question on raedon cards.

[yohann koldheart]

<p>ive been a long time nvidia card user, but my gforce 6800 is dying .</p><p>ive been pricing new cards,and it seems the raedon cards are cheaper then gforce.</p><p>ive been lookin at the hd 2900 pro 512 mb,or the x1950 pro 512 mb and was going use 2 of them.</p><p>my question is  how is their driver and customer support and reliability?</p><p>ive never had any issues with any gforce cards,just cant see justify spending over 140 more dollars for the nvidia equal of the raedon2900 pro .</p>

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>Adriana@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>ive been a long time nvidia card user, but my gforce 6800 is dying .</p><p>ive been pricing new cards,and it seems the raedon cards are cheaper then gforce.</p><p>ive been lookin at the hd 2900 pro 512 mb,or the x1950 pro 512 mb and was going use 2 of them.</p></blockquote><p>Using a SLI configuration with EQ2 is asking for <b>BIG</b> problems. Using SLI in gaming in general is just asking for problems.</p><p>Two cheap cards in SLI won't equal one good card. In theory, sure it could. In practice, often times two awesome SLI cards don't equal one good card (because some quirky software or hardware won't work with them!). Hardware, OS, Driver, and game stability issues will make troubleshooting any problems you have very difficult. It's not just a plug-and-play sort of issue. EQ2 isn't designed to take advantage of SLI, and will benefit only minimally from it.</p><p>You'll probably be much happier and saner with a single-card solution. Although there are arguably some quibbles over rank-order, a list <a href="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t247448.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">like this one</a> might be a good idea to consult. Generally-speaking, there are no "bargains" in video cards, the prices are linked to performance (with the top end of price giving a pretty poor price/performance ratio).</p><p>It turns out that for a lot of reason, throwing a lot of money at your video card for EQ2 doesn't necessarily pay in the end, because a lot of the graphics are actually being run on the CPU and not your card. A good upper-mid-range card will do the trick, as well as leave you with plenty of oomph for other games.</p><p>For example, if you don't need DirectX 10 features, a good deal on a 7900GTX would net you a much better deal (and a LOT of graphics performance) than spending more $$$ on a slower-performing (but newer) 8000-series card.</p>

[kjfett4]

I use an x1950GT w/512MB RAM and have been very pleased. I can't imagine you needing 2 cards though. I play with all settings on max except for self shading (I hate the way it shadows player faces) and have no graphics problems at all. If you have a recent FPS that benefits from it, then go for it, but if EQ2 is all you play....I would recommend saving the cash and trying one and see if it isn't enough first.