Help me decide between 9700Pro and Ti4600

[Chalnoth]

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)

Utterly incorrect. The only difference between the Ti 4200 and Ti 4600, as they relate to games, will always be the resolution at which you play (and perhaps some of the detail settings, like texture detail and whatnot).

Unless you define "usable" as "I have to have every option turned up to the max all the time, and will not turn down the resolution for new games," then a Ti 4200 will last just as long as a Ti 4600.

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
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.

Actually, I was under the impression that that was one thing they did update for the GeForce4 MX, that it does have support for the same anisotropic/FSAA modes as the GeForce4 TI cards. Haven't seen anything in-depth on that, though.

[Mono]

Yea, I think GF4MX did pick up at least some of the Titaniums antialiasing method. It seems to do alot better then GF2 cards in that area at least though it's still to high of a performance hit imo to really matter :eek:

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
Actually, I was under the impression that that was one thing they did update for the GeForce4 MX, that it does have support for the same anisotropic/FSAA modes as the GeForce4 TI cards. Haven't seen anything in-depth on that, though.

by well, i meant with good performance. although you're right, it has the same MSAA modes that GF4Ti has, and probably the same AF options, although i don't recall ever hearing about those in any review. my point is that the gf4mx would have lackluster FSAA/AF performance anyway.

[borntosoul]

remember that the difference in playable frame rates to upleasant frame rates is not that great ,its not a percentage ,so sometimes a small increase in frames comes in very handy indeed :)

[Onde Pik]

If you a buying a rig that fast, a Ti4600 would be nonsense. Either wait for the 9700 or just buy the R9700PRO. The TI will be a bottleneck on that CPU.

[Onde Pik]

Originally posted by SurfMonkey
How about getting a cheap gfx card for now, save some more money and wait for the NV30. I had four machines running R9700s at work. Three cards were busted and had to go back. Not what I'd call confidence inspiring. Next monday all four cards are going back and we are switching back to Ti4600s, this time we'll wait for the NV30 before we upgrade. And prod ATi materials with a long stick prior to use.

This simply makes no sense, the NV30 is most likely still a few months away, and that CPU will be wasted on anything less than a TI4600. So if he wants to wait for the NV30, it would make 100 times more sense not to buy the new system now atall, because he would be able to get it alot cheaper once the NV30 arrives, and with a cheap GFX card the system wont make much diffrence anywyas.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Onde Pik
This simply makes no sense, the NV30 is most likely still a few months away, and that CPU will be wasted on anything less than a TI4600. So if he wants to wait for the NV30, it would make 100 times more sense not to buy the new system now atall, because he would be able to get it alot cheaper once the NV30 arrives, and with a cheap GFX card the system wont make much diffrence anywyas.

it depends on what resolution you play at. there are games where the CPU ceases to become the limiting factor at high resolutions, especially with FSAA and AF.

[Falkentyne]

Here's the plain skinny...

If you want to run the latest and greatest games at the absolute fastest framerates and the highest details (ok, maybe not UT2003 at 1600x1200x32 6x FSAA , 32x aniso... @_@), get the 9700. If you want to run the latest games, AND have good (although maybe not perfect) compatibility with your OLDER software titles too, get the Ti4600, especially with a driver set (you'll have to experiment to find the best one), that runs all your games.

Now, with NV30 behind the corner, the recommended course of action is to wait and see how NV30 pans out, and then decide between them, but if your existing video hardware is just too old, then it's not worth waiting.

As you know, ATI drivers have usually had problems, and they got a deserved bad rap because of it. Anything from some newer games not working, to many older games not working (although thank god, there was no DDHELP exiting+crash error)
Thankfully, ATI's drivers are getting much better, but there are still people who are afraid to get an ATI card, because of past problems. But to each his own, right?


Another thing of note:
With a good driver set, the TI 4600 can run virtually all older games (although it never hurts to have a PCI Voodoo2 in there for good measure), however the Win9x Nvidia drivers have had the "DDHELP" crash for ages now, ever since or BEFORE driver 6.xx.....while ATI cards have not had this problem.

This crash occurs when a program or game causes DDHELP to be removed from memory, when the game is closed (this isn't supposed to happen, but it shouldn't crash the acceleration!)

No new games will cause DDHELP to close on exit, but some older games might, and this _WILL_ crash the Nvidia display driver for directdraw and direct3D (directdraw will stilli work if you turn off hardware acceleration).

ATI cards have never had this problem, AFAIK.
Note that Fraps seems to cause this to happen now, too, when run with another game.

There is a work around for this though... just keep something that hooks into DDHELP, but doesn't use any system resources constantly running (like DXDIAG; although Nview.dll might also work). The catch is, any tweaker program changes won't take effect until that program is closed ,and the only way to close the "safety" program is to use KILLHELP.EXE to end task manually on ddhelp and reinitilize it afterward with the control panel directX icon and click "directdraw" tab.