Video Card Prefs

[Sky Viper]

Tom's hardware reviews the nVidia GeForce2 in rather high standing.
With the GeForce3 otw, and the VooDoo 5500 getting decent reviews, I was wondering:  What do you guys thing is the best bang for the buck?
Also, what Brand of GeForce2 would you recomend.  ASUS seems to have real nice $ range right about now.



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Sky Viper

[Animal]

The Vodoo5 is a VERY good board, but I cant recomend it. 3dfx went belly up so you will have no support. And the Geforce should have a longer life in your PC than the V5.

[Rocket]

Sky I have an ASUS V7700 DELUXE Geforce2 GTS 32mb DDR.  I love the card.  FPS is awesome in 1600x1280 32bit.  The only squeak I have about it is I installed dx8.0a to play mechwarrior4.  The asus drivers freaked out.  I am running reference drivers right now but I can't use my tv in/out on the card because of it.  I am hoping ASUS will release a dx8 stable set of drivers in a hurry.
I have tried a voodoo 5500 and I hear the Geforce3 will be the card in the future but it will take sometime for the programmers to take advantage of the tech. on the card.  The draw back is the GTS isn't going to be produced anymore from what I have read but will continue to be sold until stock is gone. Not sure what this will do for driver support on the card.  Check out www.reactorcritical.com  for more info!

S!
Rocket

[Eagler]

best bang for the buck is the voodoo 5500 at $113 www.pricewatch.com  (I payed $299 last summer   )

performance per $, it can't be beat

Eagler

[Staga]

Hercules Prophet2 MX is cheap(160$here) and fast and other interesting card is Ati's Radeon.
64Megs DDR Radeon's price came down from +300$ to 200$ here.

Some cheap MX-cards picture quality ain't too good, Check before you buy. Leadtek's and Hercules/Guillemot's cards have better components than some other MX-cards, Price is little higher but so is quality too.

Radeon is little slower than GeForce2's in lower resolutions but if you're using 1024*768 32bit and up its almost as fast as GeForces but got better picture quality and colors (And its good with DVD-player too).

Raw speed = GeForce2 GTS
Bang/Bucks= MX2 or Radeon

[nonoht]

with Hercules Gforces II Mx i've got 60fps
down to 15-20 in smoke/clouds
45-50 in CV


Duron 600
256 SDRAM 133
Via KT133

[Skuzzy]

The Hercules line of GeForce based products are well done.
I would rank some cards in this order, with the first being the fastest.

1) GeForce Ultra 64MB
2) GeForce GTS Pro 64MB
3) ATI Radeon 64MB DDR
4) GeForce MX 32 or 64

The Radeon is very close to the GTS Pro in performance.  BUT (a very big BUT), it depends on what GeForce driver and motherboard you use.
When I was doing my benchmarks, I used an Intel 815e based motherboard as one of the systems and the GeForce 6.50 reference drivers.
NVidia claims they have put in special optimizations for the Intel 815e chipset.  I could tell where these were done and it did push the performance (fill rates were 140% faster than an Intel 440BX chipset at the same clock rates) significantly faster.

Another factor is your CPU speed.  If you are running 800Mhz or less, I would go with the ATI Radeon 64MB DDR card.  The 2 GeForce cards, which are faster, will not be any faster in an 800Mhz system versus the Radeon.
Once you get above 900Mhz, the 2 GeForce cards start getting pushed, especially if your motherboard is 815e based and you are using the 6.50 NVidia reference drivers.

As a side note, and one I found intersting when doing all the benchmarks,..the GeForce Ultra 64MB card ran cooler than the GTS Pro card (all were Hercules).  The Ultra card has a very nice fan/heat sink on it.  The GTS Pro has a fan/heatsink, but is smaller and actually caused the GTS Pro to run hotter than the Ultra card.
The ATI Radeon card does not have any heat problems and ran about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than either of the GeForce cards.

I digress,...Almost have the WEB site done with all this information.  Looking forward to getting it complete.  Stay tuned.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[Staga]

Nonoht have you tried to overclock your card?
If your card's core speed is 175Mhz and memory 183Mhz you propably have same kind of card that I have (with Huyndai's TC-55 5,5ns memory). I added little fan to gpu's heatsink and raised speeds to core210/mem220 and it works like a swiss made clock  

[nonoht]

yep stage  i've try...
but upper than 190 mhz for core and ram i've many color dots in texture during playing AH

humm seeing colored clouds in AH is not a good thing..  now i've set 190 mhz and its fine

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nono
56th (FG) FIREBIRDS RAF

[Sky Viper]

Awesome info gents!
Thanks!

My target upgrade system is gonna be something like this:

Athlon T-Bird 1.2G 266
ASUS A7VKT133
ASUS V7100 GeForce2 MX 32MB NoTV  (Good reports from friends on this board)

With my current SB Live!, 128M RAM, and ATA66 HDD.

Should prove quite a grin from my current K6-2 400, 3dfx Voodoo3 2000.
 

Thanks again,


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Sky Viper

[Sky Viper]

BTW

Those of you looking on pricewatch.com only may want to shop around a bit more.

Using cnet, and price watch was ok, but using both, and then researcing the companies that they reference, I was able to come up with a price list that totals $110 less than if I had gone with either alone.
With both priceline and cnet, I found that they miss some of the best deals that companies like 1st eWeb or essencom have to offer.  Kind of like they have target product searches and are not finding everything.

Thanks again,

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Sky Viper

[MrSiD]

Don't be stingy on the vid card area, you'll regret it. I bought my Geforce1 nearly 2 years ago and I couldn't be more satisfied with it.. After all this time it still holds up on its own.

If I were you I'd wait for the Geforce3 prices to drop a little and then invest into that per-pixel monster! Have you seen the screenshots? Amazing reflections..

If you can, wait a little and get a good card. The 1.2Gig t-bird can run games even without t&l in most cases so you might be able to stick with your old display card for now.

[Skuzzy]

You definately are not gettin enough video card for that CPU.

You should at least be getting a GeForce GTS Pro 64MB.  The MX cards do not scale very well and will be a bottleneck to your system.

Also note, the MX card is significantly slower than an ATI Radeon 64MB DDR card as well.

Don't sell your computer short by choking it with a slow video card.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[dudul-]

and what about 32 Mo or 64 Mo of video RAM?
is 64 Mo necessary if you not in  very high resolutions like 1600 -32 bits  ?

perhaps for FSAA ?


thanks for infos

"dudule"

[Sky Viper]

 

Originally posted by MrSiD:
Don't be stingy on the vid card area...
If you can, wait a little and get a good card. The 1.2Gig t-bird can run games even without t&l in most cases so you might be able to stick with your old display card for now.

Yeah, I was thinking about that after I posted earlier.
I know 1 or 2 guys in AH who are running V3 on Slower T Birds and getting 50-70 FPS.

As you said about satisfaction, this 3dfx card was the best $80 I spent in a long time.
Getting close to it's 2nd year, it still doesn't let me down.
As Skuzzy has said, it may be worth the wait for the $ to come down on the G3.

The system changes are only in mind because I have a hell of a time flying in AH if I am anywhere near smoke, clouds, carriers, or Flack. And when planes explode in front of me, or when putting the gear up, I get a full stop for 1-2 seconds while the CPU catches up.
System monitor reports the CPU at 100% use as soon as I load AH.
Prior to 1.05, this was not an issue.  
I wish they would update there min. requirements list.  It's not fair to the new guys who come along with systems like mine.



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Sky Viper