Best Bang for your Buck Graphics Card ?

sphtman: why warn?

my xfx geforce 5600, 256 DDR, VIVO does @ highest settings about 60-70 fps in HALO
and the 5600 is fast, but for sure not the fastest of nvidia, the 5950 ultra is 5 times or even way more faster then the 5600. ATI is for fun and budget, nvidia is for the real gaming, quality and OC'ing.
i've had over 8 3D cards this year, 3 of them were ATI's - they were nice, but the nvidia's were a lot better.

*i'm going to buy the terratec mistyfy 5800 ultra, 128 DDRII

sorry, i don't want to start a nvidia/ati fight - this is MY opinion, some people don't share it, others do.

if i was a mod, i would close this topic.. this kind of things will never stop, i know from experience.

[EDITED]

I warn because right now the GeForce series is lacking. And stating that nVidia is for real gaming is humorous assumption to make based on its current standing. I'd be hard pressed to find any site or pc mag that would back that claim that it is the best card out there. But it is your opinion and I respect it. I just want them to be informed to wait a little longer for the next generation cards so he won't end up paying more for something he can get cheaper. Right now nVidia's NV30 Core set (all of nVidia's cards from the Ultra 5950 to the 5200) can't handle programmable pixel shaders above 1.4, which is a really really bad thing.

In the Half-Life 2's demo test using the new Pixel Shaders 2.0 it's performance was abysmal, the Radeon 9600 was almost two and a half times faster than the nVidia 5900. The GeForce 5950 is just an overclocked 5900. The chipset was slightly upgraded to the NV38 to handle the higher bandwidth usuage, but its only 25MHz faster in the gpu, and the ram clockspeed is up 100MHz. Its just like the difference between the P4 and the P4EE, they just beef up a little and put it out without any real noticable difference aside from performance. Gabe N, of Valve said it was pathetic how baddly it failed with the latest technologies. But its not all nVidia's fault part of it has to be put upon Microsoft for trying to force an inferior API on game developers.

So far all my experiences go against what you are saying, out of the last 6 PCs I've built for family and friends the ATI has almost always beat the GeForce in performance and quality. But again, to each his/her own.

[OT: oooohhh wooden shoe wearing dykes... mmmmmmm...]

heh, got totally side tracked.

Okay the best two budget cards out there are the Radeon 9600XT an the GeForce FX 5700 both are around $200. Both perform about the same so its up to you.