New GF card - ATI or Nvidia?

[rpstewart]

OK, I'm officially confuzzled....

I'm trying to investigate potential upgrade paths for the PC and the GPU choice is proving a bt tricky. At the moment I'm running a pair of cards, a 9800Pro running one Dell 2405W and the TV Out plus a cheapy PCI Radeon card driving the other 2405W.

I'm looking to upgrade the PC from a 3.06GHz P4 to a 4400+ X2 or the like so we're off to PCI-e and the 9800Pro has to go.

I'm mainly looking for good 2D (lots of photoshop etc) & TV out performance with a bit of gaming thrown in (UT2K4 runs fine at the moment but 2K7 is coming...). The big requirement is to run both TFTs and the TV out simultaneously.

I'm tempted with another ATI card simply because I know that a new card will co-exist with the PCI one and give me 3 outputs no bother. Is this still going to be the case with NVidia?

Looking at other posts on here I'm coming to the conclusion that the X1600 is a waste of time so the ATI idea is heading towards an x1800, possibly the GTO one. As for NVidia I just don't have a clue.

The final thoughts are around heat and noise, the upgrade may well lead to a PC with 8 HDDs so I'd like to avoid putting a 3 bar electric fire in the case.

Budget is ok, say up to £250 but in true Scotsman style if I can do what I want for less then I will

So suggest away please.

 

[iGiDK]

can't really give you much advice re performance between the GTO and similar cards within your budget, however I'd be inclined to believe that a similarly-priced nvidia card would run cooler & quieter than the x1800

(may be wrong though, what do you guys think?)

 

[vanandjuanunited]

My x1800 sounds like a jet plane at boot but then quietens down to a low hummm. Once gaming I dont notice it.

 

[oweneades]

If running 2 cards to drive 3 displays wouldn't it require cards of the same type to avoid driver conflict?

If so then the X1600XT would probably suffice. Although bashed for its initial performance problems the latest drivers seem to have brought it back up to par.

However if the driver conflict is not an issue then the 7600gt is the best bang for buck at the moment.

 

[Messiah Khan]

I'd be inclined to get a SLI setup. at the moment I have 2x6600gt's in SLI, which allows a decent performace in games, but I can also easily turn the SLI off, to give me support for my 2405, XA-7 192i, and a TV out. It might be worth looking at something like 2x6800gt's.