Video card - Nividia or Radeon?

[ndicki]

Still poking about trying to make my old system - which can still more-or-less handle most of what I throw at it - as good as possible. That means a new AGP card, but the Nvidia 7950GT effort has got very poor reliability reports...

An alternative that appears to be more reliable is the Radeon HD 4670 IceQ - does anybody use Radeon cards for CFS2 or 3? I've heard that there is trouble with specular textures, or is that a thing of the past?

Any opinions? And please don't tell me to junk the lot, because it's still pretty well able to do everything I ask of it!

[KellyB]

I did a bunch of digging about just recently, and ended up choosing Nvidia over ATI based on the majority of reports.
The particular card I selected, based as much on price as anything, is an EVGA GEForce GTX 650, which is a pci3 with 2gb of ddr5 ram.

I chose EVGA, again, because of the majority of opinions.

I cannot, unfortunately, tell you how it works, since I'm in the midst of building myself a brand new machine, and some of the pieces haven't arrived yet, so this falls directly into the "for what it's worth" category.

This card should be far above the requirements for CFS3, but I also fly FSX, and I'm hopeful this card will make that far better than my current rig.

Got at Tiger Direct for $149, with a $10 rebate.

[FireStorm II]

If you're running XP, get Nvidia for the specular shine!

[gecko]

As mentioned above, if you're using XP, nvidia will allow the specular textures to display without any trouble. Otherwise, check out this thread: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?73928-SOLVED%21-Specular-Textures-in-Windows-7

I have no idea if this fix will work with the Radeon card, though I think it might. In any case, if you're rebuilding a system I'd make sure it can display the specular effects one way or the other, IMHO. They just add so much life-likeness to a skin.

[ndicki]

Daniel - agreed, but... Currently, I've got a 7600GS and I've already tried an Nvidia 7950GT I got over the internet from Germany, but it's a rubbish Chinese copy, didn't work and is going back. Strangely, the company selling these has a good reputation... There is no real worthwhile improvement to be gained from other Nvidia AGP cards.

An alternative is the HIS HD4670, which is apparently a decent piece of kit, with performances at the very limit of what an AGP set-up can handle. If I get some more years out of my current system! The current bottleneck seems to be the card rather than the processor, and I do not need or want to use Windows 7 or anything else. It strikes me it's more trouble than it's worth, as everything I want to use already runs well enough on this rig, archaic or not! The only thing is to get those last few fps which will come in useful for the more recent scenery for CFS3.

[gecko]

Well sounds like the Radeon will do better than a fake nvidia in any case. I like XP better too, but I don't have a system that likes it anymore and dual boot attempts have caused me too much grief. The above tweak may work for you on XP, but it is a pain and NOT a fun work around as I am finding. Hope you find a solution that suits you.