I've been asking around, doing some homework.  I couldn't come up with an Nvidia card to get, because the ForceWare drivers suck so much for certain games, but I want a good DX9 card as well.  Not the best of the best (not too expensive), but powerful.  I think I want a ATI 128MB Radeon 9600 XT.  I'm not sure the price - someone told me $200, but he might have been from the states.  So probably $300 for me.  I hate that price, but if I pay any less, I'll probably get another GeForce 4 MX-ish mess.  I have never before bought a GOOD card as soon as it comes out, so I hope if I make this decision, it will last me a good long time.

You know, providing dx 10 isn't just around the corner  

I'm so sick and tired of PC gaming being so expensive, but its how it is... The problem is I don't really know what I can afford right now, cause I need a new monitor as well.  I sure hope those have come down in price...

What do you think - is that a great card?  What do you guys have thats easy to recommend?  (I know we have alot of these topics, but ####, each time we do, new cards probably just came out - lol)

What?, you think ATI drivers are any better, I don't think so, they have improved, but not enough to make me switch.

BTW, I run 44.03 and it works great. ForceWare is only for those people who can't stand to have a lower PCMark score(Like that actually shows the performance of the card in real world use.).

Well improving is better than getting worse, which is what it seems ForceWare is getting.  I mean, for certain games they want you to have the newest drivers, but for others 45.23 work better.  What the #### - so you have to choose between certain games or others?  It's BS.

I guess its BS for both companies.  

But if I learn more about ATI (I still am learning) if it turns out these cards have a better price/performance ratio than Nvidia, I probably rather have that.

I have an MX440, but I also don't have any games that don't run on it (I don't see any new releases worth buying) so I'm gonna live with it. I'd rather put money into a new camera then a video card, I'd get more use out of it.

I have never had a game not work for driver related issiues (sp?) that didn't have a workaround (and that was only for 1-2 games)

And im running a Radeon 9700 Pro and a 7200 in my mom's comp...i've run games as old as King's Quest VI...

ATi's drivers have never posed a problem for me, other than the somewhat clunky multi-monitor stuff, but i'd think that'd be just as clunky on Nvidia drivers...

not that I have anything agianst Nvidia, my mobo runs Nforce2 and it works great, and the integrated sound is great, I just think that ATi is a much better choice for vid cards at present...

A 9600 XT should do you fine (very similiar in performance to my 9700 Pro, which runs the Far Cry demo on pretty much all high settings without a stutter) for the foreseeable future (atleast until after DIII) running games at high settings...though it depends on your other specs (ram, cpu etc.)

Plus, can't go wrong with that Half-Life 2 voucher can ya?
(is that voucher for the sp only game? or the sp & mp pack?)

BTW IMO ATi has much better price/performance ratio right now, 9600 Pro = really good bang for ya buck...

I found my 9800pro to be very buggy in my system.  it caused all kinds of problems. the most annoying of which was an intermittant 2-second 'stop-start' freezing-mouse-cursor issue. I'm still not quite sure what caused it. in the end, I think the problem was, the ATI catalyst driver contains a 'GART' driver (which tries to replace your motherboard's AGP miniport drivers), and apparantly, I shouldn't have installed that part of the catalyst driver, (because) I have an nForce motherboard (?)

and even after I physically removed the card a(nd returned it to best buy)(hehe), I still had all the same systmem-instability problems that I had been blaming on the card itself. it completely blorked my system. I thought I was going to have to reinstall windows just to make my system stable again after the 'ATi-driver-experience'. in the end I just had to reinstall the nForce motherboard drivers.

anyways I'm not saying you will have a problem with ATi; maybe you will be one of the (majority of) ATi users who have no issues. but I was so annoyed with mine after 2 weeks that I returned it, and got rid of it within the 14day return period, and got another GF-FX instead.

I run 44.03 drivers and I don't have any problems with any games..  I do notice 10fps less in HALO, compared to forceware drivers.. but its not a big deal for me.    

my experience with forceware is , it uses a hybrid DX8/DX9 codepath: DX8 to render architecture ; DX9 to render eye candy. this speeds up performance in DX9 games like HALO. its not intended to slow down DX8 games .. but some older DX8 games still don't like it.
so in general, the 4x.xx drivers are more stable and faster, for all games but DX9 games..
..meanwhile the forceware are faster for DX9 titles.

but really, in my experience, this whole issue has been completely blown out of proportion.  it shouldn't stop you from buying a nVidia card.  I'm happy with both of my GF-FX's



p.s:   if you still think the driver issue is important , then its really not that hard to set up a dual-boot system
you could have all your old games installed with the 44.03 drivers on one installation of windows;
and also keep a seperate installation of windows, with forceware drivers, where you would install your DX9 games.

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, and this thing is swe-eeeeeeeet.

No problems w/ my 9600Pro.
And since I got my rebate on my HD, I can finally get some more RAM.  Even w/ the 9600, 256megs of RAM doesn't cut it.  Sure I can run a BF1942 map at a decent FPS, but it takes 5mins to load the stupid thing.

So get the ram already

Have to  cash the check and then make my way to Microcenter.