Anyone uses ATI X1950XT or PRO?

[Myxir]

I'm intrested in a new graphic card.... I don't know... Nvidia has nothing compareable to ATI at the moment in the mid ranged class.
Anyone uses one of the named cards? What are your performance experiences with it? (I would prefer the XT)

[DuoMaxwell]

What you mean in the mid range class? the current 8x00 and HD series from both companies have lacking preformance in the mid range when compared to the previous generations, but if you check the reviews the mid range options from the x1 and 7x00 series from both companies are both cheap and fast. Take a look, http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html and here http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/06/the_best_gaming_video_cards_for_the_money/ note tho that ATI's implementation of OpenGL is a little lacking, they focus more on DX.

Look up the prices for your country, here in the states parts aren't too exspensive in the mit to low high end ranges, tho top of the line cards, even outdated top end cards tho are overpriced, why pay another $100 for sch a nominal increase in power, its why I can't recomend anything higher end then the 8800GTS 320Mb version unless you intend to game on a very high resolution screen, there gets a point where the cash is then best saved for your next upgrade.

Personally I'd take cards like the 8600GTS for lower resolution if I want OGL3.0 support, or something in the 7900GS or better series for OGL 2.0 but maybe a little higher resolution.

Why low res on the 8600GTS? It's gimped with only a 128bit memory bitpath, if it was 256bit it'd be a mch more capable card and would handle higher resolutions better then it does now. Thats not saying tho that even a slower card like the 7600GT can't play regnum very well tho. Ask Magnet, he picked up the AGP model for his older comp and was able to play just fine at a fairly high resolution of 1680x1050 with mid high graphics with room left over for some AA and AF to smooth out the graphics. A faster card, any faster card would let you max everything in regnum and allow for even better AA and AF settings.

Now as I've said before, I'm not an nvidia fanboy in the least, I only recomend them as they have drivers that actually work as advertised in linux, iif ATI would catch up or even better if they'd hold to what they said and open the drivers I'd never recomend andother nvidia card again. All they need to do is hand over the documentaion on the cards to the community and within a month we'd have perfectly working drivers for all the ATI cards we have documentation for.

[DuoMaxwell]

I should have stated tho, the prices quoted by tom's are the avrage retail price, for the sub $100 card they mark the 7600GS, on the site I usually go that can be had for $75+10 mail in rebate for a total of $65, now tho you can pay $10 more after rebate and get the faster 7600GT, $119 for the 7900GS, and the 7950GT for $180, I'd avoid the 7800GT, 7800GTX, 7900GT and 7900GTX as all are way overpriced for the preformance, around $250-300 for those cards, yo're better off at that poing going for the 8800GTS 320Mb as it'll be much faster for only $250 after $30 rebate. Personally for the screen I currently have I'd go for the 8600GTS tho, the exact model I'm looking at is the MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC it comes with a much better aftermarket cooler pre attached and if anyone actually cares it's factory OCed in both core and ram speed but best of all all that only sets you back $140 after rebates.

Now for ATI cards you asked about, the x1950 Pro goes for $119 after $30 rebate, Tom's has it marked at the $140 range, now the x1950xt goes for $168 Tom's has it marked for the $170 range.

As before tho, thats just the shop I like to order from here in the states, mainly cause of the prices being low and the stuff you order actually arives when they say it will, not like crappy stores like tigerdirect or buy.com that I've tried before and had to wait like 2 weeks before I got my stuff... Chect the rebate comapny tho, if it's handled by certain companies you may never get them, look at ones that are direct from the company, if you're not sure google is your friend, look up the rebater name and see if they're reliable.

[Myxir]

Thanks for your response. The native resolution of my Screen is 1280*1024. So it would be quite stupid to choose another, higher resolution. For games anything higher than 1280*1024 is nonsense, imo.
So I don't need a card that has a good performance at 1600 × 900 or something like this :). Especially for shooters the picture would be too small. The money i want to spend is 170€ Max. Because maybe i need a new power supply.
So if i got your post right the "best" cards for me would be 8600GTS or 7900GS?
Regards

€dit: I just found a 7900GS for 109€.
There are two offers.
The first:


PCIe x16

Power supply:

1 x 6-pin
max. usage ca. 51 Watt (max. load)

Graphicchip

name NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
clock-rate 500 MHz
Pixel-Pipelines 20
Shader Model 3.0

Memory

Capacity 256 MB
Typ GDDR3
Clock-rate 1380 MHz
memory bitpath 256 Bit

RAMDAC

1. RAMDAC 400 MHz
2. RAMDAC 400 MHz

resolutions

1024x768x32Bit 200 Hz
1280x1024x32Bit 170 Hz
1600x1200x32Bit 120 Hz
2048x1536x32Bit 85 Hz

The second:


PCIe x16

Stromversorgung

Anschluss 1 x 6-pin
max. usage ca. 49 Watt (max load)

Grafikchip

name NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
clock-rate 600 MHz
Pixel-Pipelines 20
Shader Model 3.0

Speicher

capacity 256 MB vorhanden
Type GDDR3
clockrate 1600 MHz
memory bitpath 256 Bit

RAMDAC

1. RAMDAC 400 MHz
2. RAMDAC 400 MHz

resolution

1024x768x32Bit 200 Hz
1280x1024x32Bit 170 Hz
1600x1200x32Bit 120 Hz
2048x1536x32Bit 85 Hz
2560x1600x32Bit 60 Hz (Dual Link)

What is more important? The higher memory clock rate or the higher chip clock-rate? Both are for 109€. That's quite cheap i think... Maybe too cheap...

[DuoMaxwell]

Neither actually lol, the GPU core is what makes the difference, it's the same in CPUs, you can take a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU and disable the 2nd core in bios and slow the rame to the same speed and timings as a machine with a 1.9Ghz Pentium 4 Northwood with the same amount of rame overclocked to match the speed and timing of the C2D box, guess what CPU will be faster?

The C2D will be signifigantly faster due to many new optimizations in the chip itself, the Hz speed of the CPU is a very small factor of the total preformance of the chip and is the reason I always tell ppl it is better to get the lowest end model CPU in a CPU core series and then overclock it to the desired speed, this means that if you want a fast CPU get the E63201.86Ghz @ $176 Conroe core of the C2D line, and you can overclock this CPU to the speeds of the top of the line C2D, the X6800 Extreme 2.93Ghz at a cost of $985. Both of these CPUs are of the same core type line, they are both Conroe series CPUs under the public brand Core 2 Duo, which encompases the core types Conroe, Allendale(wattered down version) and Merom(mobile version)

Now what does thiss all mean for graphics cards? Core revision means allot.

Both cards you selected are fine cards, it comes down to features, @ 1280x1024 both cards are adiquate, the 8600GTS is a bit slower and has a bottleneck in its 128bit memory path, but makes up for this with support of OpenGL 3.0 starting next year and if you should run vista it has Purevideo HD which offloads most of all of the video codec decode processing to the GPU instead of the CPU, so should you like to watch movies in the h.264(codec used by Apple for those really nice HD trailers) HD codec at high resolutions your sytem wont be bogged down by decoding the video, but I've yeatto hear if this feature will be added to the linux or XP drivers.

The 7900GS is arguably a faster card the the 8600GTS but it does not support OpenGL 3, it does have the non HD version of purevideo as well that works in XP, but I haven't checked if the linux drivers have it covered, it is a fairly cool running card aswel.

Both cards are known to be decent overclockers, using a pensil over volt mod you can overclock the 8600GTS to over 1Ghz core speed, tho don't exspect the card to last long at those speeds and voltages, it's something like pushing around 4-6 volts more through the graphics cpu then it was designed for.

As for what card is better you'll have to see what featres are more appealing to you such as does either card come with a non refrence cooling system, these are an added value, like that MSI card I talked about in a previous thread, it comes with a non refrence, dual slot copper base rear exasting cooler and comes factory overclocked. The cooler matters mch more then the overclock, any stock clocked card you see can be overclocked to the speeds of the highest clocked version of that core, tho ymmv with extreme overclocks like taking an 8800GTS to the speeds of the leadtech liquid 8800 Ultra, as that particular card had all parts cherry picked for highest possible tolerences for clock speed and over volting with tons of micromanagement of voltages in the cards bios so the card doesn't blow itself up lol.

Yes, you may need to upgrade your PSU, I personally have a 4 +12 volt rail 580watt active PFC mushkin PSU, it's really nice looking and has modular cabling so I only have as many wires in my case as I actually need.

Both cards have a 6 pin graphics card connector aswell, while not necessary at least as far as I know with the 8600GTS at stock speeds if you don't push the card too hard you should connect it anyways.

For overclocking in linux use NVClock, it's in most distro's repos, for windows use RivaTuner, I wish it was ported to Macs and linux for the high level of control over the card that it gives. Custom fan speed and auto overclocking profiles ftw! Underclock the card and lower the fan speed a bit for 2d, overclock it and max the fan speed when 3d graphics are detected is a very nice thing.

[Myxir]

I think I'll take the 7900GS. I want to have a fluently gameplay at 1280*1024. With some good graphic details but high-end graphic is not necessary. I think the 7900GS is okay for this. I won't overclock it in the near future.
Thanks for your help :)