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Premio Video Card Roundup for Q1/2004. Premio Video Cards Roundup for Q1/2004 By Calvin Chen Technical Director. Agenda. State of the Video Card Market ATI Product Lineup nVidia Product Lineup ATI and nVidia Comparison -- By Performance A Balanced System.
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Premio Video Card Roundup for Q1/2004 Premio Video Cards Roundup for Q1/2004 By Calvin Chen Technical Director
Agenda • State of the Video Card Market • ATI Product Lineup • nVidia Product Lineup • ATI and nVidia Comparison -- By Performance • A Balanced System
State of the Video Card Market • With the release of their GeForceFX 5900 Ultra card, nVidia have once again regained the fastest video card crown from ATI • The GeForceFX 5800 never took off due to noise and poor performance issues • Prior to the 5900, the ATI Radeon 9700/9800 Pro cards were “2 Fast, 2 Furious” • Both nVidia and ATI are pushing DirectX 9.0 (DX9) as a standard feature in their mid to high-end cards • Refer to the training course Premio Video Cards Roundup for Q1/2003 for more details regarding DirectX • nVidia is beginning to transition their GeForce4 series to the DX9 compliant GeForceFX series
ATI Product Lineup • All our ATI based video cards are DX8 or higher compliant • No major change for ATI this quarter, other than the 9800 replacing the 9700 as the high end card • The 9100 comes with a DVI connector for LCD panels, but it is NOT dual monitor capable using a DVI to VGA adapter • Note that the cards are manufactured by Sapphire, an ATI OEM partner, using ATI’s Radeon based GPUs (graphical processing unit)
nVidia Product Lineup • The GeForceFX 5900 Ultra is currently the fastest card available, but it does come with a high price tag • Note that all the GeForceFX cards are DX9 compliant by default • The GeForce4 MX are ideal mid-range cards that balance price and performance • The TNT2-M64 is an entry level card for users that aren’t concerned with performance • The Personal Cinema II is nVidia’s answer to ATI’s All in Wonder series of cards
ATI and nVidia Comparison (by Performance) • The chart on the right is a comparison between ATI and nVidia cards, sorted by performance • The GeForceFX 5900 Ultra is the fastest card available now, followed by the Radeon 9800 PRO • The Radeon 7000 is a good value card since it is DX8 compliant and comes with TV out • The TNT2-M64 cards are ideal if performance or DX feature set isn’t your primarily concern
A Balanced System • To maintain overall system performance, in addition to choosing the right video card, other components (motherboard, CPU, memory, etc.) should be chosen accordingly • The table above is meant as a guideline for configuring a balanced system; the recommendations above are flexible, but avoid deviating too far from the suggested components, or moving away from more than one performance level rating • For example, it doesn’t make sense if you have a system with the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra and a Celeron processor; likewise, if you have the P4/3.06GHz processor, selecting the TNT2-M64 may not be a wise choice