radeon 9600 xt or FXC 5900 xt ?

russellcsf

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Sep 14, 2004
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Hey folks,

Im about to purchase a mid-range card. Which one you would suggest? geForce FX 5900 XT or Radeon 9600 XT ?

Not taking the price difference into account, which one is the best overall?

I read the post regarding recommended cards and they say here that the 9600 xt is best buy, but i dont know if that article is old or not.

thanks in advance,
Russell
 

cleeve

Illustrious
Tough call, that. The 5900 has much better memory bandwidth due to the 256bit memory bus; but the 9600XT has more powerful shaders.

Basically, the 5900 is the better choice if you like to use Antialiassing;

If AA isn't a concern, then the 9600XT is probably slightly better because of the 5900's not-as-good shaders, but it depends on the app. In general, the 9600 will be better in DX9 titles (Half life 2, etc), although the 5900 will probably be better in OpenGL titles (i.e. Doom3 and Quake engine-based stuff).

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russellcsf

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Thanks for the reply,

Well about the anti alias stuff... as far as i know the 5900 XT leaves the edges a bit too rough... and the 9600 xt is a bit more smooth without AA...

do you think that the image quality of the 5900 with 4x aa would be better and with better performance overall than the radeon 9600 xt with low or no aa?

Not to mention that ive heard that the 5900 renders one thing or two incorrectly. No doubt that it will be a tough choice but i think i am going for the radeon and place my bet that HL2 will be way better than doom3.
 
This is getting a little old as examples, but it should illustrate what Cleeve was talking about.

[H] has two good comparisons between the two (along with the obviously lacking FX5700U), this should help if you know what you like.

<A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTk5" target="_new">Review 1</A>

<A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjA0" target="_new">Review 2</A>


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GeneticWeapon

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Get the 5900XT

....and some robster craw's.

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<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2216718" target="_new"><b>3DMark03</b></A>
 

BirdRobin

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5900XT

AMD A64 3200+ (2.2GHz Newcastle @ 2.4GHZ)
ThermalTake Polo735 HSF
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
1GB Corsair DDR400 ValueSelect (CL2.5)
R9600Pro @ 500mhz Core, 340mhz Memory