9/14    What's the best graphics card in terms of bang/buck?
        \_ Currently, anything ATI.
        \_ Given the latest Half-Life 2 benchmarks, the Radeon 9600 Pro
           \_ Yes, but would you want to play HL2 on it?  And is HL2 the
              only game you'll be playing?  And, oh yeah, HL2 isn't out now
              anyway, so today's bang/buck is meaningless in terms of vapor
              product.  And oh yeah, the HL2 benchmarks were preliminary, not
              run multiple times, and in a very Valve controlled setting. I'm
              not an Nvidia or ATI fanboy.  I'm actually hoping a third
              company develops a great new chip so there'll be even more
              competition.
              \_ yes. no. uh huh.
              \_ Competition? As in Bitboys? *snigger*
                 \_ No.  They're out years ago.  There are others out there
                    trying their hand at enthusiast graphics cards.  Remember
                    it wasn't that long ago 3dfx ruled this niche and Nvidia
                    didn't even exist while ATI was making clunkers for Dell.
              \_ I have a 9800 on my desk at work.  If the 9600 Pro is even
                 close for $100 it is absolutely amazing. --emarkp
        \_ It really depends on what you want. If you want to be able to
           run next-generation games (Half Life 2 or the upcoming id title)
           then you need to get a DX9 optimized
           card, which is pretty much the high-end NVIDIA (5900) or ATI (9800)
           cards. It doesn't make a great deal of difference between the two,
           honestly, despite much publicity (both ways) to the contrary.
           But you can buy a lot cheaper card (say, the low-end
           GeForce FX 5200) and get some pretty good performance for under
           $100.
           \_ 1) There is a difference in DX9. Trust me, in every new game
              benchmark the 9800 beats the 5900. Nvidia typically releases new
              drivers to help, but it's proven that this involves degrading
              image quality.
              \_ ATI and NVIDIA took very different tacks toward building
                 their internals. ATI built an architecture that's a lot
                 easier to compile to, and hence their "initial" performance
                 numbers turned out to be pretty good. NVIDIA is still
                 learning how to compile to their architecture. It's definitely
                 a tough one to compile to (example: performance, to first
                 order, is directly proportional to the number of registers
                 you use). So, though they have had some problems getting
                 good results and some of their optimizations have reduced
                 performance, I think it's unfair to say it's "proven"; I
                 think the next generation of drivers (v50) have a better
                 back-end compiler that will be a better match for the
                 hardware without sacrificing quality.
                 \_ I don't have time to go into all the issues here but it's
                    known that Nvidia use app-detection optimizations that
                    alter image quality, for example UT2K3 turning off aniso
                    filtering. As for shaders, it's more than having too few
                    registers, it's processing power too. Here is a recent
                    article demonstrating image quality differences with the
                    det50 driver:
                    http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/aquamark3/index3.htm
                    Note also that aquamark3 is only about 30% DX9. Ok, is
                    this all terribly important? No, but the end situation is
                    that the ATI cards are the better value, and don't have
                    questionable app-specific "optimizations" like disabling
                    features behind your back.
              2) The FX 5200 is not "pretty good performance".
              image quality. 2) The FX 5200 is not "pretty good performance".
              It is dog slow by today's standards, i.e. if you actually care
              about 3D performance at all you need 9600/5600 level minimum.
        \_ I haven't really been following the news, but my impression is that:
           .  ATI has a demonstrable lead in fast anti-aliasing
           .  Nvidia got lazy, they focused on pushing frame rate
           .  Nvidia's recent cards have a huge noisy fan
              \_ understatement here. more like vacuum cleaner.
              \_ Inaccurate generalization.  There are a few models that are
                 quiet.  I have a Microstar 5600 card that is VERY quiet.
                 \_ So if I go out and buy a GeForce FX, do I have to worry
                    about how loud the fan / how big the heat sink is?
                    \_ This was mainly a 5800 Ultra issue.
           .  Nvidia can be faster in non-anti-aliased modes by relying on
              about 3D performance at all you need 9600/5600 level minimum.
              pushing clock frequency and using bigger fan