Best Video Card

I did a real clever thing (or so I thought) by doing a search on the technical forum for "best video card".

Unfortunately all I got were people who were having problems with their video card. (I guess this means the word "best" and "video card" have never appeared in the same post hehe).

Anyway... If I were to go out and buy a new video card JUST to use SL (Since I don't use Windows for anything else) which card would I want to be buying? Errrr, on second thought, lets assume I didn't want to spend more than $250 on it. *Whew*

Which cards are used most in the Linden offices? My theory is that it never hurts to be using the same hardware as the developers

PS: I also tried to check the Knowledge base in this, but it wouldn't let me in...says I had the wrong password. Doesn't it used the same passwords as the forums and SL? Or is it just not connected up yet? (New Gas Cooker Sketch).

I shopped at Best Buy when I started playing since I could return any mistakes I bought. I tried a top of the line ATI card and had problems, then I went to a Asylum/Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 with 256mb memory.

You can find them new on eBay for around $200, or at Best Buy at around $249.

There are some $499 cards out there that are probably better, but this one gets my vote at your price range.

P.S. Watch out, some of the GeForce 5600 cards are 128mb made by companies other than Asylum...

In the office we use a good selection of ATI's in the 9000-9800 range, as well as GeForce 2-4s, and an FX 5800. ATI continues to have driver bugs but they're working on fixing them. The nVidia cards are solid except for the GF2 and GF4MX cards, which still require old drivers to draw the avatar correctly (we're working on fixing this).

As of right now, for that price range you'll probably get the best results either from a GeForce 4 (not MX!) or GeForceFX 5600. The 5600 is probably a better bet long-term for SL, but we haven't tested it ourselves so no gaurantees.

Edit: Right now SL won't take advantage of the extra memory in a 256MB card, but this may change in the future. If there's a significant price difference, 128MB and even 64MB cards are just fine.

Just what I needed to know. Thanks ian !

Is there a disadvantage to running a GF4MX, if you've got the older driver? That's what I'm running right now. Are there things that a GF4 would do noticeably better?

Also, is DirectX 9 recommended over DirectX 8?

It's important to realize that a GF4MX has almost nothing to do with a GF4 architectually - it's essentially a tuned, high-clocked GF2. So for starters, the MX is going to be slower than a true GF4. Also, it lacks a number of features which will hamper visual quality. Aside from the swiss-cheese avatar bug, which we hope to fix, GF4MX's don't get a detail texture on the ground, making it look really muddy up close. This one we won't fix - the MX just doesn't have enough texture units. I think that's about it for the time being, but as we go forward there will probably be more effects which we'll add to the system that will be missing on the MX - stuff involving pixel and vertex shaders, for instance.

But none of this will affect the playability of SL. So if it were ME, I'd hold onto the MX until there was a seriously compelling reason to upgrade. I just don't recomend it to new purchasers, unless they're looking for something more easily affordable.

As for DX9, we use almost no DirectX functionality, so you should be able to get by w/ DirectX 8. Still, some people have reported better results with 9 installed, and there's no real downside.

I can vouch for this. When I got here I had a GF4MX. When I upgraded to a GF4 4600Ti I was astounded at the details I had been missing out on.

Is there much of a difference between the 4600ti and the FX 5800 in terms of SL??

Currently, no. Although the 5800 is of course faster, especially if you want to use anti-aliasing and/or anisotropic filtering (both of which improve the look of SL, and other games, significantly) at high resolutions. But the fan/blower contraption on the 5800 is really, really loud.

What I can't speak to is the performance of the 5600FX vs. the higher-end GF4's, which currently occupy similar price points. We haven't benchmarked them here. But the FX has better special effects capabiliteis which is why I call it a better long-term bet.

A note on speed though - when I say a card is "faster" it doesn't mean it'll necessarily run SL that much faster. In general SL's performace is bound by the speed of your CPU, so if you're looking to improve your framerate a new video card may not be a very good investment.

Talking of Video cards, my old card toasted (Gforce3 Ti200 AGP) so I installed my old ATI Radeon VIVO 64meg a unsuported card. It got me into SL this time around but is rather funky to look at from my end. The textures are constantly messing up but no crashes. Weird I couldn't even use it on the last release. I'm now a happy camper until I can afford a new card this will at least get me into SL in a semi-usable mode to chat to my friends. I think I'm gonna get my life time membership now and not tell the wifey ... =0)

Shshhhhh, no one tell on me OK


Paul

I'm so glad you are Paul. =0)



*duck tapes mouth*



mmmmmmm!

Interesting. I've actually taken snapshots of the ground to use as textures for objects meant to look like ground. They look passable on my machine, but they must look ludicrous on other people's.

Thanks for the info, Ian and Misnomer.

Jake I have done the same, see me inworld and I'll be happy to give you copies of my ground texture

Actually, there's a great post out there with a lot of detail from oldschool Phil Metalhead...he went into a fairly deep analysis of vid cards and pros 'n cons, which if I remember correctly even the lindens said yay to. Overall the assessment was, if you're a techie and don't mind the occassional wrestling match, ATI is the way to go, as the overall performance of ATI cards or the same class seems to be superior to the nVidia family. nVidia does not offer the same bleeding edge, but tends to see a lot less problems. I've run three nVidia cardss, one ATI (and back in the day Voodoo), and the statement bears out. Though I hear the new ATI stuff is screamin' (it looks like it's new-wave-of-vid-cards time again).

The VisionTek GE4 4400 is a solid card, runs everything great (my current benchark is Unreal 2 with everything on...and of course SL), never gives me any trouble (on 2k or XP) and is reasonably priced. The 4600 offers very little difference for the substantial price bump. The high end ATI stuff is rippin', but the forums are full of static about them, and they are expensive.

if you want a good, mid range/low range cost Nvidia card, I suggest the GF4 TI4200. personally I prefer Visiontek Nvidia cards. the 4200 8x AGP is suppose to be fast as all get out, but than again it costs 2x as much nearly, and have to have fairly new Mobo to support 8x.

Personally i refuse to use ATI since I had one of the first 32mb Radeons, gah, driver support from... ya.. ick.. but I'm sure they've changed and their new stuff looks awesome, just not for me =(

What do you think of Matrox Parhelia, 256mg? I have Radeon 9000 and am not too happy with the SL performance, lots of black feathering on AV's after a while, and while trying to place objects, they sometimes turn black, so hard to get them in place.

I am not a techie, but related to one!!! I can get him over here whenever I want to tweak my system. He built me a Pent4/2.40 Gh/512ram

+ + + + + + + + +
"Soy muy pituca"

I personally use the ATI Radeon 9700 and don't have any problem with it, and in fact can run SL, TSO and Photoshop all at the same time on it. But I have heard some people have trouble using ATI cards with SL. I guess I am lucky

Unless you plan on using 3 monitors, the parhelia is probably not your best bet. You will get better bang for your buck from an nvidia card - GeForce4 4200 or 4600 are probably the best values out there.

I can vouch for the 5600FX. I'm using a FX 5600 256mb from BFG (Asylum), works flawlessly so far. I actually run SL using dual-head, though only on a single monitor, as SL doesn't seem to care much for extending across both. *hint?*

ok, so do i want a gforce fx 5600 or do i want to pay the extra money for the ati 9800... hmmmm....

Well what can I say other than my new GF4 Ti4200 128mb ROCKS!!!!

As most of you know my main system fried, it was a 1400mhz with a GF2mx and well lagged all the time with consistant fps of 8, in crowds like the town meetings I got .6fps

Now I am useing(till I get my new system)

A P2 300mhz with my GF4 Ti4200 128mb. And well b4 you start laughing.....

I do lag easily because of the BIG lack of CPU power but!

My rendering is awsome, my FPS is consistanly high teens with less than 10 av's.

Everything comes in (renders) very well, at a good rate of speed and very clear. I now even on a 300mhz see things much clearer now.

I occasionally crash do to too much going on around me, but if I am by myself in a sim playing around I like it better now than I was on my 1400mhz lol..

So much for the minimum 800mhz for SL lol.

So I discovered much less than half of lag Fps issues are CPU related. A good net connection and a great card makes all the difference.

From what I am told, the nVidia Ti4200 (non-MX) is a killer deal. It cost $100 on http://www.pricewatch.com when I checked a few weeks ago, and it's got enough power to make the game look really great and run at a halfway decent speed.

I will NEVER buy an ATI video card, and I'll tell you why. The driver support is just too sorry. Let me break it down for everyone.

ATI

1. Separate driver for each and every one of the hundreds of cards they've sold over the years
2. You have to hunt for the right one in a dropdown list
3. This dropdown list is not alphabetized and different models of the same card are strewn throughout the list, seemingly at random
4. "OEM" style card, such as the RAGE Mobility in my laptop? "Go ask your vendor, we don't know what they might have done with it" (like they're going to crack open the die and rewire it with a scanning electron microscope?)
5. Forums are filled with stories of how buggy the drivers are

nVidia

1. One unified driver package runs every last GPU they have ever sold
2. You select your OS from a dropdown list, they send you the latest Detonators, and you are done
3. Unified drivers are provided for Linux as well
4. "OEM" style video card? Doesn't matter, NVidia's developers actually know how to write reference drivers, unlike certain incompetent hacks
5. Forums are filled with stories of how reliable and awesome NVidia cards are, even if they are .02 slower than ATI's equivalent offerings

I love these benchmarks that show ATI cards running at 130FPS where an nVidia card is "only" running at 118FPS or something like that. First off, when you're cranking over 100FPS already, a difference of 10FPS isn't even going to register in your visual cortex. Second, how many people are running their monitors with refresh rates greater than 60Hz in the first place? Hmmmmmmmm?

If you ask for my advice (and you haven't) I'll tell you to go with the company that appears to actually give a crap about consumer experience AFTER cash has traded hands. Go with nVidia. If you are a happy ATI owner, I am happy for you, and I wish you the best of luck with ATI. But I cannot ignore my own experiences, or those of other people that I have read.

Its been a while since you have dealt with ATI.

They too have switched to a unified driver architecture. They are new to it though so it isn't as good or as stable as the nvidia one. They are working on it though which shows they are aware of the issues.

Your information about the companies is very out of date and biased.

Also higher frame rates can make a difference. This 'you can not percieve the difference' is BS. The difference comes out as smoothness and less flicker. Things jump less, you get less eye strain. Now I'm not saying you can look at a game and say 'Oh thats 134fps' or anything. And the gap may need to be more than 10 to notice the difference substantially. However the FPS servers as a measure of power. The more power, the faster it will run future games, that may only run at 60 - 80fps on the card as opposed to the current games. This means the card will potentially last you longer, perform better in the long run.

Just saying that although higher FPS doesn't mean EVERYTHING it does mean something.

As has been said before: ATI is the card for the people who want every last drop of power, and are willing to sacrifice stability for it. nVidia is for people who place a higher priority on stability than performance.

I personally fall into the nVidia category. Its not that I can't fix a driver glitch or convince my card to work, I have been doing that for about 10 years since before I even had an S3 Virge. I just find that I greatly prefer things to 'just work'. And that is what I get with nVidia.

So your basic message is correct, but you come off way to harsh and out of date. And way too much like an nVidia fanboy.

I found out after I posted that that ATI has something called "Catalyst". However, I don't think I am being harsh. You want drivers for something a little older, you really DO have to sort through a huge dropdown that is not even alphabetized or even organized by card. I scrolled through it a couple weeks ago and saw the same variety of card with different variations strewn all over the list. You'd see something (say, FireGL) near the top, and then another clump of FireGL variants halfway down.

I will agree that higher FPS is a good indicator for FUTURE games, but I fail to see how it's going to matter whether you get 120FPS or 130FPS when your monitor is only grabbing 60 of those frames anyway. If you are getting any kind of flicker you can turn on the wait-for-refresh flag on the driver control panel... I have never had flicker with any 3D board I've owned, and being in this game since 1998, I've owned a few.

I also learned that nVidia's Detonator drivers do NOT support laptop displays, so that's my bad.

In any case I am very fond of nVidia. I've never regretted owning an nVidia board. After all the wierd stuff I went through with Voodoo2/3 cards, I bought a Riva TNT2 Ultra (one of nVidia's boards from a few years back) and that thing never gave me the business, it just worked solid with every game I ran on it. Then I got a GeForce 2 in 2001... 64MB DDR SDRAM and reasonably cheap ($130 if I recall correctly), and that thing rocked... playing Unreal Tournament at 1280x1024 and having it look great and run at high FPS was a thrill! It even runs Unreal Tournament 2003 at a great framerate at high res. (Unreal 2 is another story, it runs like a snail.)

Dear god I hope everyone. Newer CRTs support refreshes beyond 100 at decent resolutions. My monitor is pretty old (about 4 years I think) and it supports up to 80hz. If I put it (or any monitor) at 60 I get a headache within 5 minutes of use.

First my monitor is grabbing more than 60. And second, when I buy any piece of computer hardware I am very concerned with how it will play future games. A card that costs $200 but will last me 3 years is a $100 better deal than a card that only costs $100 but won't be able to run the games comming out this fall. I'm not saying that is the case or have any cards in mind, just saying that future performance is a big issue for me, and I really doubt I am the only one.

Also you are passing harsh judgment on a card and company you have had no dealings with. Anything posted on the web is biased. Based on where you go etc. and it is all extremes. Anyone who is just happy with their card goes and plays games. Has fun etc. Its the people that are either pissed about it that post or that wish Human/Electronics marriages were possible so they could forge a closer bond with their cards. The average happy gamer doesn't care or even think about posting 'Yeah my card works good, I like it." Except in threads like this or when someone else is having a problem perhaps, and then its a small percentage, and then its usually 'sheesh you should have gotten an X instead of a Y. I run fine with my X.'

And in conclusion....ya. ATI has performance at the cost of stability. nVidia has stability at the cost of some performance. Which is best for you? Thats your call. I go with nvidia.

I don't think my judgment is at all harsh based on the sloppy support I've seen with that company. Also, the laptop I'm on RIGHT NOW has a Rage Mobility graphics chipset so I don't know where you get off saying I haven't had any dealings with ATI.