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Video cards: generally which are best/worst

bigred said:
Think I'll buy a PC soon and see how it goes w/whatever comes with. But again I don't get the impresssion they come with more than something like 16MB VRAM in most cases - ? That won't cut it for even a number of older (not ancient) games.
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Modern motherboard video chipsets will have an amount of RAM reserved for them in the BIOS, normally 64 -128MB sometimes more. If they need more they'll use some of the system RAM as well

And btw that's another thing that really peeves me is stores that sell systems seemed determined NOT to tell you anything about VRAM (ie what comes w/the system, no specs at all).
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Depends where you go. If you're buying from a place that employs minimum wage drones then it's not surprising, but I bet the brochure or website will tell you. If you haven't already picked your PC - what sort of budget do you have? Does it need any non-standard bits for daily use? And to reiterate SSR what games are you looking at playing? 'Older' is not helpful, I picked up Deus Ex 2 on a budget label the other week so that's now an 'Older' game and that'd kill a GeForce 4 if you tried to ramp up the settings
 
You don't need to build your own computer, just don't buy one in a retail store. You'll never be able to pick the right features and get a good price if you have to pick from a shelf model. I've had lots of good experiences with the major online sellers (like Dell). You can pick each component, like the video card, according to your needs, and have it shipped.

Building your own computer from parts was the thing to do 10 years ago or so. These days the major manufacturers get pretty good discounts on the parts because they can buy in bulk, so there isn't that much markup for buying the whole machine over assembling the parts. Just go through and remove the bundled features that you don't want (like an extended warranty) from the default package before making price comparisons.
 
Mongrel said:
Modern motherboard video chipsets will have an amount of RAM reserved for them in the BIOS, normally 64 -128MB sometimes more. If they need more they'll use some of the system RAM as well
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Wow - if true you just ended my interest in video cards.


Depends where you go. If you're buying from a place that employs minimum wage drones then it's not surprising, but I bet the brochure or website will tell you. If you haven't already picked your PC - what sort of budget do you have? Does it need any non-standard bits for daily use? And to reiterate SSR what games are you looking at playing? 'Older' is not helpful, I picked up Deus Ex 2 on a budget label the other week so that's now an 'Older' game and that'd kill a GeForce 4 if you tried to ramp up the settings
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I'll ref. this in the "buying a PC" thread :)
 
ATI tried to rely on manufactured results a-few-too-many times using benchmark applications and now doesnt have a competitor to NVIDIA's high end lines. While both makers have cut corners at the expense of real world performance while "cheating" with benchmarks, ATI never considered a way to cheaply produce a line of cards that didnt actualy cheat while maintaining performance.

So NVIDIA has a notable technology lead now and ATI doesnt seem to have any real plans to change that fact. ATI might be yesteryear in a few more.
 
That's not true. The X1900XTX and the GF7900 GTX are quite comparable cards. Last time I checked they even cost about the same. Both cards have thier +s and -s. Both manufacturers have dual card solutions (again each with it's +s amd -s)

The whole ATI vs. Nvidia debate has turned into a Microsoft Vs. Apple (or linux) You're going to have people on either end polorized by thier experience/views.

Do you research and pick the card that fits your purposes the best. :)

SSR
 
I have an ATI card in my old machine and an Nvidia in my new machine. They both work great. Unless you are going to do some seriously intensive things (a lot of video editing, or cutting edge games), similarly priced cards from each company will give similar results. For real intensive operations, there are some differences, but really nothing huge. Both companies have good products that work well, in my experience.
 
Speaking of ATI and Nvidia, how much weaker are these "video accelerators" that these 2 make and are popular toss-ins on PCs nowdays than a real video card? I get the basic diff (ie "stealing RAM vs having its own) but wonder in most cases, assuming you have the RAM to give, if it really matters much.

Or did we cover this already and I'm forgetful/too lazy to look up :cool:
 
bigred said:
Speaking of ATI and Nvidia, how much weaker are these "video accelerators" that these 2 make and are popular toss-ins on PCs nowdays than a real video card? I get the basic diff (ie "stealing RAM vs having its own) but wonder in most cases, assuming you have the RAM to give, if it really matters much.

Or did we cover this already and I'm forgetful/too lazy to look up :cool:
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It matters a lot if you're playing modern games and want to run them at full res while still looking good and smooth, anything built onto the motherboard is not going to be as powerful as a seperate card.
The conversation normally gets lost at this point as you never seem to define how old is in reference to your "I play older games" ;) :D

If you're looking at Half life, Neverwinter nights, Deus Ex type old - Onboard should be fine.

If your definition of old is "moved to budget label\reprint" - then it's easily possible to make an onboard chipset choke
 
bigred said:
Speaking of ATI and Nvidia, how much weaker are these "video accelerators" that these 2 make and are popular toss-ins on PCs nowdays than a real video card? I get the basic diff (ie "stealing RAM vs having its own) but wonder in most cases, assuming you have the RAM to give, if it really matters much.

Or did we cover this already and I'm forgetful/too lazy to look up :cool:
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Even with 10GB of system RAM, a 'video accelerator' will suffer when having to access system memory instead of memory on the video card itself.
 
tkingdoll said:
That's some of the most unusual advice I've ever heard.

Ooh, AND modern music is rubbish, get yourself a gramophone player and listen to Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree, that's much better than your new-fangled White Stripes.
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Well, I'd put up anything from CCR or Brian Wilson against that any day.

As for Tie a Yellow Ribbon (Tony Orlando and Dawn, IIRC), well, does White Stripes have their own TV show?
 
bigred said:
Speaking of ATI and Nvidia, how much weaker are these "video accelerators" that these 2 make and are popular toss-ins on PCs nowdays than a real video card? I get the basic diff (ie "stealing RAM vs having its own) but wonder in most cases, assuming you have the RAM to give, if it really matters much.

Or did we cover this already and I'm forgetful/too lazy to look up :cool:
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Speaking of ATI, I have an Radeon 9800XT, the awesome-o-ist video card available -- 3 years ago this coming fall, on a likewise once-top end 3.2GHz machine. Son just installed Oblivion, we're "midline" on the graphics settings, according to the built-in self-test of the game.

Sigh.

In a couple of years, I'll be running around with all the graphics sliders sllid to "mud blob" on 640x480.
 
In a couple of years the games coming out will likely take advantage of the PhysX technology, not to mention the continuing improved cards. There'll probably be cards that out perform todays quad SLI configurations in a few years. Maybe in another 10 years there will be another cycle, possible with cell processors.
 
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