Here's the latest 3DMark Hall of Fame, with Pricewatch Prices attached, with my pick of the week at the bottom...
1. ATI RADEON 9700/9500 Series (9500/128MB $136)
2. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 ($188)
3. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 ($181)
4. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 ($131 128MB or $112 64MB)
5. ATI RADEON 8500/9100 Series (9100/128 $89, 8500LE/64 $69)
6. NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 ($82)
7. NVIDIA GeForce3 ($92)
8. NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200 ($94/128MB, $79/64MB)
9. ATI RADEON 9000 ($92 Pro128 to $60 Std64)
10. NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 460 ($89)
My Money would be on the Radeon 9100/128MB - less than $100 to your door through one of Pricewatch's fine merchants.
Hawk, what's your Processor speed? I know you were down in the 6FPS range when we were mixing it up on Tuesday night - that blows...but I was right there with you, and didn't drop frames noticeably..."might could be" video card drivers or something similar - I had *CRAPPY* performance (Uh, like 50-60% of the benchmarked performance that was being reported at MadOnion.com with the same setup was getting) until I found just the right drivers, then I started getting 108% of average...
Here's the important spex for my system. You might see something that sticks out as more of a bottleneck than your video card, maybe...
Athlon 1600+
ECS K7S5A board
256MB PC2100 RAM (bought as a package 6 months ago for $310 total)
GeForce2 MX400 @ 1024x768x32 (overclocked with PowerStrip to 233 Engine Clock and 380 Memory clock - runs stable all the time, gives about a 5% 3DMark boost) bought it at *least* 2.5 years ago for $129 at Best Buy.
As you can see, not a screamin' system, but I typically get 59FPS up high, and at least 30 down low with lots of traffic - no noticable stuttering or slow FPS ever except one occasion - when I fire main and aux guns at the same time I get just a brief fraction of a second's stutter while the muzzle flash texture/sprite loads (Heh - teaches me to conserve ammo and fire either/or unless I *KNOW* the hiccup won't hurt my aim...bounces are perfect...*grin*)
DamPhyno
The FNG
325th FG
