whats better, ATI radeon or geforce 2 GTS?

[metrix007]

Im thinking of upgrading my TNT2 to somethingfaster, maybe an ATI radeon. which is the best video card or gameing on a T-Bird?

[digitaldog]

I think the ATI Radeon probably will be the better choice but its still early days yet for this card and personally I would wait a while until the ATI has been thoroughly tested, your choice of course. I am sure others here will post in this topic. DD.

[StuTheWise]

In hi-res and 32bit color, the Radeon easily outdoes the geForce. If 16 bit is your thing, the geForce is way out ahead.

Check out HWC's article on the Radeon for some comparative benchmarks.

[This message has been edited by StuTheWise (edited 08-18-2000).]

[metrix007]

stuthewise: where is his article located at?

[Huge]

Stu,

The GF2 Ultra will spank any card (including 3dfx's V5-6000 (with it's "powerful" 128 mb of memory). Remember when Bitboys "claimed" they could beat/match nVidia/3dfx a year ago?

The Geforce2 Ultra will spank anything out there in 2000/2001. 3dfx said the V5-6000 would come out in mid-July; here it is almost September.

[rpgjoker]

Well it depends. If high res (over 800 X 600)
is your thing and you use 32bit color your
gonna want a Radeon. They handle 32bit color
much better than the Geforce 2 which takes
a big performance hit when you switch to 32
bit color. But keep in mind when I say "big
performance hit" I mean maybe 5fps. Like Stu
said if you use 16bit than the Geforce 2 is
the way to go. Otherise go Radeon.

[StuTheWise]

HWC Radeon Article

I'm not liking the V5 series either. They can put as many VSA 100 chips on there as they want, and it doesn't seem to help.

I have a geForce2 and my only gripe is all the crap I had to go through to get it to work stable. Nothing fills my "tolerance trough" faster than my system not being stable.

[BladeRunner]

It is disappointing that 3dfx seem to have dropped the ball so much as Nvidia need more Competition pressure. NV20 delayed, (depending on who you believe), and another Geforce version. Some maybe impressed with the Ultra but I'm not. I don't really want a faster Geforce card, but a chipset that supports glide and has a 3dfx style Hardware FSAA. an all round performance leader, rather than just the fastest.

Whatever we think of the 3dfx multiprocessor solution, it will most likely be the way ahead Nvidia are pushing the envelope but there is only so much you can do with a single GPU.

[Huge]

True but even 3dfx has dropped glide from current/future boards. I just wish game developers would agree on an engine standard instead of having all these games running on all these different engines. I would love to play AvsP Gold on the Quake 3 engine; instead I get mixed results with whatever engine Fox Interactive used.

That was the foundation of DirectX; remember 2+ years ago that hardware vendors had to make many drivers available for DOS games? Why not now?

[BladeRunner]

Yes you are right there but while that damn unreal engine is still being used then it would be nice to have access to Glide, plus the many older Glide only titles.

I'm also not convinced with D3D yet as engines using this API never seem to be 100%smooth in the "ID open GL type way". Maybe it's just the 3D engines as thinking about it TR4 runs pretty smooth. I was just thinking of the 3D mark 2000 engine which is never 100% smooth what ever system / card I've seen it on.

Having said that UT is running pretty good now with 6.18/4.28/DX8 unless it gets too busy but there is still room for improvement.

On another tack I was playing TR1 the other day with my old V1 & the 3dfx patch and (although graphically "old" now), it struck me how smoothly it ran. Should I have noticed this at all if todays game engines / API's were up to scratch??.

[Proceed]

well Radeon is definatley faster. The FSAA on a GeForce is software not hardware. and if you want 16 bit speed only you want a GeForce if you want 32 bit high res speed you want a Radeon. GeForce2 T&L is slower than the T&L of a 500 MHZ PIII so that's dosen't do much for it anyway

[marmetsofthelands]

I would get a radeon its extremely fast and if your gonna buy a $200+ card i dont seem why u would want 16 bit anyway
and yes the ultra can spank any card except i dont know about the 6000 i'm still waitin to see how it does but dude he doesnt sound like he's gonna fish out $500+ for the ultra