PCI graphics cards: ATI or NVidia?

[JeffreyZ]

I just discovered, to my immense delight, that both NVidia and ATI make 128MB DDR ram graphics cards for the PCI slot. Both products cost about $120-$140 depending on the brand. Yay! No more GeForce4 MX420! (I'm stuck with just two PCI slots in my low-profile Dell 4500s, but I'll be darned if I can't still get my game on).

Um, but which one to I go with? There's the GeForce FX 5200, and then there's the ATI thing (I don't know much about it). Is there a good comparison of these competing cards?

[Dark Watcher]

We cannot speak of ATI since we have not owned any recent cards, but we did upgrade from a Geforce4 MX420. We too feel the PCI pain, and have been quite pleased with the upgrade to FX 5200. Then again..our gaming habits don't stray far from emulation...So we cannot speak much from PC gaming....It is far better then yor existing card though

[Razor Blade]

Try www.hardocp.com or www.tomshardware.com for reliable benchmarks etc ... The one to copare to a 5200 would be the 9200 So basically ati's is a 9 and Geforce's is a 5. Indront of the last three numbers for a basically equal card.

Either choice is good. No brand has better drivers unlike some think or anything like that. If they are the same price than get the one with better framerates. Although 2 fps isn't that much.

[Kane]

Personaly, of those two (the 9200 and the 5200), as far as emulation goes, the 5200 is better, being more feature packed. The geForce product is also a Dx9 part rather than the ATi's Dx8.1, but you won't really be able to make much use of that owing to the castrated nature of the card.

[Dark Watcher]

Not to go off topic, but ...

DW is currently using the Geforce FX 5200 PCI. Should DW still seek out the holy grail Voodoo 5 PCI?

[Kane]

Much as it pains me to say this: No.
Although I always was a staunch 3dfx supporter and an avid fan of the Voodoo 5, graphics technology has moved on enough to offset the Glide advantages for the most part. A Voodoo 5 was only really the mutts nuts in emulation, as in PC games it suffered the lack of HW T&L support and had buggy as hell XP drivers. In the old DOS 3dfx games it wasn't all that either as Screamer 2 didn't support it, and Screamer Rally has some major glitches. I think if I was to go searching out a new Voodoo, I'd get the Voodoo 1, just to play Screamer 2 and Screamer Rally in thier former glory.
In emulation the Voodoos have been surpassed (IMO) by Pete's OpenGL2.x plugin. You get a similar blurring effect (so useful to emulation) provided by the Voodoo 5's FSAA, with the screen filter, and the speeds of Glide are offset by the fact that we now have far faster cards.
In short? Only go get it if you want a piece of History. Don't expect too much use out of it.

[Dark Watcher]

Good to know..thanks Kane

[Gamer1]

http://sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=445

that's a good review site, testing a whole slew of pci cards

[Gingo17]

ati cards seem to have better luck with chankast, oddly. So I would recommend that, though if 3DFX were still around, I would give my undying support to them heh. Anyway, I had a GeForce 4 Ti 4600, games ran ok until it overheated. My Friend gave me his old radeon 9600 pro. it works like a charm. I get better frame rates... oddly, and its got a TV tuner. Not to mention Space channel 5 part 2 is actually playable on with the ati card (nvidia chipsets just show a blue screen). So I guess if you want value, go nvidia, if you want quality, go ati.