Which would be a better bet GEFORCE FX 5700 256 or Radeon 9800 256MB, i know the radeon is in another class but is it really worth whipping out another $50 for it?

The 9800 is just faster, nothing special. Better get a new generation card like ont of the GeForce 6xxx series.

Get a GeForce 6600 GT, it's the best value at the moment.

if i do go geforce 6 i will buy a 6800 no less and in that case its double the cost, is it double the speed or is the attractive feature dx9 hardware?

I'm not well aware of the speed differences between 9800 and FX5700 however, I would stick to the cheapest (which happens to be NV if I understood correctly). I must say FX is the only way to go for cross-development (we all now ATi on linux is a real pain) but for win32 only, this problem just doesn't exits.
Provided you can get a 6600 for a similar price I would reccomand it over the two. While I still have to convince myself about the availability and speed of the product, the improved vertex engine should be a nice feature to play with.

EDIT: did I wrote "improved vertex engine"? Forget it! I was really meant to write "floating point blending". I don't know how do I goofed up so much.

I have a 6600GT. It is faster then a 9800pro, has full DX9.0c support, and is quite cheap.

I would go with the fx card(or better if you got the money).
While the raedon might be faster, the fx5700 does have the two side stencil gl extention.
That means that the fx card may be faster in some of the newest(third gen) games like doom 3.
The FX cards allso has better shader engines, witch is good if you plan on doing shader stuff in the future.

The 6xxx series is definitly worth the money, i have had my 6800ultra for six months now and i havn't regretted it one microsecond, even though it was pretty darn expensive.

Quote: While the raedon might be faster, the fx5700 does have the two side stencil gl extention.

Radeons does have that too. The FX series is crap.

Quote: The FX cards allso has better shader engines, witch is good if you plan on doing shader stuff in the future.

They have more Features, but are more that 5 times slower than Radeons or the newer GeForce 6.

Get a GeForce 6 or stay with ATi.

Quote: Original post by noVum

Quote: While the raedon might be faster, the fx5700 does have the two side stencil gl extention.

Radeons does have that too. The FX series is crap.

Sort of, they do have that extention but it's really a hack(it renders two polygons for each you send to it), at least for the 9800(the x800 should have it though), while the fx 5700,5800,5900,5950 can do it the correct way.
This means they are over two times as fast during the stencil part.

Quote: Original post by noVum

Quote: The FX cards allso has better shader engines, witch is good if you plan on doing shader stuff in the future.

They have more Features, but are more that 5 times slower than Radeons or the newer GeForce 6.

True for the most part, it's not five times slower(the actual number depends on what you do with it), but most raedon cards have a severely limited amount of instructions for a single shader, this means that you can't use larger shaders on the 9800, so you have to fall back on slower multipass rendering.

As others have said, I'd go with a 6600GT or 9800, with preference for the 6600.

Theres really no reason to say if you get a 6x00 card it has to be the most expensive one... Just make sure to get a quality 6600GT from a reliable brand, and with GDDR3 memory. Then, if it comes down to 2 or more cards, look at price, core speed and memory speed to get the most value for you're money. A 6600GT will only be a little bit more expensive than a 9800pro 256mb, if any, and will be at least 2x faster in general, plus you'll get full Shader Model 3.0 support. I've seen good 256mb 6600GTs on pricewatch.com for ~270 US.


If you value the little bit of money you MIGHT save on the 9800pro more than future-proofing your card for an extra year or more, here's some relevant info:
Look for a 256bit memory bus, most 256MB cards and some 128s will have this. SEs and All-in-Wonder cards generally have 128bit (or even 64bit!) busses, so avoid them like the plague. Make sure you've got at least 8 pixel pipes, again avoid SEs and AiWs. All 9800s should have DDR memory, but its not as fast as the GDDR3 a good 6600GT will have. Also, take a look at the radeon x700 line - ATI's answer to the 6600s, although the 6600 is still a better card AND value, IMHO.


At the moment, I personally have a Saphire Radeon 9800pro 128MB with 256bit bus. It runs everything beautifully, UT2k4, HL2, Doom3, Farcry and Halo all run excelent. This same card can be had for less than $200 US through pricewatch.com, I've seen it as low as ~170.

[edit] - price corrections.