I am interested in upgrading my video card for Doom 3 and Half-life 2. I currently have a Geforce Ti 4200. What is a good card that will run these games well? Will a Radeon 9800 pro do the trick or is it worth it to shell out the money for an x800 or a geforce 6800 ultra?

Well, my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 runs Doom 3 well enough at 800x600 at medium, on an Athlon 2000+ w/512 meg of ram...I doubt it will run HL2 very well though.

I'd stick with your current card and wait for prices to come down, just download Doom III to see how it runs, and if you want something faster go out and buy a new card...there are a lot of factors to consider in which card you'd buy. I personally stick to NVidia because I need solid Linux support, and they're the only vendor that really supports it with easy to install and stable drivers. Right now the next-gen cards that are out there are way too pricey.

Hope this helped.

~ Krientle

I ordered this card on Friday afternoon... The expected FedEx delivery date is Wednesday, so I'll respond to this post after I've received it and played Doom 3 and some other games on it. It should be good enough to play Doom 3 and HL2 without too many problems.

Despite the fact that I prefer NVidia cards over ATi cards, I'd suggest a 9800 Pro or x800 before I'd suggest a 6800. The 6800 will run Doom slightly better than an ATi does, but for Half-Life 2 (and its mods) even the 9800 Pro will often outperform a 6800.

If you're more interested in Doom 3, go for a 6800 or 6800 Ultra.
If you're more interested in Half-Life 2, go for a 9800 Pro or x800.
If you're interested in both, go for a 9800 Pro or x800.
If you're more interested in FarCry or Painkiller go for a 6800.
If you're looking for an economy buy, go for a 9800 Pro.

At least that's my suggestion.

Link please.

Okay, sorry, I was wrong. The 6800 outperforms the 9800 by a bit, but it's surprisingly close considering the price difference. Here's http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1193&s=1 the test I was thinking of.

By a bit??? The closest margin between them that I saw was 9 FPS in 16x12 4xAA 8xAF. Other than that, it was more like a margin of 15-20 FPS, which is more than a bit if you ask me.

Okay, again, my appologies, I am in fact retarded. For some reason I was under the impression that the cards on the final page were the same as on the previous two.

I'm still standing by my argument, though. It doesn't seem worth an extra $120 to get a boost of 10-20 fps.

Well just off the top of my head i'd sayd 6800 ultra or 9800 pro. First is for performance, second is for price concernes.

sorry to bring this post back up again, but here are some good links.
Itchy is right, anything that uses openGl will be better with the 6800 ultra.

Doom III

Overall

if you got 500 bills get geforce 6800 ultra.

I'd go with the 6800gt. Assuming you can find one...

I bought a ATI 9800Pro and love it. Runs well for Doom3. Got it for pretty cheap.

My only bitch is that Newegg lowered the price of the 256MB card to the same price as the 128MB card that I bought... 1 week later.

If you think you would like playing your console games or watch tv on your monitor, I'd recommend getting a All In Wonder 9800 pro. It's what I've got and it works great, plays Doom 3 max settings just fine.

just curious, what do you call "max settings"?

Well, under the video settings under system, I have it on ultra quality. It's not the very highest it can possibly be since I have AA turned off but it still looks great.