Gaming graphics card upgrade question

January 10, 2005 10:27 AM

So, I received Half-Life 2 / Counter-Strike:Source as a gift, and I think it's time to upgrade my system. I'm fairly good with homebuilding computers, but the new graphics card offerings have me a bit confused. [+]

I'm leaning towards an AMD 4000+ with one of the new nforce4 boards that support PCI-E. But there are just too many options as far as video cards go. From my research, ATI seems to be the way to go for this particular game, but I'm struggling to find the differences between the 9800's, x800's, x700's, ... and then, there's the submodels: 9800XT, 9800SE, 9800 Pro, ....

I'd like something that's PCI-E, and that won't be obsolete in less than 18 months (had a bad experience with my nVidia Ti4200, which is in my current system). Can someone shed light on what I should be looking for in the ATI lineup, specifically in order to play CS:S? Price is an issue as well -- US$400 or so is the upper limit.

Also: bonus points for explaining AA, AF, pipelines, and all those other terms that might be important. :)

posted by aberrant to technology (20 comments total)

I was given this piece of advice just a few days ago. I haven't verified it, but it's from a reliable source. Maybe someone in the thread can confirm it for both of us.

The 9800 Pro is great, but don't buy it. Instead, buy the 9700 Pro for $150 less, and then flash the BIOS. If you do that, your 9700 Pro will be in everything but name exactly equivalent to a 9800 Pro.
posted by Hildago at 10:37 AM on January 10, 2005

Hm. According to pricewatch, the 9800 Pro-128 MBs are cheaper than the 9700 Pros, which only come in 128 meg versions. The 9800 Pro-256's are about $120 more than the 128's.
posted by aberrant at 10:43 AM on January 10, 2005

You might check Tom's. They recently had review of PCI-E cards as well as older articles about AGP cards. They have had articles explaining AA, AF, etc, also.

I have a 9800 pro, and Half-Life 2 plays pretty well on it, FWIW.
posted by theFlyingSquirrel at 11:05 AM on January 10, 2005

Thanks for the link to Tom's. It helps, but I definitely need to read up more. FWIW, I'm looking at the x800XL, which should be available in a month or so. It seems to have a pretty good price/performance ratio. Comments?
posted by aberrant at 11:13 AM on January 10, 2005

Excellent comparison of a TON of cards. You can see how much better the XT is over the Pro, or normal over SE.

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/over2k4-d3s-1024.shtml
posted by eurasian at 11:16 AM on January 10, 2005

ATI Cards are in a REALLY confusing mess right now. ATI "Introduced" a bunch of cards called x800 foo that were supposed to be out by now, but none of them are actually available for purchase. Also they really made the naming complicated. I suggest you wait a month :)
posted by JZig at 11:46 AM on January 10, 2005

To be honest, I haven't kept up with ATI's cards for awhile; they've had a bad habit lately of sending cards to be reviewed but not sending them to stores (as I'm sure you've experienced if you've been waiting on the XL for long). I did read articles at AnandTech and HardOCP and the card sounds very interesting... but I'll believe it when I see it. You might also try asking around in the AnandTech forums (video card area).
</Geek>
posted by theFlyingSquirrel at 11:47 AM on January 10, 2005

i purchased a 9800pro (to be softmodded up to a 9800xt for free), and i've been very happy. I haven't even upgraded it to a XT yet since the 9800Pro has let me run half-life2 at the max settings at 1024x768. For price/performance the NVidia 6600GT is pretty good - outperforms the 9800 at a reasonable price. It comes in PCI-E and AGP versions. And i agree about reading the anandtech forums if you're interested in talking about video cards at length.
posted by escher at 12:21 PM on January 10, 2005

I haven't used it, but I think the 6600GT looks like the best buy right now. If I had $200 that's what I'd get.
posted by knave at 12:25 PM on January 10, 2005

I just got a new machine with an X800, specifically a "Radeon X800 PRO 256M GDDR3 AGP VGA/ ViVO / DVI-I". It's AGP. It runs great. I run Half Life 2 with all options turned on at 1600x1200 and still get 100+ fps in most places. That's ridiculous. Turns out HL2 is particularly fast; Far Cry and even World of Warcraft run more like 35 fps. Still plenty for me at 1600x1200 with antialiasing.

If you go one notch below X800 you'll probably get most of the same performance for a lot less money.

If you want to get deeper into it, read anandtech and tomshardware. Or research 3DMark scores.
posted by Nelson at 1:01 PM on January 10, 2005

A 9800 Pro is the minimum you should buy for new games. It'll run them very well, but anything lower would not be that future proof. Avoid the 9800 SE at all costs, SE cards are severely underpowered. This also applies to nVidia cards where the MX models are very much underpowered. Pro is a nice high value middle ground.
posted by wackybrit at 1:40 PM on January 10, 2005

What the theFlyingSquirrel said about Anandtech.

Short answer: 6600GT, in either PCIExpress or AGP flavour, is your best bang for the buck right now. 6800GT, in SLI mode, is your biggest bang, full stop. I'll be getting a 6600GT soonish, when the wife boss decides to let me build my new box.

ATI have dropped the ball lately, both in availability of their parts and their product lines.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:21 PM on January 10, 2005

(That should be two 6800GTs, in SLI mode...)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:21 PM on January 10, 2005

What the chicken said - the 6600GT is the go, particularly in SLI mode. Hell, grab one now, and the second to SLI in 6months time when it's a $100 card for another massive speed-boost.
Interestingly enough, I just finished HL2 using my Ti4200 (Athlon 2600XP/512MB RAM) which ran the game smooth as silk @ 1024x768 with half details. Sure, it wasn't gorgeously pretty but it was sufficient for my needs. My friend's similar system w/ a 9600xt was very pretty, though, running at max everything.
posted by coriolisdave at 2:53 PM on January 10, 2005

A few comments:

The whole situation with PCI express motherboards for Athlon 64 is really spotty right now. There are only a few Nforce4 boards even available in the US right now, supplies are low, and prices haven't really stabilized.

Right now the best availability seems to be at the high-end with the SLI boards. The SLI boards have two 8x PCIe slots. Fill those slots two NVidia cards (6600GT or better) and the cards can split the job of rendering giving you a performance boost over a single card. Probably only cool if a) You "need" the speed b) you want an upgrade path that leverages your existing card or c) you need multiple high-performing graphics cards for a multimonitor arrangement. SLI boards are still commanding a huge premium, but it looks like when prices stabilize, they may only go for $20-30 more than similar boards.

There are also some non-SLI Nf4 boards. The Chaintech VNF4 was a deal when it was $119 at NewEgg, and is probably still good at $129 once they get it back in stock. It does lack the Firewire 800 ports and the 2nd GigE port that some of the other Nf4 ultra boards have, or would have, if you could buy them, but the price is right.

Also available is the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. It was nice and cheap, but sold out quickly at newegg and may come in at $149 once its available again. It has the Firewire ports, but lacks the hardware firewall and SATA2 (it does have SATA) support of the above mentioned Chaintech. Besides the missing features, the chipset is theoretically a bit slower than those using the NF4 Ultra, but the realworld impact is minimal.

All the NF4 boards and the underlying chipsets are pretty new, so there is some risk that you'll get hit by bugs, but near as I can tell, early adopters have been doing ok and the alternatives aren't great. AGP still has the performance, but its basically at end of life, and any upgrade boards you buy in a year will probably command a premium. In face, even today, the AGP version of some of the newer graphics board command a big premium over the PCIe version. Socket A and the Athlon XP are completely dead. Socet 754 doesn't have any PCIe offerings yet AND while it may have a long life, it will be relegated to supporting the value line of chips (Sempron).

As for the CPU. It's your money, but you could get a A64 3500+ for half the price of that 4000+. The performance would maybe be 10-15% lower, but probably plenty for HL2 and since you are going for a very upgradable motherboard, you'll already have the money to upgrade your CPU to something probably 70-90% faster in 12-18 months.

But, of course, you were asking about graphics cards. I'd pass on the suggestions of an 9800pro since the Nvida 6600GT cards offer noticeably better performance at HL2 and other games at the same price point. I know less about the cards in the $300-400 price range, but I'd encourage you to focus on price/performance rather than brand.

Anandtech has some great info.
For a general overview on price/performance:
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2292
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2282

For HL2 specific Reviews of newer cards:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2278

They also have more in depth looks at various cards:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/
posted by Good Brain at 2:58 PM on January 10, 2005

Is SLI only supported with nvidia cards, or will I be able to do it with ATI's cards as well?
posted by aberrant at 3:04 PM on January 10, 2005

SLI for splitting the rendering of a single screen between two cards is only supported for (some) NVidia cards. ATI is appearantly pursuing its own approach for load-sharing among its cards, its unclear to me whether it will work with the Dual 8x slots on the NF4 SLI boards or whether it will have its own motherboard requirements.

I think, but I'm not 100% sure, that you'll be able to use dual ATI cards in an NF4 SLI motherboards for a multimonitor setup, but they won't load-share.
posted by Good Brain at 3:43 PM on January 10, 2005

As always, this has been an incredible educational experience. Thanks to all for the great information! I'm going to give the nVidia 6600GT's another look.
posted by aberrant at 4:07 PM on January 10, 2005

As for the CPU. It's your money, but you could get a A64 3500+ for half the price of that 4000+. The performance would maybe be 10-15% lower, but probably plenty for HL2 and since you are going for a very upgradable motherboard, you'll already have the money to upgrade your CPU to something probably 70-90% faster in 12-18 months.

Good call, but Socket 754 probably has 12-18 months left, so if you're looking longer term than that, it might be worth the slight premium to go for Athlon 64 on Socket 939.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:32 PM on January 10, 2005

It's definitely worth the slight premium for Socket939, and didn't mean to suggest otherwise. The upgrade path of Socket939 and PCIe is key, in my book. My strategy is to try to buy somewhere in the midrange and then nickle and dime a few years worth of upgrades.
posted by Good Brain at 10:24 AM on January 11, 2005