nvidia 79xx or ati x1950 series

[de_yogurt]

which one would u go for? looking mainly at the 7900gs or 7900gt and the x1950pro or x1950xt. they both score pretty close in benchmarks. thanks for the help. have a good one!

Yogurt

[MadMan007]

x1900 series have better IQ than 7-series so I'd choose them first.

[White_Pawn]

x1950xt > x1950pro > 7900GT > 7900GS.

I'd get the x1950xt

[de_yogurt]

heres the thing with the x1950xt. its very expensive. i can get a 256mb version of the x1950pro for around 200 or under. the x1950xt is around 250-260. would the performance diff between the x1950xt and the x1950pro be worth the extra 90 or so bucks? this is basically going to be the best XP box that i can build/afford. windows vista will NEVER touch this box. i currently have 2 gigs of memory. u can check my system specs in my sig. i will also be getting a different power supply. have a good one!

Yogurt

[White_Pawn]

x1950pro would be a fine choice. The extra dollers you owuld be paying wouldn't be worth it at all imo. I'd rather get a 8800GTS for that price.

[de_yogurt]

i would like 8800gts too, but im on AGP. have a good one!

Yogurt

[White_Pawn]

i would like 8800gts too, but im on AGP. have a good one!

Yogurt

x1950pro would be a good choice if you are on AGP. You would also want to overclock your cpu.

[de_yogurt]

cant overclock my mobo. i cant even softclock it. its a BCM board. they make industrial motherboards. it has the 945 or one of the best 478 chipsets that were made. but to overclock i need an older version of the bios and cant find it on their site. i cant even use motherboard monitor. ohh, it has a lot of the same features as the max 3 board from abit. ic7 max 3 or something. not a big fan of overclocking anyway. what would u suggest for an aftermarket cooler? have a good one!

Yogurt

[White_Pawn]

i think you can get a ultra-120-x that will fit skt 478.

[de_yogurt]

lol, i was asking about a cooler for the video card. they seem to run kinda hot. but i am also looking at something copper for the cpu also. thanks. have a good one!

Yogurt

[MasterTelia]

im not a expert, but if youre not gonna OC it, why would you want a aftermarket cooling solution??

[de_yogurt]

because ati cards run hot, very hot. i dont want to risk killing a card cause of heat after ive had it for like a year. my x800gto gets very hot to the touch after ive been running games for a while. so i can only imagine how a x1950pro would run. have a good one!

Yogurt

[Hazaro]

Don't worry about the heat, it's made to handle the temps ;)

There's GPU monitor software to check just in case though. My 7900GS hits 81C.

All of those cards are good, I would go with the cheapest one you could get out of all of those to tide you over. If you don't plan on upgrading check out the 1950.

I need to get a 8800 soon, or even a 9800 if someone would release some info :/

[MasterTelia]

i have a 7300gs and i was a quick game of bf2 while monitoring temps jsut bofore, it got up on 98 then i got of the server, it starts downclocking itself at 130, and i know it musta been atleast 110 when ive gamed all night. so if this ****ty card can handle the heat i think a 1950pro would be able to handle it too

[de_yogurt]

im not just gonna not worry about the heat. that can kill cards. besides it will run and work better if its cooler or at least it should. and i might do some mild ocing but i dont know. even if the stock hsf are made to handle the heat, it still bothers me. i dont want to kill a card cause it gets too hot. i was just wondering what a good cooler would be. thanks. have a good one! 81c and you are not worried? what kinda crack are you on, thats hotter than my CPU. i hope your card fries if you are that relaxed about 81c.

Yogurt

[Neuromancer]

I have the x1950xt 256MB (which was alot less then 200 dolalrs) but if I was doing it again I would probably get the Pro.

Reason being... crossfire. The pros you just need a bridge the x1950xt you need the x1900/x1950CF which is kinda pointless, I would just upgrade to a 8800/2900 in that case.

[Hazaro]

GPU cores are made to handle much hotter temps than CPU. Like MasterTelia said, they can get hot. Laptop GPU's can hit 130C on occasion.

The stock HSF is fine for any current card overclocking.

If you want the extra boost grab a Zalman or something for it.

I hope your card fries if you are that relaxed about 81c.
eVGA will allow me to return the card if it dies overclocked or with an aftermarket cooler on it.

[de_yogurt]

well good for evga. i dont know sapphires or gecubes return policy. i just dont want to to ruin a good card. besides i cant live without a video card, if i had to send it in. im just saying, this is something that i want to do. im really picky about that kinda stuff. and in fact im looking at getting a new cpu cooler cause my 3.0 prescott runs at 125f. that seems way to hot for me. anyway, have a a good one!

Yogirt

[Hazaro]

The stock cooling made for the cards are fine. They are made to withstand the heat. So is your processor.

You shouldn't worry about any of it.

[de_yogurt]

i dont care what it was meant for. if im not happy with it, im gonna change it. jesus man, just let it go. ill do what i want with my hardware. its not gonna hurt anything to have things run a little cooler than what they are. its called being a geek and making sure things are running and performing the best they can, even if they arent overclocked. have a good one!

Yogurt

[Hazaro]

Ok I just wanted to make sure that you aren't running around thinking card die on their normal HS ;)

Zalman has a nice cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118001

For your Socket 478 you're on your own.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010110574+1371026032&name=Socket+478

[de_yogurt]

i think they make a thermaltake, cant remember the model. but its all copper and you can put like a 80 or 92mm fan on it. there are other nice ones out there, i just gotta look. thanks. ohh, i was never thinking it would die cause of the stock HS, BUT if the HSF on the fan has some kind of temperature sensing the fan could start to die or die completely, because of how hot the card would get, it would cause the fan to spin on high all the time. have a good one!

Yogurt

[Hazaro]

My fan and I'm sure many others have their GPU fan set to 100% all the time manually ;)

[bumsquad]

Are u guys sure the x1950pro is faster than a 7900gt? I checked on futuremark w/ a whole buncha different examples, and the 7900gt always won in FPS for all tests by 3-4 fps. both were overclocked too.

[de_yogurt]

i vent to tomshardware and looked and different benchmarks too. the 7900gs, 7950gt, and x1950pro's were very close. the ati had some higher benchmarks than the nvidia and vice versa. but it was so close. the only thing on toms was i didnt know if they were comparing the pci-e versions or the agp. its gonna be a tough call and im gonna do a lot more research and thinking about it. they say the x1950xt is the fastest card to ever grace the agp bus. most of the benchmarks i looked at, depending on what it was, they were within like 100-200 points of each other or like maybe at a tops of 15 fps. so they are all good cards and it really boils down to, for me, what other people say and off of that ill look at the benchmarks. but i also wasnt looking at the overclocked benchmarks, i was just looking at stock speeds. i might do so mild overclocking, so those benchmarks dont do a whole lot for me. my only other questions were, is more pixel pipelines better, higher core or memory clocks, and 256 or 512. have a good one! if someone could help me on the pixel pipeline, core or memory speeds (ex is 575 core with 1200 mem speed better than something with 500 core speed with 1450 mem sped). thanks in advance.

Yogurt

[Shell]

The stock cooling made for the cards are fine. They are made to withstand the heat. So is your processor.
You shouldn't worry about any of it. The fools that thought running 7900GS/GT's at 90+c 24/7 with a heatsink I'd have on my Pentium 1 would be just fine... which reminds me...
My P1 heatsink has been tied onto my NF4U northbridge ever since my P1 died from the power supply releasing magic blue smoke.
The max temp is a varied answer, it really depends on if the thing is ROHS complient, and the manufacturing tech, 130nm can withstand much more heat then a 65nm chip.

Why bother with another AGP videocard? Let the most awesome bus ever made die peacefully man.

[de_yogurt]

no im not gonna let it die peacefully. forget it. i have a good system, IMO. its the best machine ive ever had. i will never replace this machine. its gonna be the best system with agp that i can build/afford. im not gonna get a pci-e board until im ready for vista. that will be a while, as the build itself is prolly cost me between 2-3g's. and i wanna wait till they get vista working good. besides, for now, i can doing everything i wanna do on an AGP bus. i want this to be a kickass agp system and thats what its gonna be. so do u have any suggestions for a video card, with the ones that i mentioned? have a good one!

Yogurt