PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

15.7 Our Picks

State
of the art for 3D video adapters changes more quickly than for any
other PC technology. If you buy a $300 bleeding-edge 3D adapter
that's the fastest on the market today, that adapter
will have only midrange performance in six months, and entry-level
performance within a year.

ATI and

n VIDIA vie constantly for the title of
world's fastest 3D adapter, one-upping each other
frequently. In general, except when one or the other introduces an
entirely new chipset, the fastest current ATI and

n VIDIA 3D video adapters have performance within
a few percent age points of each other. Which one is fastest depends
on which benchmark you believe, which 3D applications and games you
run, and what resolution you run them at. And the truth is that any
reasonably recent ATI or

n VIDIA 3D accelerator
is more than fast enough for any but the most intense 3D games.

Of the two, we used to prefer

n VIDIA because ATI
drivers were often quite poor. In the last few years,
we've come to prefer ATI overall. ATI has greatly
improved its drivers, including its Linux drivers, its 3D performance
matches or beats comparable

n VIDIA cards, ATI 2D
graphics and text are of noticeably better quality than that of

n VIDIA, and ATI video capture functions are far
superior to those of

n VIDIA. In short, if all
you want to do with a video adapter is play 3D games,
it's probably a tossup between the fastest models
from ATI and

n VIDIA. But if you also want to use
the video adapter for web browsing, email, and other typical
productivity applications, we give ATI the nod for its superior
display quality.

If you're building or upgrading a general-purpose
systemone that will not be used for 3D games or professional
graphicswe suggest you not worry much about which video
adapter to choose. For undemanding 2D applications such as word
processors and web browsers running at moderate resolutionin
fact, for anything other than 3D graphics or other special
requirementsnearly any reasonably recent embedded or
standalone video adapter is sufficient. If you're
buying a motherboard, buy one with embedded video if that is an
option. Make sure the motherboard has an AGP slot and allows the
embedded video to be disabled. That way, if your needs change later,
you can install whatever video card seems best. If
you're upgrading a system with an existing
AGP-capable motherboard, buy an inexpensive AGP video adapter. If the
existing motherboard is an older model without an AGP slot, that
itself is good reason to install a motherboard that has an AGP slot
and embedded video.

We have recently come to prefer ATI RADEON video adapters made by Crucial Technology (the memory folks). Although Crucial manufactures a limited range of RADEON video adapters, one of them will probably be appropriate for your needs. For example, in July 2003, Crucial sold a $50 DX-7 RADEON 7500 to fill the need for an inexpensive adapter with excellent 2D image quality and reasonable 3D performance for casual gaming. For the midrange, Crucial sold the $83 DX-8.1 RADEON 9100, an excellent card for 3D gamers on a budget. For avid gamers who could afford a $400 video adapter, Crucial offered the DX-9 RADEON 9800 Pro. We trust Crucial's build quality, and Crucial offers the additional inducement of a lifetime warranty on their RADEON adapters.

For our most recent detailed
recommendations by brand and model, visit: http://www.hardwareguys.com/picks/videol.