Originally posted by SVTdriver762:
Well, do a little experiment: if you have an AGP 8X card, go into your BIOS and change your video card setting down to 4x. Don't worry, it'll work. Reboot the system, and run some benchmarks. Change your system back to 8X AGP and run the same benchmark. You'll notice little to absolutely no performance gain.
No performance gain? Well not quite. Using 3Dmark03 with 4x I scored 4000 points. And with 8x I scored 6223. Frame rates and fill rates were also down 30-40% on all tests.
But I do agree with you about people jumping on the high tech bandwagon. Hardware technology is so much further ahead of software technology its kind of pointless to buy top of the line stuff right away. Unless your doing high end graphics or video your not going to fully use the new stuff just coming out. Not to mention it always more expensive when it first comes out.
I recommend the MSI 9800Pro 128mb card. Thats the one I'm using. The MSI cards have the same chip as the 9800XT. When I put the card in my computer windows recognized it as an XT without flashing the BIOS. The Sapphire cards also use the XT chip. Some video card makers just use the standard pro chip. IMO the 256mb card is way over priced for what you get. I'm talking about the 9800Pro 256 card. In some of the benchmarks I saw it was only 2-3fps more than the 128 card. Sometimes the 128mb card was better. Not really worth the extra $100 if you ask me. I would stay away from the 9800SE. Its a very stripped down pro card. Its equal to the 9600XT. With the ATI X800 out now the 9800 pro is dropping in price quick. And it will still last you for quite a while.
Former owner: 1999 Contour SE Sport
Current: 2000 Eclipse GT
There are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
Isn't that just the wrong way?
Yeah, but faster!
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