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[Terbs]

Hi fellas....
I have the two graphics cards below.....could someone tell me in plain english (not Desperate Den talk no offence, mate) which is the best. I appreciate that they are both old, and probably crap to todays offerings, but thats all that is in the cupboard, as swmbo has banned any expenditure for the near future. 
 We are on a limited income, so until she wants more books for her Kindle, I am buggered.
I want to put the best one in a computer I have just knocked up out of spare bits to run FSX (flight sim) and XP pro, nothing else. The comp has an ECS MB, dual core 5200 AMD cpu at 2.9Mhz, 4 gig ram 667 DDR2, 550 watt PSU.
I have googled, but to be honest I just do not understand all the tech jargon that comes up
Hope someone can help.....TIA

The cards I have are............................

SAPPHIRE HD 4650 1GB DDR2 PCI-E (HDMI On-board) Graphics Card

or

XFX GEFORCE 9800GT (1GB) GRAPHICS CARD - PCI-E with HDMI

Tony

[johnnybbad]

Personally i would opt for the 9800, has a slight edge over the 4650

Click the link below for a comparison of the two cards

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=580&card2=575

John

[cem_devecioglu]

 
second one
 
http://www.gpureview.com/Radeon-HD-4650-PCI-E-card-580.html
Memory Bandwidth: 16 GB/sec
FLOPS: 384 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 4800 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 19200 MTexels/sec

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-9800-GT-card-575.html

Memory Bandwidth: 57.6 GB/sec
FLOPS: 336 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 9600 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 33600 MTexels/sec
 
but must note performance difference depends on correct drivers and directx versions to be installed..

and also it can change from game to game..

[Terbs]

Thanks fellas, following up on your posts.
cem.....FSX uses Directx 9.0c

Thanks for the links...figures mean nothing to me, but you can see the differences

[jtypecav]

Also you tend to find that a "weaker" GeForce card can outperform a Radeon card as game developers (me in a former life) receive better support from Nvidia and optimisations are more thorough. They are normally more expensive too - although Sapphire and XFX are both mid-range manufacturers. What's interesting as this is borne out by the GFLOPS being lower despite the GeForce being a much better card here.

As with others - go for the GeForce.

There will be loads of little tweaks you can do to your machine, but the card should run it easily.

[Plomien]

XFX also build some of the best specc'd GFX cards which allow for overclocking, I am using a motherboard from them and it is excellent
also if you want to use the hdmi feature to a TV the nvidia one is easier to hook up than the radeon

[Martian]

I've done both ATI & nVidia over the years, and my personal preference after all that experience has me in the nVidia camp all day long. Don't get me wrong, ATI do make some very nice cards but their driver software does leave a bit to be desired under certain hardware scenarios and is also quite bloated IMO.

@ Tony,

Make sure you install the latest drivers from the nVidia website as opposed to what came supplied with the card.
The download page for the 32 bit XP drivers is >HERE<

Talking of 32 bit, there is a distinct possibility that you may experience system instability if you try to run a 32 bit OS with 4GB of RAM.
I won't bore you with the technical details of what goes wrong, but anything over 3.25 GB on a 32 bit OS can cause memory addressing issues and you then end up chasing a hardware fault that doesn't exist.

Some BIOS's have the provision for the owner to stipulate that a 32 bit OS is in use when 4 GB (or more) of RAM is being used so enable that option if you have it.
If you don't have that option, either roll back to 3 GB (which will be more than enough anyway) or install the 64 bit version of XP/7 if you want the OS to utilise more than 3 GB of system RAM.

[TheBoy]

Most BIOS's from this era should have no trouble with 4Gb.  Clearly, at best, you'll only get between 3 and 3.5Gb available to XP, but stability shouldn't be an issue if the BIOS is OK.

Can't remember if XP needs the /3gb switch, or if its already default.

I'd certainly give 64bit XP a wide berth under all circumstances.