League table for Graphics Cards

[Quiznite]

Thinking of buying a new 3d card but I'm confused how different chipsets compare to each other . Any ideas for a league type list table

[j2buttonsw]

According to this the nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra is the mutt's http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/gef
orce_fx_5900-11.html

[lisaj]

j2: What a remarkably useless comparison! Frame rates for doom?! Quiznite: what are you planning on using the 3d card for? games? 3d animation & rendering? 2d work? Too many of the card manufacturers, particularly those based on consumer 3dfx or geforce types, seem to make believe that game framerates are the ONLY benchmark worth considering. They conveniently forget to mention their (usually) terrible 2d performance (such as playing a DVD, or just using windows). Before you buy, consider what your usage is likely to be, then buy a card that suits, and I recommend looking at any of the PC mags that do a full and proper suite of testing, rather than just a game framerate readout. Make damn sure you don't just buy a card because of the amount of memory it has: a good card with fast memory is likely well beyond your price range, whereby the cheap 'n nasty ones tend to be more affordable. Also, try and find reviews that make mention of driver quality. I've seen loads of 3d cards that come with awful drivers. Game performance might be great, but it's no use if the system crashes twice a day!

[lisaj]

I'll amend that by saying a bit of digging in that site does seem to lend some useful comparisons also :-)

[Quiznite]

Thanks all . This card will be used bout 90% 3D gaming and a little 2D Photoshopping . The card I had in mind was Radeon 9500 am I off the mark here ?

[j2buttonsw]

The problem with the Radeon is that it is a ATI chip and only ATI manufacture them. They are a great graphics card but you will pay top dollar for them. The nVidia chips are farmed out to whoever wants to manufacture the card which is good in as much as it reduces the price but is bad as there is no quality assurance. lisaj made a very valid point about drivers and I have found the ATI drivers to be more problematic than the nVidia ones (which are updated almost monthly). If you want the best then go for the nVidia Geforce FX 5900 but expect it to be expensive. A note about my first post: These cards are benchmarked on sites like Toms Hardware with the very latest games at the highest possible resolutions in order to get a comparison but the vast majority of games will not require such high performance so base your purchase on this. I bought a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128 MB card last year for �125 rather than buying the Ti 4600 for twice the price. I am happy as with it and do not notice the difference and it has been very steady under Windows 2000. Remember that they will be practically worthless after a couple of years (a friend of mine bought the original GeForce 256 card for �299 when it came out and I bought one the other day for �15!) so they are not an investment. A good rule of thumb is to upgrade your video card only when a game that you can't play with your current system comes out.