Please help! 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro *VS* Dell RADEON X800SE 128 MB PCI Express

[Sarah k05]

Hi Every one.

This is my first time posting here. My best to the community here.
Hope you gurus can help me with a problem.

I just bought a dell system:

Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic
3 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (4 DIMMs)
250 GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200 RPM)


that includes a 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO video card. I also have a Dell RADEON X800SE 128 MB PCI Express.

Please tell me which card is better to use for gaming ect. I have posted the specs of each card below. Thanks for any help.

Sarah

Dell RADEON™ X800SE, (128 MB) PCI Express Video Card (OLD CARD)

X-bit labs - Dell Initiates ATI RADEON X800 SE Sales.


SMARTSHADER™ 2.1
Full hardware-based support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0/9.1 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware.
Shadow volume rendering acceleration.
Complete feature-set support for OpenGL® 1.5 and 2.0 extensions.
SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1
2X/4X/6X full-scene anti-aliasing modes.
2X/4X/8X/16X anisotropic filtering modes.
TRUFORM™ 2.0
Second generation N-Patch higher order surface support.
VIDEOSHADER™
Engine uses programmable pixel shaders to accelerate video processing and provide better-looking visuals.
FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology.
Enables DVD playback and Multi-Tasking while watching DVD.
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT, and color space conversion.
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding. Modes include 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs.
Integrated TV Output support for up to 1024x768 resolution.
Windows® Logo Program compliance.

Product MPN
- MPN J3886
Processor
- Graphic Processor ATI RADEON X800 SE
Key Features
- Card Interface PCI Express
- Compatibility PC
Memory
- Installed Memory 128 MB
- Memory Tech DDR SDRAM
- Installed Memory / Technology 128 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Technical Features
- Form Factor Plug-in card
- Max. Screen Resolution 1920 x 1440
Input / Output
- Display Interface VGA - 15 pin D-Sub x 1 • DVI x 1
- Output Interface S-Video • TV Out

**********************************************
128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro Dual-VGA or Dual-DVI, TV-Out Graphics Adapter (43R1961) (NEW CARD)

Lenovo Support & downloads - 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro Dual-VGA or Dual-DVI, TV-out Graphics Adapter - Overview

Dual-VGA supporting a maximum analog resolution of 2048 x 1536
Dual-DVI supporting a maximum digital resolution of 1920 x 1200
A low-profile for desktop, tower, and ThinkCentre M57 Small Form Factor systems
Comprehensive Microsoft DirectX 10 support
High-definition (HD) experience with Microsoft Windows Vista
Certified for Windows Vista
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and display architecture
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)
Hardware-based H.264/VC-1 Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for smooth video playback of Blu-ray content
Integrated s-video TV output support up to 1024 x 768 resolution

Performance specifications

PCI Express(R)x16 lane native support
Low-profile graphics adapter for installation into desktop and towers and ThinkCentre M57 small form factor
Dual analog (VGA) monitors supporting up to 2048 x 1536 resolutions
Dual digital(DVI) monitors supporting up to 1920 x 1200 resolutions
s-video TV-out supporting up to 1024 x 768 resolution
180 million transistors on 65nm fabrication process
ATI RV610LE graphics processing unit operating at 450+MHz frequency
64-bit DDR2 memory interface
128 MB of video memory
Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
- 40 stream processing units
- Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
- Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
- Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
- 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
- Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
- Shader instruction and constant caches
- Up to 16 texture fetches per clock cycle
- Up to 128 textures per pixel
- Fully associative vertex/texture cache design
- DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
- High-resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
- Fully associative texture and Z/stencil cache designs
- Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
- Lossless Z and stencil compression
- Eight render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
- Physics processing support
Full support for Microsoft™ DirectX™ 10
- Shader Model 4.0
- Geometry Shaders
- Stream Output
- Integer and Bitwise Operations
- Alpha to Coverage
- Constant Buffers
- State Objects
- Texture Arrays
Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
- Programmable tessellation unit
- Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
- Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
- Anti-aliasing features
- Multi-sample anti-aliasing (up to four samples per pixel)
- Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
- Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
- Temporal anti-aliasing
- Gamma correct
- Super AA (CrossFire configurations only)
- All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
Texture filtering features
- 2x/4x/8x/16x high-quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes
- 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
- Bicubic filtering
- sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
- Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
- Depth and stencil texture (DST) format support
- Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
Crossfire Multi-GPU Technology
- Scale up rendering performance and image quality with two or more GPUs
- Integrated compositing engine
- High-performance dual channel interconnect
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
- Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats for high-definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
- Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX video decode acceleration
- Avivo™ Video Post Processor
- High-quality video post processing
- Two independent display controllers
- Two integrated DVI display outputs
- Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)
- Secondary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI only)
- Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high-resolution playback of protected content
- Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs, each supporting analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x1536
- Integrated AMD Xilleon HDTV encoder
- MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Divx, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
- Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
- VGA mode support on all display outputs
OpenGL 2.0 Support

[mjolnir1134]

Between the two, the HD 2400 PRO is the better choice than the X800.

What games are you planning on playing by the way?

[Sarah k05]

Thanks mj,

SC2, wc3 Tft, diablo 3, Dawn of War Soulstorm. I guess that will be my limit since i dont think i can play high end games. with the 2400.

-Sarah

[ShyguyXPC]

actually, looking at this GPU Heirarchy chart, shows the X800SE slightly above the HD2400 Pro... but in same range as a 2400XT.

Graphics Card Heirarchy Chart - Tom's Hardware : Best Video Cards For The Money: Oct '08

reason I went looking for it, is I know the HD2400 Pro series are slower cards using 64-bit memory bus, where as the X800's are 128 to 256-bit.

but the HD 2400 Pro is going to be able to support more features as well as newer features unlike the old X800.

SC2... Supreme Commander 2?

if so, either of those cards might choke some on that game, my 2nd Desktop system is running a HD 2600 Pro with 512MB of Memory & can barely keep up Supreme Commander 1 at medium settings, if I go to play on LAN or Online, I have to make sure its only 1 or 2 other players tops with minimal unit count, otherwise at later stages in the game, in massive battles or launching nukes, the game Lags unbelievably bad. can only imagine SC2 will be just as spec demanding as the first game.

Haven't bought Soulstorm yet so can't comment on it, but the first 3 games/expansions (Dawn Of War, Winter Assault & Dark Crusade) all run fine on same system.

[Sarah k05]

Thanks ShyguyXPC,

It seems these both cards dont do any justice to my new system (quad core + 3gb ~800 mhz ram) even though its dell . I looked at cards online to buy. It seems like some 512 mb graphics cards are cheeper then some 256mb cards. What other factors should i look for in cards? What good card can you suggest around $150-100 range that will last me a while 18 months

Sarah