Geforce 5900 or Radeon 9800 XT?

[MO2J]

Hi Guys 8)

I am buying a new graphics card soon and the Nvidia Geforce 5900 or Radeon 9800 XT seem to be the best contenders.

I am upgrading from a Geforce FX 5600 card - so I'm sure that there will be a huge impovement either way.

Anyone own either of these cards or have any insight into which is better? I know that you can argue it both ways, so it would be very helpful if anyone has firsthand experience with either of the cards.

I've had a trawl around the web and the general concensus seem to be that the 9800 generally has better benchmarks, but I've heard murmurs that the 5900 has better drivers and is more powerful, meaning it will have a better future...

[Super Stu]

9800XT

nVidia have fumbled.

[Dazzla]

ATI without a doubt. Wipes the floor with the 5900.

[Ciaran]

9800

for reasons above^^^

[Chaser]

From what I have read the coclusion seems to be that the Radeon9800 is faster with certain new releases, especially the up-coming HalfLife2. Its all to do with the DX9, the Radeon conforms strictly to the standard but the Geforce5900 has extra features and power that aren`t taken advantage of at the moment. Because Nvidia have tried to be clever, it causes certain technical problems which slow it down, but in the future devcos will learn how to maximise the GF5900 power and it will exceed the Radeon in speed power and graphical features.

The Radeon is the safe option at the moment but I definitely believe the 5900 is the better card and that is why I will be buying it as soon as Doom3 is released, John Carmack is now working with Nvidia to make sure that the game looks best on their hardware.

[oracle]

One question that hasnt been asked , What are your system specs

as there is no point getting a fast graphics card with a slow system

What games do you want to play on this card? current or future?

[Plow King]

Don't bother with the XT it's not worth the extra 100 or so quid for 10% extra performance. Get a crucial 9800pro and use the coupon code bbukwebpromo to get a further 10 quid or so off it. A full pro card for about 240 quid. ****ing bargain. I love mine

[mid]

Before we get to spending money on either, I'd be kind of interested what on Earth it is that is running so horribly slow on a 5600 anyway. Its not top of the range, but its fine for just about anything currently available unless you're wanting to play at silly resolutions. Hell, I'm enjoying Call Of Duty on a GeForce 2.

[MO2J]

The machine I'm running my 5600 on has an AMD Athlon XP 3000 processor, MSI K7N2 DELTA ILSR nforce2 motherboard and 512mb (soon to be 1Gig) of RAM.

The 5600 hasn't caused me any poblems but I have been saving up for a new card for a while and the upcoming stuff like Deus Ex 2, Farcry, Half Life 2 etc. will run better on the newer cards.

[oracle]

to be honest, stick with your card by the time hl2 is relesed ati and nvidia will have new cards out

[ThoseOfTheUnlight]

to be honest, stick with your card by the time hl2 is relesed ati and nvidia will have new cards out

Umm...

Valve are pimping the ATI cards of the moment for half life 2, so I find that hard to believe.

[Super Stu]

I thought HL2 was due late Q1/early Q2? That puts it in line for release about the time the next product cycle is due, and hence new (or as I suspect) tweaked cores.

[yashiro]

John Carmack is now working with Nvidia to make sure that the game looks best on their hardware.

He is? I'm not so sure he's trying to make it 'best on Nvidia'.

[mid]

Not "best on nVidia" in a "better than on ATi" way, but best as in dealing with the myriad quirks and misfeatures the GeForce FX cards suffer from in their DX9 support to give the best performance they can. As Chaser explained, writing shader code that performs well on nVidia without breaking Radeon support is 'interesting'.

Certainly, my recommendation would be to wait until you have these upcoming games installed on your hard-drive and running unacceptably before spending the money. Prices are guaranteed to drop on the current round of cards, and its probable that the next lot will be along around the time of release too.

[MO2J]

arrghh I couldn't wait

Got myself a Asus Radeon 9800XT - very nice it is too

Have to send the free copy of Half Life 2 coupon in to ATI in Canada though, along with - a photocopy of my receipt, the barcode on the packaging cut out and a print-out of an online form