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video card for new A7N8X/AMD 2500+ system
Hi. Building a new system. So far:
Case: Antec Sonata Motherboard: Asus A7N8X Deluxe CPU: AMD XP 2500+ Barton OS's: Dual Boot, Windows (2000/XP?) and Linux (Red Hat) Hard Drives: WD 120GB, WD 100GB Optical Drives: CD-RW, DVD-ROM Sound: on board (at least for a while) Video: ??? Use: software development; the usual email, browsing, office apps; some audio and video; some games, not hardcore I posted recently asking about motherboards (and some other general questions) so this may seem familiar. Now I'm looking for comments specifically on video cards. At first I figured I could get by with something in the $75-100 range, like something based on the GeForce FX 5200. After more research, I learned that that chipset is not very highly regarded, and is not really up to par with the rest of the system (which admittedly is more than I need right now, but I want to keep my options open and include some degree of future-proofness). So I decided to open up that price range a bit, up to around $150 (which would make the video card the most expensive component in the system, but perhaps that's not so unusual). I focused on chipsets from nVideo and ATI, and I wanted something fairly modern/recent, so that led me to look at the GeForce 5600/5600 Ultra, and the ATI 9500/9600 (non-Pro and Pro). I used this review at Tom's Hardware as a guide: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/ It includes low end cards, high end cards, and cards inbetween (actually chipsets, not cards, which leads me to a question: Is performance so dependent on the chipset that you really only need to look at that, and not the rest of the card?). The group I listed above is basically the middle group. I figured that was a good place for me to be, considering the overall system and my intended usage. In most (almost all?) of the performance tests, the chipsets came out in this order (best first): 5600 Ultra, 9500 Pro, 9600 Pro, 5200 (the non-pro 9500 and 9600 often came out closer to the low end chipsets and not the middle group) Given my intended usage, I focused more on features than performance (especially since the performances differences weren't that huge). Features I was looking for included a variety of different output types (VGA, DVI, S-video, composite), dual/multiple monitor support, Linux support, video in, AGP 8x. It seemed to me that while the Radeon cards win out on performance, the GeForce cards win out on features, especially those I listed. Additionally, the Tom's Hardware review chose one editor's choice out of the cards they looked at, and that was the MSI GeForce FX 5200 card. It offered a nice array features, and a nice selection of included software. All this had me leaning towards the 5600 chipset, and in particular the MSI card. After this, I went to check out pricing on these particular cards/chipsets (using pricegrabber and dealtime). As perhaps expected, the (rough) average low prices of the cards came out roughly in line with the performance numbers: the 5600 Ultra the most expensive (slightly over $200), followed by the 9500 Pro, the 9600 Pro, and the 5200 at the bottom end (around $160). As it turned out, the MSI 5600 card was below the average for 5600 cards, coming in at around $156. (These were all 128MB cards.) Now, in going through the pricing, I noticed a few things. First, there were a few 5600 based cards that were significantly cheaper than the others -- some from Jaton, Chaintech, and Leadtek were around $130. Additionally, there was a 5600 Ultra card that was about the same price as the average of the 5600's -- from PNY. And this leads me to wonder if some of these brands are significantly worse than the others, and should generally be avoided. (And if it's not performance where they differ, because they all use the same chipset, it must be things like quality and reliability of the other componentry.) So, right now I'm leaning toward the MSI 5600. But I'd like to hear what people have to say about my analysis process, this particular card/chipset, some of the other cards/chipsets, and those similar cards that could be had cheaper (especially the PNY 5600 Ultra). Thanks for your comments/suggestions! -- Milt Epstein |
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