Ati vs VisionTek ??

Hi everyone,

My sister is trying to buy herself a new graphic card , and she is on a budget lol so she's narrowed it down to these two graphic cards....but i have no idea what the comparisons mean, anyone help??

This is what she gave me, the visiontek is cheaper, but i just wanna know what is gooood unless anyone has any better ideas for a better graphic card at a good price? (she wants to be able to play games that require that weird pixel shader stuff)

thanks!

VisionTek Xtasy 9600 256MB DDR AGP
API Support DX9, Direct3D, OpenGL
Card Type 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator
Clock Speed of Video Memory 400MHz
DVD Acceleration Yes
Fill Rate 1.3 Billion Pixels/Second
Interface AGP 8X
Maximum 2D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour) 2048 x 1536
Maximum 3D Resolution (At 32-Bit Colour) 2048 x 1536
Number of Polygons Per Second 175 Million Triangles
Processor Type ATI Radeon 9600
Remote Control No
S-Video Output Yes
TV Out Yes
TV Tuner (Yes/No) No
Video Compression Yes
Video Memory 256MB DDR


Ati All-in-Wonder Radeon 9600 128mb
Chipset: ATI Radeon 9600
Memory: 128MB DDR SDRAM
Clock Speed: 325MHz
Memory Cloc: 400MHz DDR
Pixel Fillrate: 1.3 Gpixels/sec
Geometry Rate: 163 Mtriangles/sec
Bus Type: AGP 2X/4X/8X

For the most part the cards would be the same. The card with ATI in its name would refer to it being from the ATI manufacturers, while the VisionTek in the other's name would refer to that card being the same type of card, just produced by a different company. Best bet is to not look so much at the price as much as the reviews, assuming that the difference in price is in an acceptable range. (Usually 50 dollars in my oppinion.) What I would do is check out VisionTek's record on their sold cards, the consumer reviews, and their technical support. Then check out the ATI card records, their consumer reviews, and their technical support. 'Cause for the most part you'll be getting the same card.

Personal preference, I would suggest the ATI card. Just because of the three cards I've gotten from them none have ever had any problems. Again, get reviews on past cards as well as that one!

Ooooh ok i will do that, thankyou so much!

Wait, these are NOT the same card! Note that the ATI card is an "All-in-wonder." That is the card that does TV and imports/exports video, comes with the remote control and all sorts of other multimedia options.

Plus, the ATI card only carries 128mb RAM versus the Visiontek's 256mb.

I would definately suggest going with the Visiontek if it's to be used for games. But, the 9600 line is fairly old now and may not be able to handle those "pixel shader" games as well as your friend hopes. Though, Valve DID say that Half-Life 2 would be scaleable enough to be playable on older cards.

Aurelie, for the love of god buy an nVIDIA card!
ATi has horrible problems with SL, among other games, and windows in general. Their drivers are poorly coded and can cause horrible crashiness for some people.
I recommend an FX 5600 or 5700. I personally own an FX 5200 but will be switching this christmas

actually ati has next to no problems in any other game, but it is terrible for SL. for non sl players i actually do reccomend ati over nvidia.. for SL tho you really don't have a choice, its nvidia or risk having yer SL time be a frustrating mess

I Wholeheartedly Agree With Eggy.........buy An Nvidia Geoforce........awesome Card!!!!!!!!!!!

lol yes its for gaming, all the games she wants to play requires those pixel shader thingies

*pokies* does that have pixel shader crappy stuff too?

*clueless*

the cards we have now are ummm...*coughs* (being my sis and I) are ummm only nvidia geforce 2.....hee...hee......

please god help me get a new graphic card lololol

well she doesn't play SL and never will (she doesn't like these types of things), she is strictlly a gamer...like swg, eq2 etc, the new thief etc

I would recommend a GeForce FX 5700 or better. Depending on the variant, you can get them for anywhere between $125 and $200 Canadian. They're a great midrange card. I can't recommend an ATI card, simply because their driver support is so poor. With the right drivers, an ATI card is great, but with Nvidia, it's great and just WORKS.

tanku kitty *hugs*

Aww, jup, sorry. Looked at the vision tek and thought you were comparing the same card. Goofed up there.

BTW, I'm getting the feeling that I'm the only person in the entire world that has a working ATI SL relationship... Kinda strange... Hrm...

For what its worth, I agree with the post that ATI is best for everything except SL. Of course, for that reason, my last card purchase was an ATI and I'm happy with it. The ATI drivers work fine in my opinion, as I haven't had problems other than with SL. And in short, I don't believe the notion that SL's problems are driver-related. My opinion is that SL's problems are do to Linden Lab not complying with the standard, and incorporating extras that benefit Nvidia, yet break ATI... in the same way that MS included extra non-standards into it's web browsers over the years, causing site display problems.

As for Nvidia, I've had two Nvidia cards over the years. The Riva TNT wasn't supported very well at all once their Riva TNT2 was released (I should've waited a month for the TNT2)... so I ran into a dead-end with it as far as driver benefits go. And the very high-priced Geforce Ti500 I bought a few years ago was fried at the age of 6-months... due to a crappy cooling fan that stopped working.

ATi's problems go back a lot further than just SL; their drivers for OpenGL are recognised to be some of the worst on the planet. (even the small fry card producers have better drivers than ATi - for OpenGL at least anyway.). ATi are currently in the process of doing a ground-up rewrite of their OpenGL code, to bring it into line, but the blame isn't LL's alone (although I do suspect there is some definite blame to place on LL's shoulders too - but an application shouldn't outright crash or lockup if an 'invalid'/'unknown' OpenGL command series is given - that is the drivers problem when that happens. Often major game engines will have manufacturer specific workarounds to avoid problems in the drivers.)

-Adam

You're getting it the wrong way around. SL uses several rarer parts of the OpenGL spec that have been neglected in ATI's implementation. Talks with ATI's driver team over the last couple of years have led to most of these problems being fixed in their more recent driver releases. In fact, only a couple issues remain. Linden Lab is following the standard, (perhaps inadvisably) but it's ATI who hasn't met it. (For evidence, run SL under 2 year old drivers, then switch to the latest. See the difference?)

The reason you may not have encountered the issue in other 3d apps or games is because SL isn't like other 3d apps. In ATI's defense, they spend most of their time and effort optimizing their drivers to perform well in the 3d engines that millions of people use, FPSes. This is a much smarter move than spending all their time attempting to make a less focused driver that may leave their FPS customers a couple frames per second lower than Nvidia's. If they want to keep their market share, they have to perform flawlessly in Quake and Unreal. Thankfully, they've made efforts to improve their poor support in other areas as well.



Correct me if I'm remembering poorly here, but Nvidia's TNT/GeForce drivers have always worked on all models of the TNT/GeForce family. That's the point of a unified driver. Now, I admit, there were still manufacturer-specific GeForce 2 drivers, as recently as, well, when they had GeForce 2s. Still, the reference drivers (Since then, called Detonator and now ForceWare) have always been available.

As for your fan dying, you and I both know that the fan is an OEM part, not a Nvidia part. Nvidia only supplies the chipset and the reference board design. Unless it was a Nvidia-branded card, the only people you can blame are the people who made the card, or yourself for not cleaning it regularly.