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Good video card

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NoxNoctum

Grizzled Veteran
Jun 15, 2007
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#1
My video card is dying, I've been having to underclock it+set the fan t 100% for the past 6 months or so. Which is cool, because I haven't played any games at all for the last 3 months...

I'm consdering getting back into it though, I'm excited about all the new DH stuff... this time I'll just have to moderate my time better.

Anyways I don't want to spend a TON of money on a new one. The only games I'd be playing in the near future would be RO, and possibly OFP2, ARMA2 and Empire:TW depending on how good they turn out to be. I don't feel the need to play them at maxed out graphics. Looking for something in the $200 or less range I guess.
 
#2
Where do you live? Since in europe ati cards are cheaper and thus have an edge.
ofp 2 will use the grid engine which hugely favours ati cards. For the others nothing is known yet.

also some new ati cards are coming out in a couple of months. So if you have patience you can wait for those.
 
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#6
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#12
Eh, ati will run nvidia's physx soon enough natively. Nvidia has too, to compete with intel's physics thingy.

Also ati is working together with some other companies on an open source physics format.

Ati also has dx10.1, which means most likely dx11 games will run better on it than on the pure dx10 cards nvidia has.
 
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#16
Cuda will probably never become a standard though same with physx because ATI simply wont ever support the api. So people wont make a game rely too much on physx as long as a big part of the end users use ati videocards. So real games and gameplay being focussed on physics probably wont happen too soon what well see now will be only visual beauty sadly.

Intels havok is not going anywhere though (atleast not for gpu acceleration), and there is no clear confirmed information about a physics thing actually comming to DX11 beside a programmable shader base for stuff comparable to cuda i guess. So physics with it are not impossible but its not clearly stated in the papers.

ATI's driver over all (on windows) are less fiddly and more stable than nvidia on DirectX (although more sensitive to proper removal when installing a new set), although they don't have a devrel comparable to nvidia's so profiles get made after games come out rather than before as is the case often with nividia and openGL support is a bit lack luster.

Ati releases 12 drivers WHQL supported per year while nvidia releases loads of betas but not that many WHQL drivers. Although ati linux drivers used to be horrible, although now they have went open source on the linux platform users have already made some good ones. Although ati themselves continues to create fail linux drivers.

I would have preferred physX to stay standalone and work together with both ati and nvidia so that physX could have become a mainstream term with games(all 2900+ ati vidcards can support cuda (which has been shown) but they simply wont ever implement it because if the platform would become mainstream nvidia could slowly direct it to be another glide but then for physics by using hardware functions etc outside of dx spec that only nvidia will have).

I personally say look at the performance per dollar first, then after that go for your preferred brand. Although it remains that Nvidia doesn't have anything really to go against the 4850. While the 260 and 4870 are a good match.
 
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#17
err, i dont think you get what CUDA actually is. CUDA has nothing to do with physX in the first place. CUDA is an interface allowing a programmer to compile and run code on your gfx card. (afaik some Filters in Adobe CS4 even use it).

Also, physX would be dead already if nvidia didnt buy ageia. As for the mainstream thing and physX support: there are several articles out about programmers creating ATi drivers able to run the PhysX API.
 
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#18
worluk said:
err, i dont think you get what CUDA actually is. CUDA has nothing to do with physX in the first place. CUDA is an interface allowing a programmer to compile and run code on your gfx card. (afaik some Filters in Adobe CS4 even use it).

Also, physX would be dead already if nvidia didnt buy ageia. As for the mainstream thing and physX support: there are several articles out about programmers creating ATi drivers able to run the PhysX API.
Click to expand...

As i said ati can run CUDA and because of that PhysX, but they will never support cuda and thereby wont officially let it run on ATI videocards unless PhysX becomes mainstream.

I never said that cuda is anything but parallel programming base for a videocard, and as I said that is pretty much the same thing that will be added to DX11. Not a physics engine is said to come with DX11 yet, but a codebase for videocards. CUDA got something to do with physX and the thing is that PhysX runs on the CUDA code base. And as ATI will never support CUDA (unless they really really really have to) it will never support PhysX.

There have been people that managed to get CUDA stuff working on ATI hardware, and with that were able to run PhysX and other programs using the CUDA platform. But you wont see an official driver supporting it untill there is a complete market dominance. Its purely ATI trying not to make cuda a standard, and holding out till DX11.

Here's the parallel programming bit of dx11:
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2008/09/17/directx-11-a-look-at-what-s-coming/5

So even if cuda lifsts of heavily outside of the gaming market, as long as ati does not support cuda. PhysX which runs on CUDA cannot prosper properly as game developers wont make a game that will only run on 1 brand of videocard. They might make some visual goodies especially with nvidia's devrel but they cannot make a game pretty much only play if you run it PhysX hardware accelerated, through a physX card or a videocard that supports CUDA.

Without support PhysX would be dead, but since its nvidia proprietary i dont see much of a future for it either. Unless ATI adopts it, which wont happen unless there wont be an alternative comming.
 
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