPU.

This is why I suggested a 6600GT, as it is the next logical and cheapest upgrade option.

Here is an indication: This is a BMark of my overclocked FX5900.

Hmmmmm...

It'll cost me under £15 more than the 9800Pro. I've also looked at a few user reviews and they're pretty good. Think I might pay the extra and go for an exchange rather than a replacement. Maybe it's time for me to give Radeon a miss.

Dump that 9800 pro and get a 6600 gt. Much better performence for around the same price.

As for a geforce FX (aka geforce5), aviod those cards. FX's are notorious for their bad dx9 support and horrible driver problems.

AVOID geforce FX's at all costs, unless all you have is a PCI slot.

Quote:


Is this a joke? I thought thats what buyin new was all about

BTW I had a nightmare last night, it wwas Nvidia relising the 7800GTX Ultra, the bad part was it had 52 pipes and sold for 800$ and I had just bought my 7800GTX. Only I would have a dream like that.

Weeeeeell......looks like the way to go here is to dump the 9800Pro and go for the 6800LE which I can get slightly cheaper than the 6600GT from the original supplier.

Then what you do is get Rivatuner and unlock the pipelines and pixel shaders that the drivers switch off. That way you 'almost' get a 6800GT - almost because the memory is slower.

Read all about it below

http://www.doomedpc.com/drupal-4.5.2/?q=/node/9

Yes thats a good plan.