Im concidering upgrading my computer slightly, buying a SSD system disk and a new graphics card. Im currently using ATI Radeon HD 3850, and would certainly like a card with better opengl support. Any recommendations of what cards I should buy, and which I definately should stay away from?

don't buy ati. every nvidia-chip has the same amount of 'open-gl' support

Any nvidia should be fine. A 8800 should be cheap and still damn fast. I'll probably get one some day.

Rule no.1: Never buy ATI graphics card if you're planning to play Quake!

(This can't be stressed much enough)

Nvidia GTX260 896MB !

ATI Radeon HD5770. So fast anyway(but still not expensive) that it wouldn't matter if opengl would be a little less optimzed. I'm using HD4850 myself and zero problems with ezquake and very high fps. Actually, ATI OpenGL seems pretty good these days. Buying old tech sucks, that's why HD5x.

Don't buy ATI - a lot bugs in qw and many other games (had 4870).
I had 8800 gtx (burned) that gaved me 1078 fps stable in any resolution in QW.
Now i have GTX 260 Lightning 2Gb and that card cant handle even 500 fps in QW (300 on 4870)- shitting new GPU's.

If you want really fastest card for old and new games - get 9800GX2, that imho fastest card for now.

I recommend getting dual 295s

x2 cards are total crap, since they require SLI profile for each game you want to have SLI enabled. Even if all that was ok it might not work properly. They also require a lot from your PSU, generate a lot of heat, have micro-stuttering and they also require pci-e slots that can run at least x8/x8 in SLI-mode.



Check your drivers, anything above 182.50 is crap (never tried the very latest driver though, 195.63 or so). My GTX285 runs 1900-3000fps on DM3 when I'm running/rocket jumping around the map at 1680*1050 resolution. And this is not the limit what my card can do, but rather a limit my i7 860 sets when running at 3466MHz.

The 9800 GX2 card seems interesting. Problem I have is finding it at any norwegian retailers. 2x295 is perhaps abit out of the price range I imagined. And is it really so, that older nvida cards perform better in QW than newer ones? If so, Id probably prefer an older card since QW is my main game and the only game were I really care about good performance.

My main problem with the current card I'm using (ATI 3850 HD) in QW, is that performance seems abit random. Sometimes QW seems smooth and cool, other times it just feels like the game is sluggish and less responsive to my actions (both movement and aim). Also I currently have to turn all GL rendering features off to even keep a stable fps, even though i concider it an advantage to have rocket light and certain powerup glows enabled which is slightly annoying to be forced to disable.

I do however need a card new enough to support dual-DVI due to my screen (2233rz). Is it so, that a 8800 gtx / 9800 gx2 card would perform better than the newer 260 / 280 / 295 series? If so, my choice of card is clear as those cards should also handle newer games pretty well.

8800gtx = 128 SP
GTX260 = 192/216 SP
GTX275/280/285 = 240 SP
GTX295 = 2x240(2x192 ?) SP

so.....GTX295 > GTX285 > GTX280/GTX275 > GTX260 > 8800gtx

I would go for GTX260 in Your case....or even something cheaper like GTX250 (former 9800gt/gtx ?) with 128 SP I believe....

with my 9600GT (64 SP) and E8200 @ 3.2GHz I get stable 462 fps. I can imagine that with GTX250/GTX260+ You can get easily above 600fps stable...

sorry, I did edit but somehow added a 2nd post...

Man these all look too expensive for anyone who wants a video card basically just for playing QW without any hitches & with relatively low power consumption... so what's the best cheapest card that can hold 600fps?

My old HD2600XT kept fps always over 600(@ 1024x) so probably even laptops can do this if you configure them properly. So if you are in it for the cheap, try GTS 250.

they might be more expensive but he's also looking for a card with dual DVI output, which the cheap cards do not offer.

600+fps ? just read my 2nd post :E GTS250 is for ~80-110E....

2x gtx295? Do you have a motherboard that has four pci-e x16 slots and that is SLI-certified? Something like x58, they cost like 300 euros. Obviously you didn't read my previous post, but I would stay away from x2 cards (9800gx2) due to their problems.

No, older cards do not perform better in QW than more current ones, unless their specs are worse.



Might work with cards that are reference design. However it is never this simple. You didn't take clock speeds or installed memory into account, or the memory bus width. Besides, QW being from 1997 when there were no programmable shaders around, the amount of SPs means absolutely nothing to it, unless ezQuake team has added features from GLSL to the ezQuake. So, fillrate + memory bandwidth are the ones affecting ezQuake in this case.


Incorrect. NVIDIA cards have had dual-dvi ports ever since 6800ultra, so it's safe to say that if you have geforce7 (7x00-series) or newer it will have at least one dual-dvi port. That might exclude some OEM-cards that are shitty anyway and you can't find them from any store, since they come with pre-built computers.

Renzo, check my link, you don't need 4 slots. Gtx295 is two cards in SLI internally, needing one slot, but the space of two cards (and a mobo designed with space for that) (That mobo I have actually supports 3xSLI for the non-SLI Gtx2xx (Gtx290? I forgot...) but does not support 3xSLI for Gtx295 which would really be 6xSLI =8-[===] either physically it is not specced out for that or the drivers aren't there for that yet)

The main problems with 2xGtx295 is the price range. There really is no other problem, unless you count super fast performance in all games as a problem ;p

Note: an 8800 level card is probably all you need to get maximum performance in QW if that is all you are aiming for, last I checked 8800 were at $50 price point?

Another note: SLI Profiles? I just enable SLI for everything in the nvidia app, its a one-time setting, and you are done.

Ignore all these SLI-fools. Also ignore all the fools who recommend outdated products (8800GT/GTX). Ignore all the fools that offer the 600euro cards. You can get a decent card for 150-250euros (HD5750, HD4890, GTX 275). All above 600 fps in qw should be fine. Those cards alo run very smoothly with newer games.

These SLI-600euro-super-gpu-fools are just wasting their money to get 10fps more.

ps. Most of all, ignore phil! and all those Nvidia-fanboys.

So you're saying he should ignore the fact that ATI has bad OpenGL support?

It's not that bad anymore.. Actually I like their opengl support these days. But if you want high qw performance with a cheap price, it's nvidia..

Yeah, I wanted to say two x16 slots + SLI certification but for some reason I messed up the count.


Yeah, you really need SLI profiles for each and every game you want to play with SLI enabled. NVIDIA adds more profiles on every driver release, and you can even make your own too. However if your profile works or not depends on the driver itself, which is pathetic.

SLI should be totally transparent for it to be done "properly" like 3dfx did it 10 years ago.

Well, I have a HD4870 and it works just fine. I'm getting stable 770fps @ 1440 x 900 resolution. I don't consider that as bad.

talk to murdoc. he has HD4890 and i7 and prolly millions of FPS. talk to him about aTI_BAD_FOR_QW....

Quake4(opengl) tests of new cards including GTS250 and some HD5x, http://www.geeks3d.com/20091119/ati-radeon-hd-5970-hemlock-is-the-king/.

nothing like 2x 3dfx Voodoo2

even better, 2x 3dfx Voodoo3!

I still have the SLI cable and the cards. any1 interested? i sell for the right price!

And this proves what? In one OpenGL game ATI cards are actually faster? Not like OpenGL games will be released in the future anymore, but the problem is still there with the older games, and not a single result on some benchmark is going to change that.

Hah, you took me wrong. I wasn't trying prove anything(not even about ati being faster). As I said, it's a quake4 benchmark with some late 3d cards. I myself believe more in benchmarks than some random words at forum.

I did yesterday, and his config worked much better for me than my previous one. At least so far. Only problem is that all my teamsays were different from what I was used to when we (fusion) played vs f0m, which didn't help much to an already pretty confused gang .

Other than that, after one day of testing murdocs cfg, it looks really smooth and I might not bother buying a new gfx card after all.