ATI Radeon 9700 Pro vs. ASUS GeForce4 TI4600

[AcidJazz]

Which onw would suit video gaming better(FPS in particular)..?
I know that ATI is supposed to be more powerfull(and it is), but there's also a difference of about $100 CAN between two cards(ATI is more expensive). I have 9700 myself and extremely happy with it, but a friend of mine is upgrading his PC as well. His way of looking at it is: "Why would I spend an extra $100 if I won't even notice any difference while playing my games..?". I honestly don't know what to recommend him(never saw any of GF4 in action), so I'm asking for your help.
Thank you.

[catch23]

The Radeon 9700 Pro is about 8 months newer...of course it will be better.

I would recommend it over a GF4 Ti 4600 if money doesn't matter...but I am personally going to wait on nVidia's NV30.

[AcidJazz]

Originally posted by catch23
The Radeon 9700 Pro is about 8 months newer...of course it will be better.

I would recommend it over a GF4 Ti 4600 if money doesn't matter...but I am personally going to wait on nVidia's NV30.

Of course I can't say that money isn't an issue here...it as always is...:)
It's just that he wants to be albe to play all of the coming up games(UT2003, Unreal2, Duality and Doom 3 of course) on "max settings" without experiencing any performance hit.

[catch23]

they should all play fine with max quality at 1600x1200 with a GF4 ti 4600...in my opinion.

[DilLy]

Not necessarily. He better have a very high end CPu as well. A game like UT2003 is also dependant on your cpu as well as the graphics card. Cranking the details and resolution all the way up to the max in 32 bit color will give you a performance hit even on a 9700pro.

I have a 1.8 P4, with 512 PC800 RDRAM, and a MSI Geforce4 ti4600. I play UT2003 with all details cranked to the top and in 1024x768x32 with 4x AA turned on, and I never go below 40 fps even in crazy firefights. The 9700pro should give considerably better performance, as long as the system is running optimally. You need the rest of the system to compliment the graphics card, or it will not make much difference.

this is just to give you an example of what can be expected. I do not overclock either, FYI. When the final UT2003 is released later this week, and the high res. textures are included, my performance may vary. But boy will it look good :D

I am -really- looking forward to the new Nvidia chip, too.

[catch23]

....I play UT2003 at 1280x1024 with a GF3 Ti 200...plays just fine when it's overclocked a little.

[Lord Prism]

The Read Me file that came with UT2003 Demo states that it really uses a lot of RAM as well!

[DilLy]

...but not as much as GPU and CPU, at least after the 512 mb point.