Best Radeon card?

9800 XT, 256 MB. Expect to pay an arm and a leg.

Personally, I would wait somewhat, as I'm in the process of looking at new computers currently. I usually wanted to get the fastest card available, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

The XT runs about $450 or so, at least according to Pricewatch. By the way, this doesn't consider the workstation cards, like the ATI Fire series. I don't think they would be good for Doom anyway.

Well, if I choose to wait, I assume the price of that beauty will drop. I'm jsut guessing that DOOM 3 will require a top card to run decently . . although I could be wrong. Maybe it'll run fine on something a bit lower.

Doom 3 will undoubtedly demand all you can give it. Even with that card, you'll be looking at 35-40 fps on max settings. That's only a guess, but that's typical. No card - even the best current available - can dominate the newest, fastest games. It'll be especially true since the 9800 XT predates Doom 3. Then again, the 9800 XT is supposed to be a really kickass card, so it might hold its own. Unless you're using a 19" or bigger monitor, you wouldn't need more than 1280x1024 anyway.

is my G4 Ti4400 even going to be good in a year?

becuase i cant even find any places that still sell the Ti series, its all the Mx series. and are the new Mx's any better?

Don't exagerate doom 3 alpha ran quite fast on my computer and I have a geforce 5600 ultra 256mb, p4 2.6ghz, 512mb ddr ram.
Of course not all of us will be able to play with uber resolution textures but still we can enjoy good graphics and fast gameplay, doom 3 won't be like ultima 9 ascension which ran slow on whatever computer you had.

The 9800XT , while it is numbers wise , the fastest card on the market, is not the wisest choice IMO.

There's a number of alternatives....

One being, buy a 9800 and either A. flash the bios to a 9800 Pro bios, or B. overclock it to 9800 Pro specs, which is quite easy to do even with stock cooling

Another option, buy a 9800 Pro , and flash the bios to a 9800 XT Bios (Which i've done, in fact did it last night) or just overclock the 9800 pro to the XT speeds, which is VERY easy with stock. I took my stock 9800 pro to 430/390 which is higher than the XT's 412/365, and that was at stock cooling. But then I chose to use the BIOS update, just to see if it'd work and it did, nice and simple..

The radeon cards will be able to handle Doom3, at max settings without a doubt, a lot of people base their judgements of Doom3 based on the alpha, which wasnt even using the doom3 engine. Plus, it wasnt optimized, and it was highly highly ALPHA. There is however, a version of Doom3 floating around on irc and whatnot that uses the doom3 engine, my friend Anthony has it and i've watched him play it quite a few times. He's got a Radeon 9800 Pro stock 128 meg, XP 2600 not overclocked, and a gig of PC2700. He plays it at 1280x1024, maxed out settings and it runs at a respectable 75-90 fps and around 60-65 in heavy fight scenes. While it is a heavy graphical game, it's not as taxing on systems as some might thing,

And lastly, when choosing from the 128 meg of 256 meg version of the video card, it depends on your needs. If you wanna play at 2048x1536 with everything maxed, 6xAA and 16xAF, then go for the 256 meg, but if you play at decent 1600x1200 with 2xAA and 16xAF, then go for the 128 and save yourself $100 or so. Benchmarks have even shown the 128 to be faster than the 256 meg version, which is obvious, even though the 256 meg uses DDR2. My personal opinion for you LTD, go for the 9800 Pro 128, and either overclock it to XT spec, or flash the bios to XT spec , but if you choose the bios flashing, make sure wherever you buy it has a good return policy, because you WILL still be overclocking the card, persay, by flashing the bios, and if it's not able to handle the heat increase, if your case isnt properly cooled, etc. it might fry itself.

Good luck and good gaming!

:I'd walk a million miles for your love, I'd walk a million more for that little thing you do with your tongue :

I don't know why you can't just pay TH [Toms Hardware] a visit instead of asking in here. Over there, you'll find benchmarks and comparisons.

Thanks for the info, ridge . . . quite an education for me. The reason I ask this here (where once can also find Vice City help, it seems) is that I get the opinions of real, everyday users who might have actually tried the card on a particular game and can give me their own system specs and results, much like ridge did.

Although this is a skinning site, there is, I think, room for these kinds of discussions. After all, most skinning sites have a section where this kind of discussion would fit in.

Well, I appreciate all the insight. I'm relieved that DOOM 3 might not require a complete overhaul of my system, although I will probably get a new vidcard and perhas upgrade the processor, although I think that what i have now might suffice (Athlon XP2000+.) I think my 768 mb of RAM should be enough, too.

Because Tom's Hardware sucks. If he wanted to go there and get Tom's opinion he would have, but he didn't, did he?

thanks ridge, i too was looking into cards this season.

sticboy.
keeping it clean, simple and functional.

Tom's Hardware has all the info that was / is needed. They have hands on with lots of cards and do test thoroughly. As for most end users, they test out ONE card and give there opinion on it...and most of the time, they big it up so that they look good.

Just buy the one with coolest looking techno demon thingy on the box.

Actually, whatever you do, don't buy one with a box if possible. I remember buying my Ti4600 in a static bag saved me about $50 compared to the retail box and at least $25 compared to the white box. So the fancy techno demon thing will cost you.

It's because of that fancy techno demon thing that some of us have jobs. We are artists here afterall :-/

Yes, the box is the most important part.

No problem at all LTD, you either sticboy :) Always glad to help fellow custo'ers with their hardware woes

*opens eyes wide at the mention of techno demon* wooooo i want one! =P

I got mine whitebox, and at the time, saved me $80. Didn't come with the s-video cable (which i already had) or a DVI adapter ($8 off newegg for an ATI one) and who cares about the driver CD and manual? Download those right from ATI's website. Deff best to get OEM/Whitebox if possible...I even saw a 9800 Pro RETAIL on ebay tonight for $270 Buy it Now price, that's cheaper than I paid for my OEM :'(



:I'd walk a million miles for your love, I'd walk a million more for that little thing you do with your tongue :

http://slickdeals.net/#p3906

Proverbs 19:96 -- Custo helps those who help themselves... use Google

Caesar good link, but sadly that 9800 isnt the PRO version, which lacks higher clock/mem speeds and a feature here and there. For $50-$70 more you can get the Pro version, which at it's release, costed onwards of $150 more than the non pro version. But then again, it all depends on your budget of course. If budget permits, deff. get the 9800 Pro, if not, then check out pricewatch, you can get a 9800SE nonpro for around $140

:I'd walk a million miles for your love, I'd walk a million more for that little thing you do with your tongue :

i dont now much about raedon cards but i believe you can oc a 9800 to a pro.

One note, "And lastly, when choosing from the 128 meg of 256 meg version of the video card, it depends on your needs. If you wanna play at 2048x1536 with everything maxed, 6xAA and 16xAF, then go for the 256 meg, but if you play at decent 1600x1200 with 2xAA and 16xAF, then go for the 128 and save yourself $100 or so"
NO, you can not have any AA or AF at any res higher then 1600x1200. Not sure why, but you cant.
Also, Benchmarks lie, dont trust them for a second. The 256mb card is useless as of right now, there is no need for it. No games can take advantage of the 256mb of ram on it, and the card will be outdated when the games to use that much.
Also, DO NOT go and bios flash first thing. Overclock the card first to see if it can handle the speeds, if it does, then bios flash, if you want. But I do not recomend it, seeing you are already OCing it just fine, and why take the extra risk of killing it?
But if you have a non-pro card like myself, you cant OC it without a bios flash, and I did just that. But make sure you look for the right bios, and they should flash it to whatever the desired card is, and possibly leave the original clock speeds, so you can OC on your own.
Use an app by the name of radeclock. It is in the display adapter control panel, in a tab, and lets you have some nice control over the clock settings.
I recomend just the plan ol Radeon 9800 pro, no need for the FX. I have the 9700, and couldnt be happyer.

Shi, of course you can OC without flashing, but if i read correctly, that's what i was getting at in my previous post.

Also, you CAN use AA and AF at higher resolutions, easily. I play Quake 3 at 2048x1536 with 4XAA and 16AF all the time and i can sures see a difference, no problem.

As for the 256 meg cards, yes right now their useless because they benchmark lower, and i will trust benchmarks because we all know which ones to use and which ones not to. Case in point, NOT TO : 3dmark programs, their too synthetic, and anyone who goes "Wowzers my card is uber1337 b/c i got 6400 on 3dmark03" is a moron IMO.

But I can see plenty of usage in a 256 meg card, ever try to play COD at 2048x1536 or 1600x1200 with EXTRA textures? Sure it's possible on the 128, but it runs noticeably smoother on the 256, same with UT2k3 and any other game that uses very high quality textures, in high resolutions, with AA/AF on. Granted, any game out there will run beautifully at 1600x1200 and look great, and 98% of people wont run games in 2048x1536, but there's still a use for the 256 meg ones, just not a very practical reason to pick it.

And lastly, to follow up on my flashing the bios paragraph, as i DID say, you can easily overclock the 9800 to 9800 pro speeds, or the 9800 pro to XT speeds, VERY simply, even farther past it with regular old stock cooling, but i was just mentioning the option of flashing the bios, not suggesting he run out and do it, but just giving him the option.
:I'd walk a million miles for your love, I'd walk a million more for that little thing you do with your tongue :

mmm, precious 9800XT Pro Sapphire.... *Drool*