[simpits-tech] Radeon vs. GeForce

[Bubba]

Wow, that's the only opinion I have about it. Wow.

Background. My new machine has a kickass chip (Athlon XP 2800+ Barton),
scads of RAM (A gig of PC2700), a huge HDD (160g UATA133), and an nForce2
chipset. Not to mention the 4x DVD±RW :) However, the GeForce4 MX 400 with
shared RAM sucked. It would lock up if I did anything that involved massive
amounts of video. XP would just go away. So I headed over to Breast Buy and
their very liberal return policies to pick up Unreal II and a new card:

PNY GeForce FX5200 8x AGP 128m Twinhead TV-Out (doesn't that make it a
trihead?)
640x480  45.62 FPS
1024x768  29.64 FPS
1280x1024  19.60 FPS

Not astronomical, but playable in 1280x1024 with only a few choppy sections.
Generally my rule is 30 FPS minimum so I stuck with 1024x768. Then I decided
to see what kind of improvement I could get by jumping off the nVidia ship
in favor of:

ATI Radeon 9600SE 8x AGP 128m Twinhead TV-Out (see above, only this one has
a DVI in place of the 2nd VGA)

Ready for this?

640x480  63.20 FPS
1024x768  41.29 FPS
1280x1024  27.01 FPS

That's roughly 37% faster across the board on a test that slams the 3D
system pretty damned hard. I have a funny feeling that I'll still be yanking
this thing out and replacing it with a 9800Pro, though. Christmas money and
all that ;)

Thanks to those that pushed me to going from PC133 to PC2700 RAM, those that
pushed me to an nForce chipset, and those that recommended a Radeon. This
machine ROCKS now. And it'll... uh... "backup" a DVD in half an hour ;) I
gotta make sure it's not illegal to have a Netflix account and a DVD burner
;)
--
Steve
mysticz28 at swbell.net
He who seeks will find, and he who knocks will be let in.