Video/Graphics Cards

[kosova]

My questions are...
The video cards that come like XT/PRO..and other ranks how do they go and what do they mean..better yet what's the difference...

2nd ?
What too look for in a card..i wanna be able to look at a V.Card and say yes this will give me that gaming experience i plan...

thanks
yours truely

**fyi***
i don't plan to buy the best video card out there i just meant on the second question is there a way you can tell which cards pack the bucks

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by true_ks My questions are... The video cards that come like XT/PRO..and other ranks how do they go and what do they mean..better yet what's the difference...

They are just purely variation in performance within a certain line of cards. For ATI, the order of increasing gaming realism is SE, no mark, Pro, XL (in select series), XT, XT PE (in select series, once again). So a Radeon X800 XL would generally be favored over the Radeon X800. For nVIDIA, it's XT/SE, no mark, GT, Ultra.

The general difference is performance. For the most part, it's just higher clockspeed, memory speed, in some cases more pixel pipelines utilized, etc.

Originally Posted by true_ks 2nd ? What too look for in a card..i wanna be able to look at a V.Card and say yes this will give me that gaming experience i plan...

The price is an honest voice. Outside of that, it's all just busy work to figure out.

kram

[fedz]

Nowadays there are 2 bang for buck cards in my opinion. The first, in the mid-range category is the 6600GT. It supports all the next-generation technologies and provides good performance at an old-gen price ($150+)
Second is the X800XL. This is a truly high end card, but is retailing at VERY good prices (around $280+)
All in all, it is up to you. Give us your budget and gaming preferences - do you play doom 3 or half life 2/counter strike?

By the way, Nvidia goes LE/XT/no mark/GT/Ultra. There is no SE series that I know of

fedz

[kosova]

i wasn't planning or didn't have a 3-d game in mind that im going to play...i use to play CS a lot..basically i just needed a lil of everything, but was worried that if once in a while i may download something like Age Of empires and want it to work pretty good...thanks for everything

[fedz]

For that a simple 9600pro will do, but if you want to be able to game decently long into the future I'd recommend the 6600GT.

fedz

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by fedz By the way, Nvidia goes LE/XT/no mark/GT/Ultra. There is no SE series that I know of fedz

Many weren't happy at nVIDIA who used the "XT" branding - ATI used that to denote extreme performance while nVIDIA's XTs were the crippled versions of the no mark versions. For that, several manufacturers changed the nomenclature to "SE" - so you will see nVIDIA GeForce FX5900 SE and FX5900XT - both meaning the same thing.

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/str8buy/pitmayad.html


kram

[fedz]

Funny I've never seen an SE, but I've seens loads of LE's

fedz