GeoForce or Radeon
 

I'm thinking of getting a new computer in the very near future and I thought I'd ask everyone their feelings on the GeoForce and Radon video cards as these are what come with the systems I'm looking at. So which is better? I've heard that the Radon has compatability problems with a number of software including games. I remember someone saying they had problems playing SE4 with a Radon video card way back sometime ago.

GeoForce 5200
0r
Radeon 9800 XT

tks for your opinions and help

[ June 05, 2004, 03:07: Message edited by: mac5732 ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

Both are good, but I would go with Geforce. Just my personal choice. However most gamers are going with the Radeon.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

ATI always seems to eek out slightly higher performance in each generation of hardware, but by all accounts their drivers suck badly. The nVidia drivers are much more compatible, consistent and reliable. What would you rather have, the best benchmark numbers, or the ability to actually play all of your fancy games without crashing? Something to think about while drooling over benchmark numbers... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ June 05, 2004, 04:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

ATI has been getting better and Nvidia worse with their drivers, though. A recent set of drivers broke Rise Of Nations, for example, and Nvidia has been disabling certain features (or forcing enabling of others) to create artifically high benchmark numbers.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

I've had at least 8 graphics cards in the Last
12 years and I've ended up with a Nvdia 5950
Ultra - and its great. Most have been Nvdia and
I've had very few problems.

Radeon did have a driver issue once but its been
sorted out now. You do find their cards smaller
and mostly quieter but there's not much in it.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

Ok, some benchmarking:
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/7351/...03-summary.gif

[ June 05, 2004, 10:26: Message edited by: aiken ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

Personally, I have always had problems with ATI. To the point where I wouldn't buy another ATI product if my life depended on it.

Imagine, buying an ATI and when I open the shrinkwrapped box and pull out the card, 2 resistors fall off the card. hmmm, not a good sign. Take it back to the store, and they graciously exchange it. it installed fine, about a month after the install, my computer would not boot. (I would only get 3 beeps from my PC speaker) hmmm, open up the case and look around,.. guess what. two resistors are sitting on the bottom of my case. (yup, from the ATI card) this time the store would not exchange it because of the amount of time that passes. I try to contact ATI support, and bark at the wind. The very idea that ATI has customer support is laughable. Since they had an office not far from where I live. I get a friend to drive me over. From the time I entered the building it took 2 hours of being given the runnarround before they finally agreed to fix (not replace) my ATI card. I signed a paper and left the card with them. They would send it to me by post. Not happy (but having little choice) I leave. I wait, I wait, 1 week, 2 weeks, (I call, but as usual no reply at the support line.) 4 weeks. I get my friend to drive me over again,.. They say they have no record of my card ever being left with them, and say something to the effect that 'they are not a repair service and it would be highly unlikely that they would accept a card for repair.' they say that they would refer me to the nearest repair shop. Ha! I pulled out my copy of the paper I signed when I left the card with them, they look at it and say just a moment,.. another man comes out and says that the person who signed this paper no longer works for ATI and they have no record of this transaction. Grrrrr, I ask "so what about my card? are you going to give me a replacement?" "Sorry we do not have stock here, this is just a sales office. All our orders are processed at the main office in Toronto." They basically say I should contact the head office, they give me a business card with the name and number of the person I should talk to. Guess what? Yup, no answer at that number either. $329 +tax down the drain.

Buy an ATI? Not if they had the only graphics card available the PC. I would at that point switch to Macintosh as my platform of choice.

But I hear they have changed, they are much better now. (btw this story took place 10 months ago.) When I was forced to buy a GForce 2 MX 400 to keep my computer running. nVidia is fantatsic. In the long run, I must thank ATI for letting me discover nVidia. I only paid $139 for my GForce (the GForce4 was the main seller at that time. and it was all I could afford at the time after loosing $329 to ATI)

So, Mac. Which Card do you think I'll recommend? LOL

Nuf said, Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

P.S. the ATI card was a Raedom 9600 or something to that effect. (suposidly the best graphics card available at the time I spent the money.)

[ June 05, 2004, 11:26: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

I have a GForce nVidia a couple generations old and have had no problems with it. I would recommend going to
http://www.cnet.com
and looking at their reviews of things. They explain all the bitz and perks fairly clearly.

Wildcard

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

I agree that the NVidia drivers have been better, but they still are ok.
And due to my past experiences with ATI drivers + support (or the non-existance thereof) a LOT of things will have to happen before I ever buy an ATI product again. Not just a few fractions of percentages on a questionable performance table. I am used to bad support, but was really surprised by a barely hidden "you have bought it, we have your money, don't expect anything more from us" attitude.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

Psst...

There are also more companies than just ATI and nVidia in the video card business! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Do you need the fastest 3D you can possibly get? I think only Doom/Quake players really need the ultimate frame-rates. If you aren't a Doom/Quake junkie you might find a Matrox card to be acceptable. They have consistently been rated as best in 2D image quality for ages and ages. Their latest generation has good 3D even if it's not as screaming fast as the two leaders. I hear some of the ancient powers of video chipsets are re-awakening, too. Hercules is still out there. Not to mention some of the generics like Acer/AOpen and whatnot...

[ June 05, 2004, 19:03: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

I think I'd probably go with Nvidia next time I buy a video card as well. I suspect my ATI card is behind my mysterious device driver errors that strike me once or twice a day - to which I've yet to solve.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Perhaps, but am I intereted? Not one bit. If they offered me a new computer system to go with the card I'd say "No." Replace my 'Lost' ATI? No thanks. Nothing they say or do will ever change my opinion of them. There loss not mine. You know the old saying, Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Well, this is one cat you can't skin twice.

I have several friends with ATI cards and they have had no problems. (one of my friends had the exact same problem as me, a resistor fell off, but he is an electronic technician by profession and he simply re-soldered it on the card and that fixed his problem.) BTW: the resistor that fell off did not prevent his computer from running, but he could not run any 3D games. they would simply crash to desktop or cause his computer to reboot. If this sounds like problems that you have, you might want to check if a transistor is missing from the graphic card.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> ______________________________
| |
| --- |
| | | |
| XX --- |
| |
|___ ________|
|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">XX marks the approximate spot where the loose trasistors were on both my friends card and mine.

Anyway, It's all history now. I'd much rather look to the future. (And I know that SEV is a part of my future, so I'm very happy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif )

Nuf said, Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is clearly my problem. Those games I mentioned, crashed on desktop and sometimes rebooted my computer. Thanks for advice, David. I'll check my card for missing/faulty transistors.

btw. What means "Nuf said"?

[ June 05, 2004, 20:39: Message edited by: Karibu ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

Personally, I would prefer a Radeon over a GeForce because I have had better experience with them. Right now I run a GeForce 4 64mb card (got it for free so I can't complain), but it has driver incompatibility issues with certain games, mostly Mechwarriors.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Interesting, because nVidia whores their cards out to game developers to make damn sure their cards work. Though I have heard of a few horror stories with the FX 5xxxx series, I've heard a *lot* more ATI horror stories.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It is a shortened form of "Enough said", and it may also be spelled "Nuff" (Well, "spelled" isn't quite the right word here though. But I shouldn't be digressing).

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

That is a sad story, David. However, you are entitled to compensation. I would go to them and threaten to contact police if they would not support you similar card. Propably they would give you another card if only to avoid bad attention. You could also tell them that you will post your story in several computer associated web forum if they would not help you.

I have heard similar stories about other persons difficulties with big companies and those who persuade their case strong enough, usually win their case, because big companies do not want to have bad reputation/overly big scene over few hundred dollars.

Oh yes, I have Radeon 8500 in my system. I have had problems with several games (ie. Ufo Aftermath and Homeworld 2 won't run) and sometimes with movies. Sometimes my computer crashes and throws warning that graphic card could not be connected. However, I am unable to say if my problems are because of graphic card, motherboard or bad IRQ's. I suspect my motherboard is crap one, so I have no exclusive evidence that Radeon 8500 would be bad card. However, I would propably go for Geforce now.

[ June 05, 2004, 12:25: Message edited by: Karibu ]

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It is a shortened form of "Enough said", and it may also be spelled "Nuff" (Well, "spelled" isn't quite the right word here though. But I shouldn't be digressing). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh, thanks for explanation Alneyan, because I used to think it was the quote from "Three piglets" tale, about piglets whose names were Nif-Nif, Nuf-Nuf and Noof-Noof http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

I bought a ATI 8500LE to use with Mechwarrior Online play. Huge mistake. I thought I would get a much better frame rate but the only thing I got was a computer lock up every time I connected to mechwarrior Online games. It also would lock up whenever I would connect to the internet also. The only way to get out of the lock up was to reboot my computer. I tried all the drivers, upgraded my bios, read all the files on this card, tried to contact ATI support(big joke), but I finally solved the problem by going out & buying a g force video card. It works great. I will never buy another ATI product again & I would recommend that everyone stay away from ATI products. I have heard this opinion from a bunch of different sources. ATI is putting out some real junk.

Re: GeoForce or Radeon
 

ATI can be a decent card but we use nothing but Nvidia here at work. We bought some new computers that had ATI Radeon 9xxx and they were junk. So we bought brand new Nvidia's and they run perfectly. I will never run a ATI card in a work environment and probably never at home either.