Mog and Chips

My parents want my old graphics card – the ATI HD3850. Which means I need a new one.

In short, because Softimage is my animation package of choice and even the professional ATI workstation cards have issues with it (even the professional drivers, there’s a warning on Softimage website about it) ATI is out of the question.

Now if I get the 8800 GTS, I can softmod the card to think it’s a nVidea quaddro – it’s the latest card that can be softmodded in such a way (I believe nVidea got wise to it and changed their later 8- and 9- series.) I’ve found one of these at £75.

The GTX 260 certainly looks very shiny – it’s £130 cheapest and it’s the newest thing I can afford. It cannot be softmodded, but it looks very powerful.

Inbetween there’s the 9800 gt, £80, which also can’t be softmodded.

I don’t entirely understand the numbers behind it. The GTX260 has less pixel shaders than the 3850 I already have (216 and 320) but has a higher pixel fill rate and FAR higher texture fill rate (41475 as compared to 10688)

…The HD4870 has respectable numbers, is the same price as the GTX260, and can be softmodded… but I read so much about ATI cards being no good for 3D, and experienced it first hand during my degree with the drivers disagreeing with OpenGL – constant crashes, and issues restarting after crashes without rebooting the entire system.