9700Pro is the fastest card on the market but for how long is a big question with the GeForceFX coming out next month.

If you wait for GeForce FX, the price of current products will drop. So you may wanna wait until GeForce FX comes out if you are interested in either the 9700 Pro or Ti4600. There will always be something new coming out, but your Athlon XP 1600+ is still a decent processor. I think either the Ti4600/9700 Pro would be a good choice.

Perhaps even consider the 9500 Pro cards. They are quite a bit cheaper than the 9700 cards and should still be faster than the Ti4600.
 
Regards
 
Andrew

The 9700 Pro is the only DirectX 9 card available. ATI has had many problems with their drivers. Nvidia is always on top of their drivers releasing on average of 3 to 4 updates for every 1 release of ATI's. MAXIMUM PC has a good article on the new Geforce FX. They don't think it will match the 9700 Pro's speed and they said ATI is finally on top of their drivers. It's a hard decision. ATI has always blown away the competition with regards to overall image quality(ATI DVD playback is unmatched even Matrox who was once the 2D visual king can't come close). The ATI card has alot of new and cool things that Nvidia does not have. It seem Nvidia is concentrating on the 3D aspect of their cards and no focusing on the whole picture. ATI is paying attention to the entire video card (DVD performance, 2D and 3D quality). I have used ATI, Nvidia and Matrox cards and in my humble opinion the ATI cards always had more to offer. If they are indeed on top of their drivers then the ATI is probably the way to go. If you are on a budget, then look at the 9500Pro also. This is new and isn't as powerful as the 9700 but is the same chipset just clocked down.

Quote:I want to upgrade my old Geforce2 GTS, but not sure if I should get a Geforce 4ti 4600 or a Radeon 9700 Pro. Any ideas?

Also, I only have a Athlon XP 1600+, should I upgrade the processor instead?

What do you all think?

Upgrade your processor!

You don't need to upgrade your processor. Don't listen to these fools. There isn't a game on the market yet, that can fully use the capabilties of even a 1.2 gig processor. All that seems to matter anymore is the speed of your ram and your video card. Which I would suggest the Ati.

Quote:You don't need to upgrade your processor. Don't listen to these fools. There isn't a game on the market yet, that can fully use the capabilties of even a 1.2 gig processor. All that seems to matter anymore is the speed of your ram and your video card. Which I would suggest the Ati.

If 'all' you do with your life is play games then by all means spend all your $ on a high end video card. Then we'll see who's the fool ;(

jimf43 & ptba42 freakin chill OK?
 
 
An Athlon 1600 is still a pretty capable chip, but saying that there isnt a game on the market that doesnt utilize a 1.2 gig is just plain wrong, try battlefield 1942 on a server with 64 players (or 64 bots if you wanna make it really crawl!), even with the radeon 9700 pro it will not play well. There are many games out right now that benefit from a 2.0ghz+ cpu.
 
About video cards: I am a former "nvidiot" who bought an ATI 9700 pro. Is it fast? YES!. are the drivers up to Nvidia standards? NO! getting better... but not there. anybody that surfs the rage3d forums will tell you of the MANY complaints radeon users have...
 
if you want your card to "just work" with damn near any and every program you throw at it, get nvidia.
 
If you want the fastest card available TODAY with better 2d and good dvd and don't mind having to troubleshoot drivers and figuring out wierd software incompatibilites, get ATI.
 
 
this is NOT flambait, just my opinion being a nvidia AND ati user who commonly reads (and try's to help people on) nvnews and rage3d forums.
 
 
in my opinion, if you go ATI you might as well get the 9700, if your gonna fight with ATI drivers you might as well have the top performer, otherwise it is barely worth it.
 
 
 
(And for those that want to argue that nvida drivers are sucky too... I refer you to John Carmacks opinion... When using a nvidia card and he has a problem in opengl, it is ALWAYS his code that is wrong... NOT the drivers for the card he is using... He considers Nvidia drivers to be the GOLD STANDARD for drivers. I can't speak for everyone, but that say's ALOT to me)

Tweaked, I agree completely with you... I've thought for quite some time that ATI may have better hardware than Nvidia, but without the drivers to back up the hardware, it's debatable who's ahead. I personally, am a nvidia fan, for what it's worth. I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to CPU usage... Depending on the level of detail in the game, screen resolution, system RAM, system RAM speed, video card, etc... So many variables, there's always going to be a bottleneck somewhere, most likely in the storage system.

Just a note, today's new Programable Graphic Processing Units like the Geforce 3 and 4 and the ATI 8500 and 9000 series were designed to offload much much more processing from the main CPU (Athlon, P4, whathaveyou) to the GPU. A game that required a 1ghz processor before, might only need a 700mhz processor if optimized for the new graphics cards. The CPU is then freed up to crunch on other things, like network gameplay for the game, some sound issues and I/O and AI for the game. So I think the CPU issue is moot for now. A 1.6ghz Athlon XP and an ATI 9700 Pro should run the new DOOM 2 without a hitch. DOOM 2 will rely heavily on the GPU first then the system CPU second.
 
I await the flamage.

Quote:A 1.6ghz Athlon XP and an ATI 9700 Pro should run the new DOOM 2 without a hitch. DOOM 2 will rely heavily on the GPU first then the system CPU second.

Sorry to say this, but I'd bloody hope an XP 1600+ and Radeon 9700 Pro can run Doom2. It was designed for a 486 SX/25 and a VLB graphics card.

P.S. I know that you meant Doom 3 but I just couldn't resist.

hhehehe..
 
Dunno where he came to those conclusions about Doom 3 Every test I ran showed that it was HEAVILY processor depedant. Oh well what do I know I just ran the game.... ;(

Nobody has ripped ATI for its crappy drivers more than I ever did. If you go prowling through the Rageunderground and Rage3D forums, I had a bunch of flames, rants, arguements about the crappy drivers for my old Rage Pro and Rage 128 boards. The drivers sucked, they performed bad, unstable, and the various "performance" enhancements were non-existent.
 
So I switched to the Geforce line of cards, I was happy, these "Detonator" things were quite good, solid, fast, and delivered on some performance promises, though not all of them. I do question back in the day on some unofficial "Detonator" releases like the 8.xx series. Seems like people can modify INFS easily. But yes Nvidia drivers are solid and produced well, and this what ATI is doing now with these "Catalyst" thingies.
 
I have a Radeon 8500LE now, and the Catalyst drivers are really good, they are stable for the most part. A few of them have given me some issues still as it seems like ATI is rushing them out sometimes for sake of having a new driver release. Even on their drivers page it states, "ATI recommends against uneccessary driver updates." The Catalyst 2.4 and 3.0 so far have sucked for me, 2.4 was really bad, it couldn't even run old OpenGL games. It was fixed in 2.5 about 2 weeks later, which makes me wonder if 2.5 is the REAL 2.4 and the real follow up to 2.3 which had no problems either.

Should be only another month and the GeForce FX will drive graphics prices down. I'm waiting for the prices to fall to pick up something to replace my crappy MX200.

Well...after all was said and done I went and ordered a Radeon 9700 (not the pro). I will let you know how it turns out... :x

Quote:The 9700 Pro is the only DirectX 9 card available. ATI has had many problems with their drivers. Nvidia is always on top of their drivers releasing on average of 3 to 4 updates for every 1 release of ATI's. .



ATI does not have dirvers issues any more, that is an old excuse! - and not even one for me as i have NEVER had an issue with ATI drivers and have had far more with NIVIDIA drivers.


i have both cards myself - of course the 9700 pro rules over the ti 4600 i got.


as said above, wait a few months till the new FX comes out then all card prices will drop and grab a 9700 - it is far better then the 4600 - not to mention it has about 19g of memory bandwidth where as the ti4600 has 10g of memory bandiwdth per second.

the 9500 just has slower clock speeds.


What will be the main use of your system? if it is strictly gaming, then nvidia - if it is dvd / multimedia / gfx and game - go ATI all the way - ati is a FAR better all around card.

Quote:Just a note, today's new Programable Graphic Processing Units like the Geforce 3 and 4 and the ATI 8500 and 9000 series were designed to offload much much more processing from the main CPU (Athlon, P4, whathaveyou) to the GPU. A game that required a 1ghz processor before, might only need a 700mhz processor if optimized for the new graphics cards. The CPU is then freed up to crunch on other things, like network gameplay for the game, some sound issues and I/O and AI for the game. So I think the CPU issue is moot for now. A 1.6ghz Athlon XP and an ATI 9700 Pro should run the new DOOM 2 without a hitch. DOOM 2 will rely heavily on the GPU first then the system CPU second.

I await the flamage.

Actually, what u have said i have seen around alot more, more and more games are becoming GPU dependent and not as much cpu depend as in previous years, that is why they are getting so fast and much more memory, i mean my video cards have more memory they likely a LARGE majority of people who own computers in this world...lol

But, at the same time, with this increase in GPU power, developers are then include more things which are cpu depended since a large load has been taken off the cpu - so developers are using the newly free resrouce to make things better.