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Best Video Cards for Speed, Stability, Rendering, and Drivers


Tekk

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Here is a topic that I think has been absent in the Klipsch BB for a while. It might be a little off-topic, but hey...

I am going to pick my favorite video card in each of the above categories: Speed, Stability, Rendering, and Drivers. I'd be interested to see what other people have to say about my selections, and I'd like to see what other people pick!

First off:

*Speed

I'm sure that this pick won't suprise anyone.

The Geforce 2 Ultra renders more frames per second than any other card on the market. It rendered close to 90fps at 16X12 in the Quake3 OpenGL demo. I am sure that those of you looking to the Raedon might me dissapointed by the slower frame rate. However, The Raedon does an impressive DVD/Video application suite of products that other Geforce/Geforce2 cards lack. Also, look for the G450 from matrox to leap-frog Nvidia's top of the line card later this year. The G400 is more than a year old, and its still right up there with the 'big boys'.

Read the press release from Matrox here.

Matrox's upcoming card bosts two RAMDAC's 32MB or DDR SDRAM, and lost of TV/DVI options.

Benchmarks are from

Tom's Hardware

q3_dm1_normal.gif

The Geforce2 Ultra also performed well in DirectX7.

evolva_32bit.gif

*Stability

When it comes to Stability, Nvidia doesn't immediately jump into my head. If your playing games that really work DirectX to its limit, I would still go with the Matrox G400. I have yet to see it crash a game, and it works well with DirectX 6.1 DirectX7 can sometimes cause problems with InstallSheild. When playing Motoracer/Rollcage, I couldn't get past the opening sequence with a Geforce256 unless I had Dx7. 6.1 works fine with the G400.

*Rendering

This is tough. Environment Mapped Bump Mapping makes all the difference here. If you refer to the post entitled 'Building a REAL Computer', Kblair posted an absolutely astonishing picture of a scene with water in it with and without EMBM. After seeing that, you'll never want a card without it. The only cards featuring it are the G400 and ATi's new Raedon card. I'd stick with the G400, but if you want slightly higher frame rates, and more options like TV-out and such, maybe you should look into Raedon.

*Drivers

Here, I think its a a tossup. I actually like the Detonator2 drivers, they seem to work on everything I've tried. The Det3 drivers have caused performance drops in some of the newer Nvidia cards, so if you go with nvidia, try both. The Det3 drivers post some impressive performance increases in nvidia's reports, especially in the older cards like the TNT2. In actually tests, they aren't quite a 50% jump, but it definately makes a difference. The G400 drivers are a sure thing, they are rock solid, and they will work with anything.

I'd be interested to hear what you all have to say!!

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A cookie is just a cookie, but a Fig Newton is fruit and cake.

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