Need a graphics card recommendation

Bard

Ok... let's just say I've got up to £250 to £300 to spend (which I don't at this very moment... but come pay day... well...) and would like to improve on my basic Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo 3D card.

What would you guys, who appear to be in the know about this kinda stuff, recommend I go for?

Platform is Win2000 SP1 with a half-decent hardware system behind it (PIII-500, 160Mb RAM, 12GB HD, SBLive 1024)

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Bard

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"and there was much rejoicing..."

MiCr0

i've got a geforce 256 32mb ddr
and its wonderful
and with the way prices are going it should be pretty cheap too

Figment

Ive got myself an ati radeon 64mbDDR with onboard dvd and tv in and out. I love it, and have had no problems with it.

Bard

oh yes- now that you mention it, TV In/Out would be a definite bonus ... any recommendations? ... and "where to buy" (in Dublin) would be good too

Stephen

I've got a GeForce 2 GTS 32mb .. lovely for games

(Don't suppose you want to buy the 16mb matrox G400 i replaced with it? )

Bard

Nah- the Creative 3DBlaster Banshee (poss. not "Voodoo" as mentioned above) I have is a 16MB card which works nicely up to 1600x1200 in Windows itself (I have it set on 1280x1024) so buying that card from you wouldn't be quite the step I want...

I want to get the best I can afford basically (preferably with a TV In/Out as mentioned) while still being a sufficient jump up from what I have, supporting the games I play well in Win2000 (FIFA 2001, Q3A, UT, Half Life, and then some...) and having at least 32MB on board... but am I asking a lot there?

[This message has been edited by Bard (edited 12-04-2001).]

Kix

You might want to drop a line to Stonemason on the "Even better news " thread.

He's getting in a bunch of GF2 MX boards from the UK. Good bang:buck ratio.

Dustaz

300 will get you a gf2 , def go for that.

PiE

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Stephen:
(Don't suppose you want to buy the 16mb matrox G400 i replaced with it? )</font>

I might, how much?

Stephen

50 quid ?

flamegrill

if uv got £250 + (or will have) and u want the best card on the market, that would be the Geforce3 but id wait a while for that. so get the Geforce 2 ULTRA, which is a kic ass card. here have a wee look at it...
http://www.nvidia.com/products/geforce2ultra.nsf/

Bard

Well! - Pay day came around and I ended up spending a wee bit less - about £170 in fact - on a new 3D card... which was just as well really considering the truck-load of other bills I've got piled on me

After a bit of deliberation, (pacing up and down in PC World, Blanch ) I finally went for a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX 64Mb card - with NVidia's GEForce 2 MX. I think it was a pretty good choice, - all my games that were previously slightly jerky, or simply wouldn't work in ultra high res/quality modes (Q3A, FIFA 2001, B&W and then some...) now motor along incredibly fast and smoothly... I'm happy with it.

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Bard

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"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

[This message has been edited by Bard (edited 30-04-2001).]

Lucutus

Another 3 or 4 days sees the release of the Hercules 3D Prophet III 64 Meg DDR card.

Slurpy GeForce III Powah!

Yah should have waited a while...

Koopa

dont want to dampen your spirits or anything but youve just been ripped off,
a geforce 2 MX gives worse performance than a geforce 1 DDR, the card you wanted was probably a geforce 2 GTS

Bard

Ah well...

tbh, for one thing, I was happy with what I got- particularly for the price I paid...- I don't think I'd have liked to have gone much higher and I'm sure a decent version 3 card would have set me back a good few more squids. For another thing, - it does suit my purposes... I was going a bit overkill with some of the features I was looking for - didn't really need a TV-Out as I have that Tiny decoder/transmitter/receiver kit for the TV and it does the job nicely. All games etc. are flying along at an excellent pace... and they all look absolutely superb now as opposed to slightly jerky and a little shoddy previously... it should last me the next year at least.

Cheers for the feedback tho'!

Gerry

yep, you got into a "more mega = faster" frame of mind there. 64megs on an mx is quite useless, much better off with a fast graphics chip like a gts, and 32 megs of ddr ram. Even if the memory on your mx is ddr, the mx chip is only half as fast as a gts. ( 2 rendering pipelines instead of 4 )

Bard

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gerry:
yep, you got into a "more mega = faster" frame of mind there. </font>

Actually- yes, - very true... and point taken. However, with everything working very well through it, as I said, I'd see it lasting me at least a year yet, and I reckon that's not bad. (I'm trying to look on the bright side of what now appears not to be the best purchase I could have made...) - it's still a great card, still a vast improvement over what I had, and it does the job I needed... so... *shrug*...

_CreeD_

Best bang-per-buck in a few weeks will be the Hercules 4500 (Kyro 2). Dabs have them on pre-order for 110 stlg.

Kali

Geforce2 GTS performance for a ****y sum of money.
will be interesting to see how the Kyro IIs final release driver set performs though.

forgot to post an interesting article on aces.. graphics card roundup with benchmarks from Geforce3, KyroII, Ultra, MX, TNT2 :
http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?article_id=25000223

[This message has been edited by Kali (edited 30-04-2001).]

Celt

Shop around and you can get a GF2 Ultra for £200(ir) or thereabout.