Older video card question

[htpc_user]

I have a question about a couple of older video cards, and it’s not that big of an issue so I decided to stick it in the “Off Topic” section and see what you guys thought.  My “main” computer that I use  for gaming and internet is getting pretty ancient compared to today’s standards (my HTPC however is OK); I have a Radeon 9600 Pro (256mb Ram) in my computer and a Geforce FX5700 (256mb Ram) in my son’s computer.  From what I understand these 2 cards are pretty comparable and there’s nowhere that I’ve found that declares one better than the other.  What I’d like to do is get a pretty good (AGP) card for my system so maybe I can get a little more life out of my Socket A system until I can afford to do a full-blown upgrade.  If I get a card then I can either pass the Radeon 9600 Pro on to my son’s PC or let him keep the FX5700, and then I’ll be able to give one of those cards (the 9600 or 5700) to my dad for his PC and take out the crappy Geforce 2 MX that’s in there.  So that’s the problem; I want my son to have the better card and give my dad the other one, but I’m not sure which is better really…or if there’s just not that much difference.  I’ve seen some confusing things over the last couple of months on different games’ requirements.  For example, yesterday in Best Buy I saw a game that said you had to have a 9600 series card or a Geforce 5900 series (or better).  On another game that I looked at lately it said you had to have a Geforce 5700 series or Radeon 9800 series.  Those 2 things are contradicting.  There are also a couple of issues that I’ve encountered myself with these 2 cards.

The 9600 Pro
1.) On this card I can’t go past version 5-7 of the Catalyst drivers.  Anything higher than that crashes my system.  First I thought my system was corrupted, so the next time I did a clean install I installed version 6-something and the same thing happened.  I’ve tried newer versions thinking whatever was wrong may have gotten worked out, but it still crashes.

2.) Not that it’s too big of a deal, but I tried playing the Halo demo with this card and it wouldn’t play.  I think that it’s a driver issue.  When I was able to install some drivers higher than 5-7 and keep the system stable long enough to try Halo, it worked but would eventually crash during the game.  But the game worked fine on the FX5700.

3.) The S-Video out is not very good.  It does not fill the screen, leaving black bars on the sides of the picture and thin black bars at the top and bottom.  This is the same problem that I have with my dad’s Geforce 2 which is a big reason I want to get it out of his computer.

4.) This is a “pro” for the 9600; it can play the game Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.

5.) Another “pro”; I could get a component adapter for this card and connect to my dad’s standard TV if this is the card that I put in his, so the issue that I have with the S-video may not be an issue.  I think with component out, the image may fill the screen but it’s only a hunch.

The FX5700
1.) The S-Video out works great.  I used to have that Geforce 2 in my son’s computer connected to the same TV that my dad now has and the issue of the picture not filling the screen was annoying.  Once I put the FX5700 in, the screen was filled entirely without having to mess with any kind of overscan settings or anything.  So, if I put this card in my dad’s computer then I know movies will look good.

2.) The game Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter will not play on this card.  1/4 of the bottom of the screen is totally black and the rest of what you can see is black and kind of blue.  It’s like they’re just shadows.

So each card has its perks and its drawbacks.  I want the card that will play the most games in my son’s computer, and I want the one left over to go in my dad’s and have good TV out and play some games.  At the same time if it’s not that much difference, I don’t really want to have to open up my son’s computer and change video cards if I’m not really gaining any thing.

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