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Radeon 9600 Vs. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra

M

Macmadant

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2005
851
0
just wandered as im stuck between them on a refurbished imac

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics processor with AGP 8X support:
64MB of dedicated Double Data Rate (DDR) video memory

ATI Radeon 9600 graphics processor with AGP 8X support
128MB of dedicated Double Data Rate (DDR) video memory

I pressume from looking that the radeon is better but someone enlighten me;)

i always thought that Nvidia was better but i don't know
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
These two cards are almost equal but the 9600 has a slight edge, very slight. Some gaming programs will do better with one some the other.
Click to expand...


BS, the 9600 is usually about 30% faster, the 5200 does not do proper pixel shaders, it's a quasi DX 9 card.

the 9600 based imac is allot better, in almost every area, mostly in noise.
 
ATi

Get the Radeon - there are on-the-fly programs that allow you clock up the GPU for ATi - I haven't seen the NVidia version.

The ATi was a step up - go for that in my opinion.

F
 
Macmadant said:
i always thought that Nvidia was better but i don't know
Click to expand...

Definitely not...a somewhat outdated article here, but basically the 9600 is better. Not by a vast margin, but enough.

--Eric
 
allot of pc gamers tend to prefer nvidia, but i suspect it's because they are american compared to ATI a canadian company.

i'm in camp red.
 
You'll find that, pre-6800, any nVidia card is inferior to an equivalent-generation ATI Card, 9600/5200 included.
 
FireArse said:
Get the Radeon - there are on-the-fly programs that allow you clock up the GPU for ATi - I haven't seen the NVidia version.

The ATi was a step up - go for that in my opinion.

F
Click to expand...


This is true, though you can flash nVidia cards pretty easily (still not as easy as clicking an arrow).

The 5200 is outdated technology. Go with the 9600.

As for why ATI is better for macs, there is debate about that, but since Macs (at least up to the G5, I don't know much about current gen) carry ATI cards stock, the software is likely coded with ATI architectures in mind.

But yeah, ultimately the 9600 is just a better card.
 
both of these cards are low end but if i had to pick the lesser of two evils then def go with the 9600 b/c the fx series sucks
 
jamesi said:
both of these cards are low end but if i had to pick the lesser of two evils then def go with the 9600 b/c the fx series sucks
Click to expand...

That is a rather broad statement there jamesi- not all of the FX series sucked.
 
they pretty much do all suck.

the high end cards were "dustbusters" and were continiously beaten by the 9700/800 series, and the low end were slow and mediocre and got beaten by the 9600.
 
Hector said:
they pretty much do all suck.

the high end cards were "dustbusters" and were continiously beaten by the 9700/800 series, and the low end were slow and mediocre and got beaten by the 9600.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction Hector- I was not aware of this. I thought that the high end cards in the FX series were very good cards (at the time)- not "dustbusters".

Oh well, I have always preferred ATI cards anyway.... :D
 
jamesi said:
both of these cards are low end but if i had to pick the lesser of two evils then def go with the 9600 b/c the fx series sucks
Click to expand...

Actually, I have a flashed fx5200 in my Sawtooth and it is pretty smooth. Of course, it's a G4, and I'm not playhing Doom 3, so really anything with 156 megs of Vram is going to work for me...
 
I'm not sure this matters to you but you cant rotate your desktop with the nvidia but can with the ati.:mad:
Also the ati is more of a gaming card ( for our tons of games...) producing more FPS, while nvidia is more of slow brute (can produce more particles in motion for ex.) While both do each other's lobs good thats just their high lights.
 
say you turned your monitor 90 degrees clockwise, you'd have to do the same to the actual desktop to have everything the right way up, it basically allows portrait mode which some illustrators/artists prefer.
 
Ah, gotcha. I can't imagine wanting/needing to do that, but it's interesting to note that it can be done. Or can't on my G4. ;)

PS--I meant 256 vram, I was drunk last night.
 
Hector said:
say you turned your monitor 90 degrees clockwise, you'd have to do the same to the actual desktop to have everything the right way up, it basically allows portrait mode which some illustrators/artists prefer.
Click to expand...

I could do that with the ATi Drivers for my iBook (9200) but it wasn't terribly useful =P
 
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