9800 pro or wait for next gen cards?

ARGINITE

should i buy a 9800pro now or should i wait and buy a next gen card when they come out?
by the way when is the next bunch of ati and nvidia cards on the market?

Caliden

well a 9800pro is basically just a super overclocked ati card and its seems like these cards are overclocked as far as they can go.
however i have no idea when the next-gen cards are coming out but buying any type of hardware is always a agmble and will always be outdated with something better in a couple of months

Big Chief

Originally posted by Caliden
well a 9800pro is basically just a super overclocked ati card and its seems like these cards are overclocked as far as they can go

eh? i know a good few folk who have oc'ed there 9800 pros without a bother..

as for getting the card, through all the games ive ran on it now ive never had 1 bother once with my radeon 9800 pro.

They say the PCI-Express is going to be released soon but well, i think it may be a while before it is mainstream.. Ill wait till they are until i upgrade again personally as im more than happy with the performance my card gives me

Drazhar

Well, what mother-board do you have? Im not sure, but i doubt the next gen cards (the truly next gen ones) will have backwards support (correct me if im wrong), how the hell will they sell those Next Gen MoBos???

try to take into consideration the future of your current system. If you have a new motherboard, and just have a crap AGP card, then go ahead, get the bells and whistles for it.

But if you have an older board, and are just a bit jealous of these apes swinging their 9800Pro around, then just let it go.

I have a GF4 TI4400, and i dont give a monkeys what anyone says, thats a feckin beast of a card. Its pretty much the limit of my board (KR7A-133R) and it does a damn good job for me.

BloodBath

Providing your system can make use of the agp8x the n go ahead and get it.

The new cards won't be out for a while and when they do they will be around 500-600 euro and your current system might not even support them. Waiting for new tech to come out is always a bad idea unless it's only a few weeks away.


BloodBath

El_MUERkO

The Radeon 9800 series and DirectX 9 work well together, all the soon to be released next generation of games are DX 9 based, you can get a 9800 pro for €220ish now and it'll run all these games well. I'd say get it.

Woden

most of the next generation ati cards will support both agp and pci express formats

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1966 check out this article form anandtech about the next generation ati cards

data

freekhead

Dataisgod leave it alone you have said enough jus stop. next you will be demanding ddr800 and the like...where does it end....tink of the children.....:)

anywho technology will expand 2 fold every 18 months fact if it doesnt then everyone is up s*it creek.....
...if u have 8x go fo it you will realy see the performance increase on doom 3 and the like but if you dont have 8x dont bother cause then you will decide to change mb then say god processor is a bit nackered and change that and so on and so on and so on

Ps: Dataisgod when you gona flash your pro????

Woden

flash it, hmm didn't plan on it tbh, it overclocks to it and is stable and gives nice increase in 3dmark03 and aquamark as a result, but i'm qutie happy with pro speeds i doubt i'd notice the difference

freekhead

you will actualy get the clock to increase a bit more. it increases the voltage to gpu and ram could never get the ram to what it is now without flashing it. try it out see what you think most ppl reporting 600 to 800 points more on 2001

Ronaldo7

Wheres the cheapest place to get one including shipping now? Komplett had one for 210 including shipping to ireland and now they dont...its 260 or thereabouts now...d'oh!!!!:(

L5

Well the 9800pro is dropping in price every week, its down to 212 on jes-computer now, it';; be below 200 by this time next month id say.

Ronaldo7

Did you get the one in the specials in the end L5?

mr_angry

The Ati R420 production silicon is apparently ready, meaning it should be on shop shelves by the first week of April. nVidia's NV40 is scheduled for the middle of May.

What kind of budget are you looking at? The 9800 Pro, as people have already stated, is available for €220, or thereabouts. A high-end R420 or NV40 card could cost you up to €750-€800 bucks. Having said that, if you wait and get them, they'll be significantly better, and more future-proof than existing cards.

Word has it that nVidia are implementing a chip on the NV40 that allows it to run on either AGP or PCI-express channels. ATI however have no such plans for the R420 - it is exclusively AGP. The next generation of ATI cards will then be exclusively PCI-express.

The Inquirer reported this morning that the NV40 would feature 16 pipelines, rather than the expected dual-pumped 8 pipelines. While the Inquirer is not a reliable source, this would give the NV40 a significant advantage in the market place, although it will be over a month later than the R420.

Its really a question of your budget, and how long you're prepared to wait.

L5

No, didnt get my order placed in time , ill wait till it drops to 200 on jes-computer, then ill get it!

BigEejit

I got one ....very happy with it (€199 ) ...I got the Sapphire one ... I was wondering which one to get (there was a Powercolor for €199 the same day), thought the Sapphire one may be a better overclocker ... when I ordered they were both showing 100+ in stock ... that had changed to "on backorder" within 2 hours ... :eek:

po0k

I've oly read the 1st 3-4 replies, so excuse me if it's been said already:

Next-gen ATI cards will come in native PCIe and native AGP models, they will be sperate actual chips, though the same technology core.
nVidia are going a different route, exact same GPUs, but with a AGP-PCIe bridge for the PCI-Express cards.

Also, when these cards come out the curent gen will drop in price.
So wait ~2 months and get yourself a 9800 Pro 256Meg for €200.
Don't bother looking at XTs at the moment, for the measily increase in clockspeeds (which are easily achievable with a Pro and also reduce the ceiling for overclocking the XT) you pay nearly 70% more on the price.

Sir Random

Next gen cards will blow away current cards and have VS3.0/PS3.0 support which makes them futureproof for another 18 months.

Why buy the last cards of the current gen, when next gen is so close? I'm definitely waiting for the NV40

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14373

---

Nvidia NV40 specifications confirmed

Too late for ATI to respond


By Paul Dutton: Thursday 26 February 2004, 14:52

NVIDIA REALLY needed to pull the cat out of the bag in the next round of its increasingly epic battle with ATI Technologies and from where we’re sitting we’d be more than surprised if the next round isn’t, now, a foregone conclusion.
US sources close to Nvidia have confirmed that their next generation GPU will feature a full sixteen pipelines – not as previously speculated an 8x2 arrangement - and this is reflected in the increased transistor count of circa 205-210 million, up from a previously speculated 175 million.

In very recent times ATI have been extremely confident in saying that their R420 - set to launch not long after, Nvidia show their hand – would, immaterial of architecture, thoroughly outgun the NV40.

Indeed today, Richard Huddy - ATI's European Developer Relations Manager maintained that their expectation was for ATi’s R420 to be, faster, on balance, across a suite of 10 common games than Nvidia NV40.

However we think that ATI's earlier confidence was based on internal intelligence that Nvidia’s NV40 feature set would be limited to an architecture built on 175 million transistors and that Nvidia would deliver, as anticipated, on the first day of CeBIT in March.

Nvidia's launch date for NV40 seems to have shifted backwards, but even a month or so is not going to give ATi enough time for a hardware response.

Knowing what we know now about NV40 having a full sixteen pipelines, we sensed that despite some fighting talk, and indeed some intelligent and rationalised arguments, ATi are now hoping, at best for a close fight…

NV40 0wnage of ATi R420 coming soon to a store near you?

We sure think so… µ

patch

Just to clear up something, is there much of an advantage to having an 8x slot over 4x?
My present boards are all 4x, but I'm planning on picking up a 9800pro once HL2 hits.
I was under the impression there's not a huge advantage to 8x.
Cheers guys.......

netman

Originally posted by patch
Just to clear up something, is there much of an advantage to having an 8x slot over 4x?
My present boards are all 4x, but I'm planning on picking up a 9800pro once HL2 hits.
I was under the impression there's not a huge advantage to 8x.
Cheers guys.......

I got an AGP 8x motherboard (i875P) and AGP 8x graphics card (Radeon 9700 Pro), and the difference between 4x and 8x is zero.. zilch.. nada.. It's just marketing.

By the way, I think the retail 9800 pro cards have Half-Life 2 vouchers, as in if you buy the card now, you get the game free when it comes out. Just in case you're dying for a new card and think you have to wait.

BigEejit

Originally posted by netman
By the way, I think the retail 9800 pro cards have Half-Life 2 vouchers, as in if you buy the card now, you get the game free when it comes out. Just in case you're dying for a new card and think you have to wait.

Nahhh ... just the XT boards ....:rolleyes:

1234 posts

patch

Originally posted by netman
I got an AGP 8x motherboard (i875P) and AGP 8x graphics card (Radeon 9700 Pro), and the difference between 4x and 8x is zero.. zilch.. nada.. It's just marketing.

Yeah netman, that's what I figured. Someone posting earlier seemed to think differently, happily he's wrong. Cheers.

netman

I think you might find results in synthetic benchmarks to be different, as in 3D Mark might award you another 1000 points simply because it detected you have AGP 8x instead of 4x. (I'm making this up, but it's probably true to an extent)

But when you look at real-life performance, there's absolutely no difference.

Ronaldo7

ye but there will be...

Woden

not necessarily as by the time agp 8x would be used, agp cards will no longer be in common place due to pci-e

Deadwing

Why bothere shelling out 700+ euro (as someone posted next gen cards would be around that price tag) when there arent even any games atm that will fully exploit that kind of card? For 200 or so you can get a 9800 pro that will run HL2, doom 3 etc fine. Wait until the truly next-next gen games are coming out, and the price of the next gen cards will be lower by then. Right now, as far as i can see, theres not much point in spending that much money on a card that will run games that a 200 euro card can run just as well.

BloodBath

Why bothere shelling out 700+ euro (as someone posted next gen cards would be around that price tag) when there arent even any games atm that will fully exploit that kind of card? For 200 or so you can get a 9800 pro that will run HL2, doom 3 etc fine. Wait until the truly next-next gen games are coming out, and the price of the next gen cards will be lower by then. Right now, as far as i can see, theres not much point in spending that much money on a card that will run games that a 200 euro card can run just as well.

Just about to post the same thing.

You are waiting for the 9800 pro to drop below 200 so I doubt your gonna shell out 600-700 for one of the next gen cards and it will be months before they drop to an affordable level. Get the 9800 pro now. It will last you at least a year running all the new games at top spec. By then the next gen cards will have dropped in price and there will be games actually taking advantage of what they can do.


BloodBath

Col_Loki

Yea id definetly agree there. If you have a big budget for a graphics card like a 9800XT then i would wait as it would be crazy to buy such an expensive card at this time (with doom3 and HL2 not even out yet and new tec on the way). The 9800pro on the other hand is good value €200 , and using that €200 on the new GFX card range aint gonna get you far at all , would be better to get a 9800pro and spend the extra on the rest of your system IMO.

Deadwing

Most people who are buying gfx cards now, are really only buying them for two things. Doom 3, and HL2. Thats pretty much it. My 9800 pro has killed pretty much any game i can throw at it, so if i were you, id definitely go for one. I havent looked back since i got mine