[HellSpawn]

Hey guys.... I'm just trying to get the best bang for my buck and was wondering what some of you guys think about working on high end gaming cards.

I'm thinking about getting the nVidia 5900 Ultra 256MB DDR card. I'll be doing 3d, photoshoping, and gaming with this card.

The GeForce FX workstation cards cost a fortune. Are workstation cards really worth the money? The high end FX workstation card will be around $2k CAN and that's just not an option. The lower end FX workstation cards still cost a hell of a lot more then the 5900 Ultra.

It's kind of hard to find info about how much better performance is on workstation cards.... Thanks for any help.

[[Shizo]]

Basically, anything current from nVIDIA or ATI are gonna be kickass cards.
However it all depends on what are you planning to do with them..
Do you need 2,000,000 polygons rendered realtime? Then you probably gonna need some crazy ass ultra video card.
If not - save your money

[Smurf]

the bottom line is that the 5900, and the 9800 arnt made for applications such as 3dsmax and maya. The workstation cards like the quadro and firegl are made to work best with maya and 3dsmax. You will get alot more proformance from the workstation cards. You could get a low end 3dlabs card, that might be a better deal.
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Meep -It pwnz you.

[B0b]

i recently bought a Wildcat VP560 - it was DOA so i RMA'd it and they sent me an 870 instead cos they were out of stock on the 560

[Sukhoi]

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/qfx2k_fireglx1.shtml

[Shadow-X-]

Heya, I was in the same position as you just a few days ago. I just moved to the other side of the country (Ontario to BC) for school purposes, and I didn't bring my severely outdated PIII 450mhz, and i was in the market for a new PC. Now, I've been doing a bit of photoshop within the past few years (nothing professional, just leisure), and I was in the same dillemma as you are in now. Now, as most of the people who post here are proffessional artists for game companies and whatnot, they would know what sort of video card to get for graphic purposes *homage to them!* BUT, as a regular person ( I hate to say "regular*), but for those of us who are people not in the graphics industry, any sort of upper-end graphics card will usually be suffice for our needs right? I Mean sure, the GeForce 5900 and Radio 9800 werent really meant for the Pro Graphics produces out there, but in your case, you want to do some gamig AND graphics.
Now, from my point of view, any card will do, and when I was searching for a vid card to put into my new system, I did consider the GFX 5900 Ultra, I wanted the top of the line card so that I would be able to play the upcoming HL2 and Doom 3. But as a student, budget was a huge concern to me, and I didn't wnat to spend $620 on a vid card, so I opted out on a GFX5600 Vivo card (128M, AG8X) for $230. From what I've heard, the Geforce FX5600 series (and Radeon 9600 series for you ATI fans) is basically the market popular at the moment (just as the GeForce 4ti 4200 was, and still sort of is). For gaming, it performs very well, and I'm only assuming that it'll be more than sufficient for your casual graphics needs. I mean, you're still gonna have to wait however many minutes to get that 3D rendering done on Lightwave or 3dStudio anyways right?

Why bother paying $500~$700 for a top of the line card when it's just going to come down drastically in price within a month or two, right? But that's just my opinion. I'm gonna probably end up buying a GeForce FX 5900 ultra when these games start coming out, and require the power. but I think my 5600 will be good enough for atleast the next 2~4 generations of video cards and the games that come out during this period. So I was able to keep down my system price, and get a decent card (as far as I know)

BTW, my new rig (I'm so happy I got it!!! SOO EXCITED),
AMD Athlon XP2500+ (1800mhz) [I hear you only really need a 1.4~1.7ghz CPU for today's games anyways)
Kingston PC3200 (DDR400) CL2.5 512 meg Ram (x2, 1gig RAM total)
Asus A7N8X-DX Motherboard (nForce2 mobo, w/ 6.1sound/2xlan,SATA,IE1394,AGP8X onboard,400FSB)
Logtiec Optical Cordless MX Duo (MX700 mouse!)
A crazy case from the store, all blue w/ a bit of stock mods)
Pioneer 16X DVD
LiteOn 52x32x52 CDRW
MSI Geforce 5600 128Meg AGP8X DV-i,VIVO,TV-out, media centre remote control

All for a lowest price of $1497 after taxes. It was the cheapest I could find here in vancouver, and I had to do a lot of searching for lowest prices to accomplish a price match guarantee at the store. Pretty decent though! I just need to get myself a monitor and a printer, lol. I wish my dad would actually send me my 19' monitor from home, but he's too lazy to find a box for it to send it in since I dont have the original box (bought the monitor from my friend for a low low price of $70 or so).

Sorry if I babbled a bit...
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Just remember, when in doubt, even monkeys fall from trees sometimes.

[B0b]

i got a Radeon 9700 Pro 128 (brand new) for my games PC on ebay for �160

[dfacto]

just buy an Nvidia GForce 128 mb or more. Trust me it doesn't matter that much.
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It has been clinically proven that other people's pain IS funny.

[william willette]

http://www.pricewatch.com/

HURRY UP AND BUY A VIDEO CARD BEFOR PRICES GO UP FROM OUR RISING ECONOMY!!!
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crazy guitar player william

[ColdKodiak]

apparently the new geforcefx cards are NOT going to be good for DX9 games. That means low perfomance in Half-Life2.
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http://kontinue.com/coldkodiak/

[Shadow-X-]

But wasn't the whole shenanigan deal with HL2 about how Valve gave out test systems with ATI Radeon 9800/9600 cards, and nVidia GFX 5600/5900 cards, and they didn't supply the unreleased 50.xx drivers which nVidia collaberated with Vavle in order to get proper results for HL2? I mean, even the Radeon 9600 beat the 9800, but nVidia is still tweaking and coming up with a new driver set to get "real" results in HL2 and all following DX9 games. I'm still faithful that I bought my GFX 5600 and HL2 will work, and DOom III with work! I KNOW IT!!! If not.... *shaking fist*
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Just remember, when in doubt, even monkeys fall from trees sometimes.

[dr . bang]

The new driver doesn't seem like its any much faster.

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=257
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Join Roundeye SECRET art forum shhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

[oDD]

[lalPOOO]

Bang, that new driver is bullshit. The det 51's do make a difference, but all they've really done is lower image quality. If you don't mind that go right ahead and buy their card. It'll still be great for gaming, but you might feel a bit pissed when you go to use true dx9. I've heard nVidia is much better at workstation cards though. I would still be a bit wary of nVidia for anything for the next little while though, even their nforce3 is getting pwned by the via chipset.

shadow x, doom 3 is opengl. also, you would have been better off with a 2.4c and an 875 setup, unless $$ was a big issue..

also, heavily consider what smurf said, unless you aren't really really into 3d, or have already bought the card.

[A.Buttle]