radeon 8000 vs nvdia fx5600ultra

[rathoriel]

a friend has a old radeon 8000 and i was wondering if my old nvidia fx5600ultra would be a good upgrade for him

not to familiar with the old radeon series

thanks

[Sosseres]

Nvidia FX5600 ultra compares to a Radeon 9600 pro. So I would say it is quite a step up.

[zherok]

The ATI card is probably old enough to make it an upgrade, but all I've experienced and read about the FX series is that nothing nVidia produced out of that line was really a solid equivalent to ATI's counterpart (so a 9600 is better than a 5600). A great deal of the line failed to perform better than the 4xxx series' equivalents even. In the end, it's probably the increased feature set that would make it even worth bothering opening the case. Pixel Shader 2.0 is required by a number of games, and I'm fairly sure the 8xxx/early 9xxx cards don't support it, while all of the FX line does.

[Lupin]

The ATI card is probably old enough to make it an upgrade, but all I've experienced and read about the FX series is that nothing nVidia produced out of that line was really a solid equivalent to ATI's counterpart (so a 9600 is better than a 5600). A great deal of the line failed to perform better than the 4xxx series' equivalents even. In the end, it's probably the increased feature set that would make it even worth bothering opening the case. Pixel Shader 2.0 is required by a number of games, and I'm fairly sure the 8xxx/early 9xxx cards don't support it, while all of the FX line does.

FX series from nvidia doesn't fully support Pixel Shader 2.0

[zherok]

FX series from nvidia doesn't fully support Pixel Shader 2.0

It's a non-issue for the most part. By the time you're looking into higher end games that don't work with the FX line, you're probably not able to run the game because the hardware isn't powerful enough in the first place.

The point is that you can't play any Pixel Shader 2.0 games on an 8xxx/low 9xxx card, and even a 5200 FX will get you past that hurdle (albeit, not very well.)