Which card???

alewisa · Feb 21, 2006, 06:46 AM

Been a couple (or more- sorry!) years since I been here.

K, finally made the leap and bought a couple Xeons (2.4/533) and a PCH-DL mobo. Have a choice of three cards to go in this box (just got to love ebay!)

Matrox Parhelia
Leadtek GeForce 4200
ATI FireGL X1

I *know* the picture quality of the P: beats the other two hands down. And the ATI has the edge over the 4200. The P: conversely is [probably] the slower of the three for games.

What will I be using the rig for? Email, word processing, and some gaming. Maybe video (dvd creation). Games limited to Rome Total War.

Thoughts? Oh, and if i plump for the FireGL, am I better off using the ATI GL drivers, or the Catalyst/Omega drivers?

Brgds
Al
(heck - sep 7th 2004! Crikey)

IvanV · Feb 21, 2006, 07:27 AM

That's a tough one.
Since FireGL X1 is based upon the R300 chip (the one from 9700Pro), it would give you by far the best performance in games, but only if you somehow mod it to 9700Pro (I think). Also, it's picture quality should not be noticably different from Parhelia's.
Parhelia is the only one that's capable of supporting 3 independent images at a time, so if that's important to you, then this is the card for you.
4200 has no distinctive features. It should be somewhat faster in games then Parhelia and doesn't require any modifications like ATi's card would if you wanted to play games with it, but that's all.

alewisa · Feb 21, 2006, 07:48 AM

Should have added - pretty much a die-hard Matrox user, at least for serious work. But as this is a temp rig until (if ever) I get the Opteron rig and LCD's back, it's irrelevant.

ATI picture quality is noticeable better than the 4200.

What is the difference between the 9700 and the 9700Pro? Just faster core/clock, or architecture/pipeline/etc differences? Doing some googling I found the card cost something like £600 in its day (!), but can't find much discussing the 9700 vs Pro. Or if there are/were differences between the 9700x VS Fire GL1. Anyone?

Unless there is a stunning reason to swap to the 4200, I'm going to stick with the ATI for now. Quality is easier on the eyes. Oh, and it frees up the PCI slot next to the AGP port.

Any comments, links, thoughts appreciated, especially concerning the drivers. GL vs Catalyst/Omega

IvanV · Feb 21, 2006, 02:59 PM

The only difference between 9700 and 9700Pro are the clocks, 9700Pro works at 325MHz GPU and 620MHz CPU, 9700 at 275/540.
I heared that FireGLs behave just fine in games, but I suggest finding a second opinion on that.

Necrosis · Feb 21, 2006, 07:02 PM

I'm gonna say FireGL.

alewisa · Feb 24, 2006, 04:56 AM

K, sticking with the FireGL. It doesn't like it if I overclock the PCH too much, but hey.

So... given it is essentially a 9700Pro, (what *are* the differences between a FireGL X1 and 9700 Pro?) what drivers should I use; FireGL (dated 09-09-2005), the latest ATI drivers, or the Omega drivers?

Currently running FireGL... advice welcomed!