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"Once More Someone Asks..."

...does anyone have any suggestions for a suitable graphics card upgrade?

My system is;

2.6GHZ Intel P4 with HT
512MB RAMM @ 400mhz
Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 Digital
80GB HD
ATI RADEON 9800 AGP card
19" LCD Flat Panel

The system is less than a year old and at the time it only cost £80 to upgrade it to the Radeon 9800 instead of onboard...I did wonder at the time why the only retail version of the card had PRO on the end of them, but I figured it would be a similar card. Big mistake, but because until recently I've only played older games like Raven Shield and Delta Force Blackhawk Down I haven't had a problem. Then Battlefield Vietnam and UT2004,along with Far Cry ,coupled with the mention of the Radeon 9800SE card in PCFormat and PC Gamer, exposed the card for the steaming pile of excrement it is...

Yup, my Radeon 9800 is an SE, or more aptly, crap and, with a core speed of 324 and a memory clock speed of 290, little better than the sub £50 cards in the Special Reserve Catalogue.

So I'm in search of a new card because I figure that, with the above system, my card is really holiding me back, right? Bit more memory would be nice but right now I'd wager the only thing holding me back from the high settings on most modern and future games is this silly Radeon card.

I'm looking to spend a max of £150-£200

I'm tempted to go to Nvidia for the first time in years (every PC I have had or card I have bought has been ATI but after this, and the fact most new games seem to be built around this Nvidia "Way it's meant to be played" thing).

Any suggestions? I'm guessing the best deals are online but I really want a boxed retail card. The XFX GEFORCE FX 5900 XT in SR at 149.99 looks good....is it?

And before anyone suggests this, I've scanned through pages and pages of guides and read magazine reviews of cards but there are so many to choose from :(

...does anyone have any suggestions for a suitable graphics card upgrade?

My system is;

2.6GHZ Intel P4 with HT
512MB RAMM @ 400mhz
Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 Digital
80GB HD
ATI RADEON 9800 AGP card
19" LCD Flat Panel

The system is less than a year old and at the time it only cost £80 to upgrade it to the Radeon 9800 instead of onboard...I did wonder at the time why the only retail version of the card had PRO on the end of them, but I figured it would be a similar card. Big mistake, but because until recently I've only played older games like Raven Shield and Delta Force Blackhawk Down I haven't had a problem. Then Battlefield Vietnam and UT2004,along with Far Cry ,coupled with the mention of the Radeon 9800SE card in PCFormat and PC Gamer, exposed the card for the steaming pile of excrement it is...

Yup, my Radeon 9800 is an SE, or more aptly, crap and, with a core speed of 324 and a memory clock speed of 290, little better than the sub £50 cards in the Special Reserve Catalogue.

So I'm in search of a new card because I figure that, with the above system, my card is really holiding me back, right? Bit more memory would be nice but right now I'd wager the only thing holding me back from the high settings on most modern and future games is this silly Radeon card.

I'm looking to spend a max of £150-£200

I'm tempted to go to Nvidia for the first time in years (every PC I have had or card I have bought has been ATI but after this, and the fact most new games seem to be built around this Nvidia "Way it's meant to be played" thing).

Any suggestions? I'm guessing the best deals are online but I really want a boxed retail card. The XFX GEFORCE FX 5900 XT in SR at 149.99 looks good....is it?

And before anyone suggests this, I've scanned through pages and pages of guides and read magazine reviews of cards but there are so many to choose from :(

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, but i'm about to build mine, and i am also in two minds about ATI and Nvidia. I have had Nvidia since day one, and they last a long time - never a minutes trouble. And if any trouble occurs, a new driver will be released, whereas with ATI i have heard that the driver you get with it is your driver for life.

However, i had my eye on the sapphire 9800 pro, and that's about 160 pound - on all the bench tests its always in the top 3, out of every card. Its a little pricey though... I WAS going to choose that, but then i saw the Nvidia "the way its meant to be played" or "optimised for Nvidia" badges on new released games so i started looking at the XFX GEFORCE FX 5900 XT like yourself.

At 149.99 it is reasonably priced, and you can have the priced of mind that Nvidia will release drivers for this card in years to come.

I'm still 50/50 , and still very unsure which card to choose - if any. I have no experience with ATI, as you have no experience with Nvidia, so i can understand how frustrating looking for a good card is.

[I][B]For me, 150 pounds is allot of money, ideally i would like to spend 80 - 100 pounds. Any suggestions for a low-end "best bang for buck" card?

An annoying thing about this ATI Radeon 9800 - and this applies to any version of the card - is that a majority of games do not even support features such as full screen AA or AS, try it in the majority of them and you get artifacts and corruption.

It's untrue about the driver updates though, they release them pretty regulalry though - worryingly - they often degrade performance rather than enhance it - my machine was scoring 5038 on 3DMark2003 demo before I installed the lateest ATI Driver (march 22nd) and now it score 4700... though ATI does support cards a long time as well, my first PC had an ATI Rage FURY (first gen AGP card) and it had driver update for 3-4 years.

Oh right, well as i say, i don't have much knowledge on radeons but searching for a good card is really doing my head in.

At the end of the day - if it runs everything that i put in frount of it, i'm not too worrid. That Geforce 5900XT looks pretty nice though. . .

The Radeon 9800 XT is the best. It out performs the 9800 Pro by a bit, along with the FX5900. Nvidia are releasing a range in the next month or so, with the top of the range one being the 6800 Ultra. ATI are also close to releasing a new range of chips, hence the low prices now for 9800 Pros.

Thing is though, some 9800SEs actually can be soft modded to run as 9800 Pros. cookie monster has done this and it worked. I would try that and if it fails, just buy a 9800 Pro for £150. Names to look out for are Sapphire and Connect3D, Hercules and maybe Powercolor.

If you are strapped for cash, you can pick up a 9700pro on Ebay for about £80-100. From Dabs or Ebuyer you can get a 9800pro now for under £200. The HIS Excaliber on Ebuyer is about £180 I think and you can overclock it quite a bit using the provided utilities as it has a really mean cooler on it, unlike most cards that come with a crap stock cooler.

I would go for the HIS, but you should really go for a 9800XT, PCGamer rates the Asus one, although its about £300. I personally have the Hercules 9800pro with the same cooler as the HIS, and it surpasses the Asus Clock and Memory Speeds. Although the Asus with the cooler would kick my cards PCB But.

As for going to nVidia, just cos a game says "runs best on.." doesn't mean anything. Its not like its not gonna run on your card. There might be a whole extra frame that nVidia users get or even 2! Like it really matters.

Besides, a lot of games are looking to ATI as well. Whats the point of getting a less powerful card by nVidia (its true, nVidia users only object cos they're jealous), just to know that a game was built with a little more effort for that card, when then a game you really wanna play comes out and the makers have seen the light and gone for ATI Cards instead.

The only thing wrong with ATI that people complain about is the drivers. Granted, when I used the 3.4 Catalysts, they were pants. Now every few weeks they make changes, beta them, then release them. I am using the 4.3s at the moment and EVERY game I am playing at the moment runs perfectly on full everything. FSAA, Anistropic, 1600x1200@85hz, Full Detail. Even in a frag festing melee with 5 ppl pelting me with rockets and minigun death in UT2004 on the Robot Factory Assault Match only drops it to 20fps. No noticeable difference. Thats a game made for nVidia, but no problems at all playing it.

To sum up this random rambling of stepping on nVidia's noisy, oversized, ugly, overly hot chipset's poxy butt, buy an ATI. They are quieter, cheaper (usually), and even though games brag about being best on nVidia it makes no difference!

If you're thinking about upgrading a 9800 SE, you're at best an ignorant fool, and at worst a complete idiot.

Do you hear me? A COMPLETE IDIOT. No game will rock a 9800 SE right now, and graphics card prices are only going to get drastically cheaper before they do.

I have seen some people indicate from experience that if you bench mark them you'll find that a 9600XT out performs a 9800SE and a 9800 non Pro.

Erm the 9800 non pro is a slightly under clocked 9700 pro HELLO?
Nevermind i sound like a computer geek now ;P

Read This before you go around saying it's a SE and that it outperforms the 9800 NON PRO not SE
[URL]http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html[/URL]
If it's clocked at 324 Core Clock rate and 290 Memory Clock rate then it's a NON PRO