Need a New Video Card. Advice Please.

[Albromor]

Here is the situation. I had a "friend" a few years ago put together a Pentium 3 system for me. Came to find out that though he put a motherboard in that would handle a P3, it could only do so with an adapter. Basically it was like having an 8 cylindar engine that only ran on 5 cylindars. Those adapters are cheaply designed and the MB was nothing to write home about. Anyway, I put in a brand new Asus motherboard which has a high rating, et.al, this past Monday. The only thing now is that I am wondering if I should get a new video card. You see at the time of my original system I put in a Diamond Viper 770 (non-ultra) 32 megs of video memory, 2x/4x card. It has worked well for me, but 64 megs of video RAM is now the minimum specs. I plan on giving my P3 rig to my wife (who is a teacher) and my children (who are in school) and get myself a P4 system. I am the PC gamer in the family, so I am the only one that needs a mid to high end machine.

So, what would you recommend in a good, reliable video card? The mother board can handle a AGP 4X card. It has 256 megs of RAM (I'm going to put another 128 real soon). I will not put in an GForce 4 cards with MX in their title. Would you consider a good GForce 3 or a low end GForce 4? Or something else? Please tell me the reason for your selection. Keep in mind, I am getting the P3 configured correctly and I want my family to have a good system, yet they don't need a gamers dream system, if you get my drift! Thanks ahead of time.

[ 10-16-2002, 01:37 AM: Message edited by: Albromor ]

[MILAMBER]

You are right to stay away from the MX cards. I'd recomend a GF4 Ti4200, a Radeon 8500LE or a Radeon 9000. They are all roughly in the same price range and all fully DX8 compliant. My personal pick of the bunch would be the 4200 because you can overclock the GPU to GF4 4600 speeds with almost no effort whatsoever. Any of these options would be significantly faster than a GF3 card.

[theholyavenger]

Hmmmm...fastest video card in the world now available is the ATI Radeon 9700. It really depends on which P4 system you're buying, if you're a high-end gamer and pursues in-game graphics like The Morrowind, and you have a P4 2GHz and higher, i would definitely recommend getting Radeon 9700. But that doesn't mean a GeForce 4 4600 Ti is bad, only if you're willing to spill out $400 U.S for the radeon card, otherwise you should get the GeForce one.

I heard that DOOM III is coming out soon next year, i've seen some of the in-game graphics, the prettiest of all the FPS games i've seen so far. I think i'm gonna get another new video card for that game too.

[Dreamer128]

A friend of mine is really happy with his GF4 Ti4200. Even beats the Radeon8500. Of course it isn't quite as fast as the Radeon 9000 or the GF4 Ti4600, but definatly alot cheaper [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Mouse]

I recently bought a custom rig, and at the time (2 months ago), a 128meg GForce Ti4200 gave the best power -v- price balance. Not sure if things have moved along since then.

Btw - watch out for the next generation Nvidia drivers - apparently they will represent a quantum leap in performance [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

[Ronn_Bman]

I recently posted something very similar

The difference is that I wanted to upgrade the card on my machine, which I use primarily for gaming. After a week or so, I decided on the GeForce ti4400. I picked it up from Newegg.

But if I read your post correctly, you want a card for the machine that will become your wife and kids', right? A non-gaming machine? I would say don't look past the MX cards.

I replaced the GeForce 2 MX/400 in my machine because I was having the "stutter" problem (slight) in NWN. Of course after upgrading the card and doubling the ram, I still have that problem It's in the game, some people have it, some don't...for some it's really bad, for me...noticable enough to make me mad. [img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img]

Even though my upgrades didn't do exactly what I'd hoped for, but it certainly wasn't a waste by any stretch though. I've upgraded my machine to a kick butt level.

In short, the MX card I had played the game as well as my new TI card. I'll admit, I am able to turn on a few features I couldn't use before, like "shiny water", but as far as game play, little or no noticable difference. I sold that MX card to my friend, who had to upgrade to get NWN to run on his very low end machine. The game looks great.

I guess my point is that if my old MX card works good enough on his low end machine to run NWN, it would probably do great on your wife and kids' new machine for running office and doing homework, and it would do it for a fraction of the price.

I know the complaints about the G4 MX are that its just a retooling of the G2 chipset, so go with the G2.

Now, if you're talking about which card to put in your new gaming rig, that would be an entirely different conversation.

***Since the search function is available again, use it to check for "graphics card" and "video card". Those who responded to my posts a few weeks ago had some great info which I'm sure you'll want to read. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[ 10-16-2002, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]