Thinking about upgrading my video card...

[[AK]The Beast]

...but I don't want to do it if the "next big thing" is coming around the corner. I'm eyeing the GF4 Ti series, but will wait if the GF5 is nearing its release date. Should I buy now or wait till later? Also, what's the difference between the different Ti series? A Ti4200 with 128 MB of RAM is going for $115 on Pricewatch right now, while a similarly equipped Ti4600 is going for $100 more. Why?

[[AK]Bribo]

One is clocked higher than the other, hence better performing. BUT, there are utilities out there that let you overclock the 4200 to nearly match 4600 speeds. The 4400 can be overclocked to beat the 4600 out of the box.

[[AK]Hylander]

If you really want the best out there, you have to go with the new ATI. I'm not an ATI fan.. but their new card ROCKS. As does its price!

I just recently bought an MSI TI4600 128mb VIVO card and love it. I haven't attempted to OC yet, but a friend who bought the same card (actually on the same day too) had it running at over 700 with no artifacts.

If you want to save some cash.. get the TI4400 and do a little overclocking if you have a case with good cooling.

[[AK]Bribo]

Except you'll have problems with BF1942 is you buy the new ATI 9700 card. There have been numerous posts on this. AND, you'll probably end up with the age old problem of ATI cards - driver support sucks.

[Slaughter]

could you guys put up some links for some 3dcard tweaking software?.. I know Z has a few

[[AK]The Beast]

Yeah, I've heard good things about the ATIs. I won't be messing with any overclocking out of the box--my case's cooling sucks. I've got a front intake fan, an Antec JetCool CPU fan, a Cyclone blower slot exhaust fan, a rear-mounted exhaust fan, and of course the power supply's exhaust fan--and my CPU idles at around 170 F. BF42 takes it up into the 180s, and other games have taken it as high as the 190s.

[Slaughter]

OMG Beast, are you running an Intel?!? I stay steady in the 120's. That Tornado 1200 case is a cooling god.

[[AK]Hylander]

I have a Tornado 1000 case and love it. =)

[Zorro]

Originally posted by [AK]Slaughter
could you guys put up some links for some 3dcard tweaking software?.. I know Z has a few

RivaTuner is da bomb...

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

I use this tool exclusively for all my tweaking needs... Currently, my Ti4600 is running at 319.5/729. I have had the core running as high as 328.5 but I got momentary freezes in the urban maps pretty frequently... Backing off to 319.5 seems to have fixed that particular issue. If you need any tips on using RivaTuner, lemme know... Besides the OC features, my favorite feature is the ability to tweak anisotropic filtering (which I value much more than FSAA) on a texture level by texture level basis... It makes things simply lovely...

[Zorro]

Originally posted by [AK]The Beast
Yeah, I've heard good things about the ATIs. I won't be messing with any overclocking out of the box--my case's cooling sucks. I've got a front intake fan, an Antec JetCool CPU fan, a Cyclone blower slot exhaust fan, a rear-mounted exhaust fan, and of course the power supply's exhaust fan--and my CPU idles at around 170 F. BF42 takes it up into the 180s, and other games have taken it as high as the 190s.

I'm currently engineering a dryer ducting solution that will allow me to get outside air through a nearby window ducted straight into my computer's intake fans... As is, my CPU idles at 70F with that window cracked, but I'm thinking with direct ducting, I should be able to pop that puppy down into the 50-60F range... Especially when it starts really getting cold here...

My Leadtek Ti4600 has a really assinine cooling solution out of the box. I can't recommend Leadtek enough. I've had their cards since I bought my first GF2, and I've never had any problems... The overclock well, the perform well, and they're very stable with nice features. They're usually pretty light on software packages, but, hey, who wants to play games that have been outdated for a year anyway? I really want to do is set up a water cooling solution for my GF4 like this, but it's probably a ways off still...

[[AK]Faxman]

A ducting system using outside air? You've piqued my interest!

[[AK]Goob]

Well I love my AtI 9700 Pro. Playing UT2003 at 1600x1200 with 4x AA and it is liquid smooth So far so good. I have had no problems to date. I am hoping that with ATI getting lots of love from ID they will not have that pesky driver issue they had in the past. It would make em look pretty bad.

-Goob