I'm looking to replace my current graphics card ( NVidia GForce4 MX440 64RAM) with something better, most likely a 256RAM card. Any suggestions as to what I should purchase? All input is welcome.

anything would be better then that, except the 5200


need a price range, and what you intend to do with it (256megs isn't required by any games to date)

If you go the ATI route and want the best bang for the buck: 9600 XT
If you go NVidia and want the best bang for the buck: 5700 Ultra

If you go the ATI route and want extreme (expensive) performance: X800
If you go the NVidia route and want extreme (expensive) performance: GeForce 6800 Ultra

If you just really want to skimp and get a decent 128 meg card, the GeForce Ti 4600s are still pretty dandy cards even these days, but I would suggest at least getting a 5700 Ultra or 9600 XT. But yes, any MX card just sucks especially if it's standard PCI (as I think they all are).

For what it's worth, I still think the now Sub-$200 9800-Pro's are pretty solid bang/buck.

I'm looking to spend about $300 on the card. Is there any major diff between ATI and Nvidia cards, does one run EQ better than the other? Also, any suggestions as to where to buy?

LoL, I don't want to get an NVidia versus ATI thing going, but personally I just prefer NVidia, as in my experience they've always seemed like stable cards. Simply my personal preference which is based more on customer loyalty probably. Go to www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com/) and look under the "Cards: Video" section. Hundreds of cards and retailers are represented there. Good luck!

P.S. $300 can get you a pretty nice one no matter what route you take.

currently theres a pretty nice gap in card prices, theres the 9800pro which is less then $200 (this is by far the best bang for your buck card out there) and then theres the x800pro/GT which will sell for 400, actually its kinda hard to find them for under 450 now ...

the 6800NU is supposed to be $300(and an exceptional card, but i'd still go with the 9800pro), but i have yet to see a retailer have one in stock

NVidia and EQ are working together, weather or not the game plays better on an ati or nvidia card is pretty moot, i haven't seen any difference in any of the cards, i doubt we'll see a difference between them for EQ2 as well

I got my 5900 Ultra 256 MB (Generic) a good 6 months ago (or more?) for $350... so those have to be in the 250 - 300 range. So far I have had no major problems with it, even though it was from a generic company.

For $300, you could probably get a higher end 5900 Ultra or a lower end 5950 ultra from one of the generic manufacturers.

It seems like people stick with one company after they've had a good experience with them. Me, I've never had any complaints with my NVidia cards, so thats what I stick with. I hear the ATI cards are great too, but couldn't really offer any advice on them.

I've een looking at cards online now, and most have another manfacturer listed also, is this the company that assembled the chip using the nvidia stuff or what? Is one better than another? I know I'm being a pest, but I'd really like to make sure I purchase the card that's right for me the first time. And since someone sent me a message asking the specs on my PC: Pentium4 2.8 gig, 1024 DDR ram, 120gig HD , running XP.

If you read the EQ's tech support board regulary then you will notice a tendency, NVidia cards usually work fine (unless the whole system was screwed up by a patch and no one can play) and ATI cards have minor glitches which are corrected later when enough people complain.

I'm not saying that either of them is better or worse because of that, just that SOE is building EQ around Nvidia support primarily and ATI support comes as second.

this is a question better asked on the forums of the sites that test these cards, personally you could not go wrong with a 6800NU right now, IF you found it in stock somewhere or online


another thing is, the choice is yours to make, theres alot of hardware review sites how there now that test the latest and greatest thing before it comes out and will tell you if it's a good buy or not, it would be worth your time to look for some of these sites and read the reviews on the cards you are interested in, match them up in the games you like, read up on the glitches and problems the card might have and make your own conclusion, this will only help in the long run and maybe takes a whole day of research, very highly recommended

Do you think the 9800's will be able to handle alot of the stuff slated to come out in the next year or so? I seriously need to up my video card but if dropping 200 now means I'll be dropping another 200 next year when Vanguard hits the shelves....

I've been an Nvidia supporter since day one and found that their cards have always been fairly stable up until I got my GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.

Four words: Unstable piece of shit

Yeah it runs stuff well, and I get over 100fps on most games (even Far Cry in some indoor parts) but there's a pixel shader 2.0 problem that STILL hasnt been fixed (I'm guessing it's a hardware defect else the drivers would have solved it).

If I hadnt however just seen a comparison between the Nvidia 6800 and the ATI X800 I would have told you to go with the X800, but Nvidia's new card (on paper) is the dog's bollocks. 16 pipelines, Pixel shader 3.0 support (the X800 only supports PS 2.0) and a ton of other features.

However, the 6800 requires a hefty power supply and puts out quite a lot of heat, where as the X800 requires LESS power than any previous ATI card.

In the end it's your call as both cards are similarly priced, but I'd go with Nvidia personally.

Wait until the initial reviews come in though, people who buy brand new video cards are essentially beta testers (like I was when I got my FX 5900 ultra) and some bugs that are found may not be fixable until a new generation of that card is released (like the FX 5950 which I believe DID fix the PS 2.0 bug)

Good luck making your decision.

zehn, yes a 9800 will do you just fine for another year, another thing to keep in mind is your ram and cpu are going to need to be upgraded more then your video card most likely, 512 megs of ram and 2 ghz are barely covering it seems to keep games playable

depending on your current video card i'd probably recommend cpu/ram upgrades over it if you are planning an upgrade at all (since doom3 seems to be playable on a damn mx440)

ATI > Nvidia.

Also, there is a form of the 6800 Ultra (the 128 MB one I believe) that only takes the one AGP slot (doesn't cover the PCI slot below). Not sure of the power supply requirement for it, though. It might still need the 480+ wattage.

none of them need above 400watt psu's, its recommended for oc'ing and nothing else


another thing to note is the 6800 ultra does not come in a 128meg format, and they all take up 2 slots (twirls finger), how ever the GT and NU only take up one slot if for some reason you need every last slot available to you
and to me i like ati's tech and gpu alot more then what nvidia is bragging about (none of what nvidia has is applicable yet), one thing going for nvidia right now is there pure performance with openGL, other then that i think thr XT is going to turn into what the GeForce Titanium cards turned into, still being fast cards 3 years later