Author Topic: What's the best video card for the money? (Read 1561 times)

Kratzer · « **on:** January 04, 2002, 12:24:00 PM »

I have some questions...

What is the difference between a Radeon 8500 and a Radeon 8500 LE?

How does the Radeon 7500 stack up against the GeForce2/3 cards? That is, what does it compare to in a GF2 - a GTS, an Ultra, an MX?

If I have $150 or less to spend, can I get enough of a better card than my 32MB Elsa GF2 MX for it to be worthwhile?

How about the GF3 Ti 200?

What about the GeForce2 Ti PRO cards? How do they compare? Are they better than a straight GeForce2 Pro?

Any help would be appreciated... Thanks!

Kratzer · « **Reply #1 on:** January 04, 2002, 12:32:00 PM »

ATI's site doesn't even seem to list the 7500... wtf is up with that?

What is the difference between the 8500/7500 cards and the Radeon DDR?

Eagler · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2002, 12:47:00 PM »

I thought the 8500 ran at 275 while the 8500 LE ran at 250 but the card I tried from work listed as a 8500LE and ran at 275. So you got me.

Good card by the way, better desktop than my GeForce2 Ultra but less fps in AH but ran btwn 35 and 70 fps at 1280 x 1024 32 bit. Debating on getting one of my own ..

Kratzer · « **Reply #3 on:** January 04, 2002, 12:54:00 PM »

Okay... so I've been attempting to research this...

7500 specs
1.74 gigatexels/sec
45 million triangles/sec

I can't find the memory bandwidth or speed for the 7500...

A GeForce2MX, what I'm currently running, by comparison:
700 million texels/sec
2.7GB/s memory bandwidth

So... the 7500 has 1740 million texels a second? That seems like a substantial performance increase - well over double. This card looks great from a price perspective, about $100, it seems. Seems too good to be true, actually...

The GF2 Ti is listed as having a pixels/sec of 1 billion - is that the same as texels/sec, or different? 1 billion pixels/sec = 1 gigatexel/sec? So the 7500 would be faster?

Zippatuh · « **Reply #4 on:** January 04, 2002, 12:56:00 PM »

I like my Geforce3 Ti200 card. It’s a Leadtek and based on other posts about this card I would stay away from visiontek, I think that’s it. Appears nimitz and some others had problems with this vendor. I got this card for $178 and upgraded from a MX400. Here’s my post for the details:

My Geforce3 Ti200 Thread

These sites where listed by others that I found very helpful in finding the right card for the money:

Tom's Hardware

8 deminsional

Good luck.

Zippatuh

Lephturn · « **Reply #5 on:** January 04, 2002, 01:02:00 PM »

ATI's weak point is their driver support, which sucks.

I'd go with the GeForce 3 Ti 200, it's the best bang for your buck as a gamer IMHO.

Kratzer · « **Reply #6 on:** January 04, 2002, 01:41:00 PM »

Okay... agreed, GeForce3 Ti 200 it is... now, does anyone have the Gainward/Cardexpert version of this card? Anyone know how this one stacks up? It seems to be the cheapest.

Animal · « **Reply #7 on:** January 04, 2002, 01:50:00 PM »

get that one.

Raubvogel · « **Reply #8 on:** January 04, 2002, 01:55:00 PM »

Gainward rocks you putz. Get it and quit wasting our time.

-ammo- · « **Reply #9 on:** January 04, 2002, 04:15:00 PM »

I got a gainward Geforce 3 (powerpack), i love it! My FPS in AH rarely gets under 70. In the smokiest and cloudiest enviroment in AH I have gotten as low as 45 FPS. Now mine isnt a ti 200 but you can still OC that thin g if ya want too...but I dont think you will see a need to.

Kratzer · « **Reply #10 on:** January 04, 2002, 04:36:00 PM »

What resolution/color depth are you running, ammo?

Good enough to shoot me down last night, apparently...

BTW - do you remember shooting me down in my 190A5 in the CT last night? Where did you come from? I was diving onto the tail of a low spit, chugging along at 450mph, then it looked like you came from the same place as the spit in your Jug, reversed behind me, and were able to catch me and shoot me down... from my perspective, it seemed that I had a ton of E on both of you, but it seems you must've come from somewhere else to be able to catch me like that.

-ammo- · « **Reply #11 on:** January 04, 2002, 07:04:00 PM »

Hi Kratzer. I run mine at 1024x768x32. I am running the card at 240 core clock speed, and 515 mem clock speed. Stable and I am really pleased. I had a problem with my old Mx 400 card ( I didnt know it was the prob until I got the Geforce 3) where I couldn't tab out of AH and back in and AH would run terrible. This card solved that problem for me. It only started after 1.08 though. Now the game runs smooth and the PC is running awesome, very stable. Win2K pro is my OS.

Yup, I remember that, I got it on film too if ya want I can zip it and send it to ya. Basically I was above you about 2500 ft when you made the pass at the spit (shamus) and although you had alot of smash, I just had a little more. I dont think you saw me dive and follow your zoom, till the last second.

<S> was a blast last night!

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: -ammo- ]

Kratzer · « **Reply #12 on:** January 05, 2002, 12:02:00 AM »

Jeez, you ought to crank that sucker up! I run 1280x1024 32bit on my crappy GF2 MX and get 30fps... I can get a better framerate (35 - 45) at 1600x1200 16bit.

I figured I must've missed something in that fight... my SA and flying in general have been appaling the last week... *sigh*

mrsid2 · « **Reply #13 on:** January 05, 2002, 02:56:00 AM »

Ammo check your refresh rate I hope you didn't stick to 60hz desktop / games after changing to geforce3.

Detonator drivers with w2k or xp will mess your screen after alt-tabbing if you won't use nvreffix.exe to make both game and desktop run at the same refresh rate. Normally drivers should do it automatically but there is some bug in all W2k detonators.

-ammo- · « **Reply #14 on:** January 06, 2002, 09:48:00 PM »

took your guys advice and now running 1280x1024x32. Man it looks nice and i am still geting 70+ frames per second. I get as low as 40-50 in the smoky and cloudy enviroments. So not bad.

Raub, I am running at 75 hertz. Expert tool hid all the modes that my montior cant support and at this res, the best I can do is 75 hertz. If i was to run 1152x864, then I could go with 85 hertz. Havent tried it yet. But i am truly pleased with how good AH looks in 1280x1024. Will AH support 1152x864?