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Geforce cards

ACE OwNz J0oO!!

Ok at the moment i have a geforce 2 p3 733 192megs of ram .
I am only 15 and therefore i have very very little cash ,
i read the help at the start of the technology section but it didnt help, What card is decent and not that exepensive . as in under €250 and how much of a difference will it make, at the moment most of my games are running ok But the fps with return to castle wolfinstein are ****, can anyone please help . give me a price and a location if you can, thanks a lot.

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Winters

Dont complain! ... you got a better pc and graphics card then me!

Doodee

Well, providing you know where to buy them you can get some great cards for sub €250.

However if you want something that is going to last you beyond the up-coming releases of the likes of UT2 and Doom three then I recommend anything (apart from Geforce 4 mx's) with 128MB's of Ram as you will need the extra bandwidth.

I myself recently got a Radeon 8500LE 128MB for a total price of €232 including VAT and delivery from England (Delivery was €40 alone so the card would have been alot cheaper)
you can also get the GF4 Ti4200 cards for around the same prices.
Now I'd definitly recommend the Radeon to you and you would notice a performance increase especially with teh new Catalyst drivers. People have often argued that ATI have had bad driver support which was true however with the release of these Catalyst drivers and the promise of more frequent Driver releases ATI are looking more and more like the Title contenders that they are ment to be.

As for the Geforce 4 Ti4200, well the benchmarks speak for themselves, it can outperform the Radeon by about 20-40% but it is that 20% more expensive, generally costing around teh €250-300 mark for a good 128MB card.
If your still curious then why not visit www.anandtech.com and take a look at there Video Card section, they frequently benchmark these cards and can give you a realistic and un-biased answer, also check out www.hardocp.com for more of the same.

as reguards best places to buy the cards I'd say www.komplett.ie , www.overclockers.co.uk or if you can buy at trade prices like I could then www.microdirect.co.uk (very cheap for ATI cards)

Hope I've been of some help.

po0k

Get new drievers.
www.nvidia.com
turn off antialiasing, turn off vsync, turn off antisropic filtering, render everything in 32-bit colour, including the desktop.
I've a similar system to yours and I get fine fps.

P3 800
GF2Pro 64meg DDR
640meg PC100
28.32 dets
23.11 are decenmt too
even 21.83, butI'm not sure if they're DirectX 8.1 compliant.

Koopa

Doodee:
However if you want something that is going to last you beyond the up-coming releases of the likes of UT2 and Doom three then I recommend anything (apart from Geforce 4 mx's) with 128MB's of Ram as you will need the extra bandwidth

having more ram does not mean you have extra bandwidth, the two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, there are loads of cards about which only have 32 megs ram, but have almost double the memory bandwidth of a 64 meg el cheapo "next generation" card (geforce 1 ddr vs geforce 2 mx for example)

trying to find a good new gfx card nowadays is really annoying, you really have to check each particular model on the net to find out its specifications, thanks to nvidia's crappy system of always releasing 2 'types' of cards with every "generation" , eg. there was the "tnt 2"(good card) and the "tnt 2 m64" (crap card, worse than tnt1 at high res), the tnt2 16meg standard would often cost less than the tnt2 m64 32meg in shops, a random buyer walking into the shop would think the tnt2 m64 32 meg was a better card than the tnt2 16meg standard and buy it instead
the best thing to do is probably look for some "key" models that you know are good, these ones for example from nvidia are good:

tnt 2
geforce 1 DDR
geforce 2 GTS
<dunno about rest, not paid attention to new graphics cards lately>

heres some i know are "bad":
tnt2 m64
geforce 1 SDR
geforce 2 mx400, geforce 2 mx200
<dunno about rest>

in general, the "bad" cards will give you about half the graphics speed of the "good" ones of a similar name, eg. geforce 2 GTS vs geforce 2 mx, so its only a good idea to buy the "bad" card if its a LOT cheaper than the corresponding "good" one, most of the time the "bad" card of one generation is actually worse than the "good" card of the generation before it, eg. geforce 1 ddr is a lot faster than geforce 2 mx 400, never mind the geforce 2 mx 200

JustHalf

You've also got to take into consideration the fact that if your CPU will limit performance, so you may get marginally more performance from a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 than a GeForce 3 Ti 200.

Doodee

sorry Koopa, ment to say that you will require the Extra bit o Ram for the game.

according to John Carmac Dooms 3 should only take one cycle to render with the Radeon 8500 or GF3 Ti500's and two with the other cards around.
dunno what he has said bout the GF4 range or new ATI Radeon8500LE's.

Another thing

always releasing 2 'types' of cards with every "generation"

this is a marketing tactic from N-vidia and it has seen them to where they currently stand in the market.
Every Quater they release two types of cards, the performance card(s) and the Budget card(s).

Witht he next quarter in Fall the prices of the current N-vidia cards will fall... However ATI will be releasing their next Gen Card (R300 chip, 10 layer pcb) in the next month/ two apparently, before the next quater, in an attempt to out do N-Vidia and beat them to the line, so it may be that N-vidia shall release their next gen cards sooner, or something to keep people happy until they have the net ones ready.

As Syxpak said, theres nothing better to give that extra bit of performance than updating your drivers, that is if you already have out-dated ones.

ThrAx

Just get the cheaper one with 64 megs the performance decrease from 128 wont be that high and u'll get lovely framerates in RTCW. We've yet to see what spec games like doom 3 and ut 2003 will require but doom 3 can supposedly run ok on a 64mb geforce 2 but i wouldnt bet on it. If u want a new card get at least a 64meg GeForce 4 Ti, dont go mx they're shit. A geforce 3 will give you approximately the same fps in RTCW as the geforce 4 but the geforce 4 has many more features and will make it look nicer at a lower cost to your fps.

If u dont want to get a new card get new drivers. If ur still using the ones that came with your card then new ones will undoubtedly give you a noticable fps increase.

JustHalf

Originally posted by Doodee
according to John Carmac Dooms 3 should only take one cycle to render with the Radeon 8500 or GF3 Ti500's and two with the other cards around.

I'm pretty sure he said it renders in one pass on the 8500 and two- or three- on the GeForce 3.

Originally posted by Doodee
Every Quater they release two types of cards, the performance card(s) and the Budget card(s).

This isn't correct.

nVidia traditionally release products on a 6 month product cycle (not a three month), in Spring and Fall. With the GeForce 2 at least, the GeForce 2 GTS was released in the spring, followed by the GeForce 2 Ultra in the fall.

Quigs Snr

If you're going with NVIDIA I would order the cards like this.....

worst to best.

Buy one the furthest down the list you can afford.

TNT Vanta
TNT M64
TNT2 Riva
TNT2 Riva Ultra
Geforce 2 MX200
Geforce 2 MX400
Geforce 256
Geforce 2 GTS
Geforce 2 Pro
Geforce 4 MX420 (Controversial here, think this one is a waste of time)
Geforce 2 Ti
Geforce 2 Ultra Not much between this and the next one
Geforce 4 MX440
Geforce 4 MX460
Geforce 3 Ti200 (Currently I'd go for one of these minimum)
Geforce 3
Geforce 3 Ti500
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Geforce 4 Ti4400
Geforce 4 Ti 4600

Quigs Snr

By the way, with Radeon, avoid VE and LE branded cards, they tend to be castrated, much like NVIDIA and their MX cards.

Radeon is a competitor for Geforce 2 MX400/GTS depending on model. 7500 IS a competitor for GF2 Ultra, Radeon 8500 is really the only one to consider and that can perform very well next to a GF3 and even the GF4 Ti's in some games.

Fidelis

Benchmarking, oh how I hate 3DMark!

I have an XP-1700/512MB PC2100/GF2 Ultra (28.32) on Win98SE and I get a woeful 1670 3DMark Points - yay!

Quigs Snr

Your 3DMark score should be in the order of 4500 on default settings. Have you installed the AGP driver that would have come with your motherboard ? Almost everytime I see a card underperform like that it is due to the AGP driver not being installed.

Also make sure you have antialiasing turned off.

flamegrill

i agree with Quigs Snr there. I have an Athlon 750/512mb and a GF2 GTS 32mb DDR and i get around the 5000 mark in 3Dmark 2001. AFAIR its got the 23.11 driver version installed - i just had a quick look there.

TacT

disable your power saving options and make sure your running the benchmark without v-sync

if you have two 256mb dimms then remove one or you'll need to make some changes to the os to make use of the additional 256mb of ram.

I think you may need to tune your bios and make sure you have your agp driver for the chipset installed.

Something silly isn't right with your system, give us more details ....

Fidelis

Well I think I might have been testing it on full settings: x4 Anti-Aliasing, 32bit colour @ 1024x768, that kind of thing

What's this about the AGP driver? Is it for the actual slot? I've got an ECS K7S5A (SiS 735) mobo, do these drivers need updating? I'll go have a quick look at their site, thanks for the advice!

[edit]and Duncan, I've got a single 512 DIMM so I should be alright

[/edit]

Quigs Snr

The AGP driver for the ECS K7S5A comes on the CD with the motherboard. (It is refered to as the VGA driver if I recall correctly).

Basically this is software that the motherboard uses to allow the AGP port communicate with the OS.

Typically the 1.07 version of the driver ships with the board, you can get the 1.09 version online from SIS's website, although it doesn't seem to improve much for me.

If you don't have the disk that came with the mainboard, let me know and I'll send you one on.

When someone posts a 3DMark score, it is always at default settings.

For me this is 1024X768 AT 32 BIT COLOR,

Vsync, AntiAliasing and Antistropic filtering turned off. 4500-5000 ish should be about right for you machine. Without the AGP driver installed, I would expect (from experience, to get about 1500-2200 with a similar setup to yourself).

Fidelis

I found the 1.09 update on the ecs site so I'll give that a lash when I get home, thanks.

Quigs Snr

Let us know how you got on.

Fidelis

After disabling v-sync, turning off AA and so on, I got 4253 points on default settings (1024x768 @ 32bit). Is that about right?

Quigs Snr

It's there or thereabouts,

I checked out the scores on an older machine at the same settings as you, the machine was an AMD Athlon TBird 1.33, with a Geforce 2 Ti DDR (Overclocked to Ultra settings), 256MB SDRAM and it came in at about 4100, so you're about right.

You could probably overclock the card and get another 200 points or so, if you were inclined.

ThrAx

I just bought a GeForce 3 Ti 200 128mb DDR with TV Out for E131 brand new

KdjaCL

where did you buy it??

Kdja

Scruff

yeah ThrAx, spill the beans. and was that with or without vat?

TacT

hmmm I was thinking you should be hitting more like the 5-6500 mark at best myself.......

On my gf2 gts pro 64mb ddr at stock speeds on a pIII 1.0Ghz I was getting 4455 or there abouts.

I'd go messing with your agp aperture size and benchmark after every change.

Disable all caching (apart from l1 and l2 cache) in the bios
Disable all video bios shadowing and video caching as well.
You could disable ecc checking on the cpu for a wee boost too

Krusty_Clown

Is it a bit pointless buying something like a Geforce 4 Ti4200 for a PIII700 with 256 megs RAM? I'm currently running a TNT2 w/32megs and get alot of stuttering in games like MOH, RTCW etc..

I'd like to buy something a little future-proof for when I have a few more quid to hand, to upgrade the processor etc..

I looked at Anandtech's scaling charts, but they generally only start at the 800mhz+ mark..

Any advice greatly appreciated..

Krusty_Clown

Sorry.. saw this question addressed on another thread..
Possible thread for a sticky?

dbspin

Just in answer to original question..

Should get fine FPS in Wolf, this is almost certainly your system configuration (listen to SyxPak's post ! and look online for tweaking guides). Unless your components are Truely Terrible quality (e.g: terrible oem geforce card, slow h/d and memory). Assuming your running Win 98 that is. If your running XP and you want to play games uninstall it, as it slaughters frame rates, especially on an older (sic) machines like yours.

Geforce 4 Ti 4200 (64MB) now availble for Euro 250 in Peats. *Note* Bear in mind I work there

But I do believe Peats are the cheapest in the country for this card at the moment.

With reference to Doodee's post "Witht he next quarter in Fall the prices of the current N-vidia cards will fall" - unfortunately this is not true in the Irish market, as the previous generation high end (Ti) cards do not seem to drop in price but just get replaced by the new generation. <And the old 1's get sold at full price to the foolish>. If anyone knows somewhere that sells these cards (e.g: Vanilla GF3, GF3 Ti 500) off cheaper than Euro 250 then let me know cause I wan 1 :!)

With each generation performance of the budget GF MX cards does get better, but currently none of these cards support the programmable graphics featured in Direct X 8.0 and above (and needed for the fancy effects in Unreal 2003, Comanche 4, and Doom 3). They are not crap by any means - better performance wise than a GF 2 Ti, but they are not what you want to get the most from future games.

ThrAx is right about the performance difference between 64MB and 128 GF 4 cards, currently they're F all except in Jedi Knight 2 (up to about 30fps depending on resolution) and CodeCreatures (a monster demo which doesn't run at playable fps on any current card).

Love to contribute to a "sticky" response to this typa question if there is one. Its right up my geeky alley

koneko

Cheapest in Ireland, eh? Handy location and all, but I never considered Peats to have good prices. Unless you guys made some major changes of the last few months.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.asp?AvdID=1&CatID=24&GrpID=1&t=278&l=2

dbspin

Far as I know Komplett are located in the UK with the Irish site a currency converting and vat changing front end.

But that price is truely sweet ! Has anyone bought a card off them (eg: do they have any dodgy extra charges, do they take back faulty goods in practice etc) ? If they are as good as they look (and I can swing a loan of the perental c/c card) then I might consider getting my GF 4 Ti 4200 off em.

Theres a bit off a price war on in town at the moment..good for everybody except the boss hehe

so prices are down across the board

koneko

They are that good. Fast shipping (1 or 2 days) for 6 or 7 Euros.

They're based in Norway, but their prices are always lower than everyone else's.