Help me decide between 9700Pro and Ti4600

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by Bigus Dickus
Hmm... oh well. I didn't perceive that tone at all, but different people see the same thing different ways I guess. Wouldn't be the first time. ;)

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we could communicate in text things like body language and tone of voice? Not possible with English, unfortunately (Other languages may be more specific, though I'm not certain...).

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we could communicate in text things like body language and tone of voice? Not possible with English, unfortunately (Other languages may be more specific, though I'm not certain...).

even so, people don't write the way they speak, so you lose a lot. you don't really convey nervousness in writing; no one continually types out "um" or other such indicators.

[SnakeEyes]

Originally posted by Megatron
If the extra money is a concern, then definitely go with a Ti4600. Its still a hell of a good fast card.
:eek:

If I ever argued with you and said you were totally biased, I take it back Megatron. Seeing you admit that the 4600 is still a good fast card while also making sense about what to buy right now just about made my jaw drop to the floor. :D

I'd probably get a 9700Pro right now if I was upgrading any time in the next 30 days, and if I didn't already have the Ti4600 in my system, allowing me to hold off until I can compare the spring offerings from both of the major high-end gaming chipmakers. Even with the hassles others are reporting. But then again, I don't mind a challenge, assuming I DO get it working right, instead of running into a problem that can't be fixed on my end.

But if you can afford to spend $200 or less right now, as well as maybe an addition $300-$400 next spring, it might be just as well to go for a Ti4200 128MB card now, and then watch the comparisons that will surely be all over the place between the nv30 and the r300 later, and pick whichever seems to be proving itself the best (or best overall value, as some can't afford to get the absolute best at any cost, but want mainly bang-for-the-buck..) BTW, the 9700 non-Pro very well might be the best all-around buy if it's out in the next few weeks, with very good performance, nice future-proof feature set, and a decent price. ;)

[Megatron]

Originally posted by SnakeEyes
:eek:

If I ever argued with you and said you were totally biased..


Hehe,
I dont hide my preferences thats for sure heh. But Ill never say Nvidia doesnt make great stuff, because they sure do. I just have my preferences like we all do..sometimes I may shake the pom poms too loudly admittedly. :D :D

[MuFu]

I would get the 9700 Pro (or wait for the 9700). It's better value for money, even at $xxx's more.

MuFu.

[PreservedSwine]

How about a complete AMDXP2200(512MBDDR) R9700 system for less than $1000?

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Feed=BW&Date=20021015&ID=1999866&Symbol=US:ATYT

[Chalnoth]

I just have to say: How much low-quality crap do you think they put in that computer to keep it under $1000? It is an e-machines, after all...

Quite plainly, I'd feel sorry for anybody buying that PC. It's certain to have lots of issues...

[The Baron]

Let's see... uses SDRAM, 2 gig drive, no OS, no sound card except onboard sound, onboard NIC if you're lucky, keyboard and mouse ports are an add-in card that costs $300.

Anything I miss? :p

[borntosoul]

the smart thing to do right now is get a cheaper card (gf4 4200) just to keep going for a month or two and see how it runs on the games you wonna play ,you might be happy with the performance of it since its still a fast card :)then you could make an informed decision on how much more performance you need ,in the meantime the price of the 9700 would have droped and you could see the performance of the nv30 ,and the driver issues would be much better too so just something to think about

[Bigus Dickus]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we could communicate in text things like body language and tone of voice? Not possible with English, unfortunately (Other languages may be more specific, though I'm not certain...).

Man, can you imagine trying to have a written discussion on the net using a base language like some of the oriental languages in which inflection or tone of voice isn't just an implicit part of language that affects the intended connotation, but rather an implicit part of the language that determines which of several entirely unrelated definitions of a word are used?

Which gets my wheels spinning thinking about it... in such a language, where inflection determines a certain spoken word's meaning (and there could be several for one pronounciation, is there a way in writing to convey which definition was desired? Or is it left to context, like it is for the few homonyms (is that the right term? hmm... sounds alike, but not necessarily spelled alike I guess...) in English?

[Chalnoth]

Well, I do know that for Japanese and Chinese (which use many of the same characters), the writing system is separate from speech. That is, all of Chinese writing and most of Japanese is based on meaning, not sound. This can make it very challenging for reading, however, as the same character can have vastly different sounds depending upon how it is used.

From the little that I've learned of Japanese, it seems to me that that language may actually be capable of explicitly defining more in terms of emotions and such than English, in writing.

Disclaimer: I really don't know much about Japanese...though it is amazing how different from English it is. Still, I do know enough that I can tell how utterly useless Babelfish is at translating from Japanese to English (and vice versa). Japanese is an extremely subtle language, and the massive differences between it and English make translation very challenging.

[SurfMonkey]

Well that could be a challenge for someone to come up with a pictographic meta-language that would convey the subtle nuances of body language as well as be syntactically and grammatically correct. Either that or wait for the web to become fast enough for webcam forums to arrive.

[Mono]

Honestly I think the ti4600 is a waste at the moment. If you want high end go 9700. If you wana save some money get a Ti4200 or something else. Price diffrence between 9700/4600 dosn't justify the 4600 imo. Your mileage may vary.

[Bigus Dickus]

I remember reading about an ancient written (and presumably spoken) language that used a very unique alphabet. The characters for vowels and consonants were shaped as a pictorial of the way the mouth is formed when speaking that character. Gives a new meaning to "sounding out the word." :)

I can't imagine trying to learn Chinese or Japanese at this point. Languages with alphabets were difficult enough. Which raises another question I've always wondered about... have they always had a sort of alphabet, or is that fairly new to try and conform with the need to input written text using a keyboard?

[SurfMonkey]

I think the chinese had a pictographic language when we were still sniffing each others arses and running away from the big yellow hot thing in the sky.

I would presume that the written symbols have been greatly simplified for computing purposes, neither ASCII nor EBDIC could cope with the number of chars required.

Besides the non-romance languages are pretty hard to pick up, our centre of speech isn't built for the challenge, if you're interested look up Broccas and Wernicks areas in a psychology\medical book. You'll find lots of stuff and some pretty wierd errors that occur, like smelling sounds and tasting colours.

[The Baron]

Wow, this is off-topic.

--damnit, I hate it when I misspell topic--

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Bigus Dickus
I can't imagine trying to learn Chinese or Japanese at this point. Languages with alphabets were difficult enough. Which raises another question I've always wondered about... have they always had a sort of alphabet, or is that fairly new to try and conform with the need to input written text using a keyboard?

been like that for a very long time. Chinese and Japanese for instance have thousands upon thousands of characters...not very suitable to represent on keyboards ;)

[Mono]

Here's that emachine minus the 9700
http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_T2200

Not to bad for the price I suppose.. i've always liked top tier components though, see sig ;)

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
been like that for a very long time. Chinese and Japanese for instance have thousands upon thousands of characters...not very suitable to represent on keyboards ;)

First of all, changing a written language to conform to modern standards is a near-impossibility. I really don't think it's going to be done to any wide extent.

The closest to that that's happening right now is that slightly simplified versions of some characters (in Japanese, at least) are used for typing.

Anyway, in case you'd like to know how you type in Japanese (Btw, Chinese is probably very similar, but I have no experience with that language), it's not that hard. There are essentially two different ways. One is to use the roman characters on a normal keyboard to sound out the words. Japanese actually has very few distinct sounds, so this is relatively easy. Then the computer will attempt to guess which Kanji (the meaning-based characters...of which somewhere in the range of 3000-5000 are used commonly...far less than in Chinese), and you can modify the computer's choice fairly quickly with the arrow keys.

The other way that input can be done is with a keyboard layout that is made for typing in Japanese. This keyboard layout basically uses one key for each syllable, of which there are, if I remember correctly, about 46. Since there is generally less punctuation in Japanese than in English, this isn't hard to do on a standard keyboard. In the same way, the phoenetic characters are then combined into the meaning-based characters.

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
been like that for a very long time. Chinese and Japanese for instance have thousands upon thousands of characters...not very suitable to represent on keyboards

In order to read a Japanese newspaper, one needs to be familiar with about 2000 (no that's not a misprint) different Kanji characters. Compound that with the fact that the same Kanji can have a Japanese and Chinese pronounciation and meaning and you have yourself a formula that even a lot of Japanese have a hard time understanding.

You know your language is difficult when your own people can have a hard time learning it.

[ReDeeMeR]

I'd hate to upgrade a vid card while already knowing it's gonna be outdated :p so stfu on the money and get the best damn part possible, less hassle ;)

[Chalnoth]

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Every video card you're going to buy is going to be outdated soon, anyway.

My main reason for saying that a Ti 4200 is a better choice over the Ti 4600 was simply that both will become just as outdated at the same time (though one will always have to run at a lower resolution, obviously).

The most expensive is not always the longest-lasting.

[ReDeeMeR]

lol now that makes no sense

example: Geforce 3 Ti500 is still better then Ti200 and always will be and Ti500 is still useable while Ti200 isnt, in a 3 years it'll ofcourse be same like gf:2mx is now

Ya cant compare Ti4600 with Ti4200 whatsoever... Ti4600 will hold till DoomIII times no doubt, but Ti4200, who knows?
(It's UT2k3 engine's time now till Id's masterpiece walks in)

So in the end its: the more money you will invest the longer it'll hold ;)

[thcdru2k]

unless you overclock that ti200 :)

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by ReDeeMeR
lol now that makes no sense

example: Geforce 3 Ti500 is still better then Ti200 and always will be and Ti500 is still useable while Ti200 isnt, in a 3 years it'll ofcourse be same like gf:2mx is now

Ya cant compare Ti4600 with Ti4200 whatsoever... Ti4600 will hold till DoomIII times no doubt, but Ti4200, who knows?
(It's UT2k3 engine's time now till Id's masterpiece walks in)

So in the end its: the more money you will invest the longer it'll hold ;)

that depends on your definition of usable. Chalnoth is referring more to the feature set of the cards, and in that sense he is correct. the GF4s will both become outdated once DX9 titles start showing up. sure, the 4600 could be "usable" speedwise by the time the 4200 no longer gives acceptable framerates, but you won't have any features of DX9 gen cards. no fast high res AA, etc.

it's the same argument that has been made over gf4mx. yes, it's a lot faster than a gf2mx, but it has the same featureset. meaning, even if if it's twice as fast as a gf2mx, it still doesn't handle AF or FSAA well, and it still can't do DX8 stuff.