Choosing a new graphic card

[flibulzbuth]

Howdy!

My old voodoo 5500 has just deceased for unknown reasons (RIP, darling ).
Luckily, my shop warranty is still effective and will, hopefully, be able to replace it with another card of more or less the same value. Meanwhile, i'm stucked with an old ATI rage.

I'll probably get the choice between these 4 cards (these are the one the shop are ofering on its website that are in comparable price range):

-Radeon 8500 LE, ATI
-Xtasy GeForce 4 MX440, Visiontek
-All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500, ATI
-GeForce 4 Ti4200, XFX.

The last one is obviously more expensive. I'm leaning toward the 2 GF4. Is it really worth it to pay 50$ more to get a normal (not MX) GF4?

Do you know anything about XFX? Is it a reliable company? I read some excellent reviews of it on the net, but i though i might ask here.

Anyway, any tip is more than welcome.

[NiceWorg]

Well I read somewhere that MX cards are usually 1/4 slower. That depends of the card of course, and varies a lot. I think it´s worth 50 bucks, if you use it a lot.

[The Hunter of Jahanna]

An MX card is basicaly an old GeForce 2 card with a new chip in it. Kind of like putting a pentium 4 into an atari 2600. The GeForce Ti cards on the other hand have been totaly redone to take total advantage of the faster chip. Radeon makes good cards but there have been some compatability problems with newer games like Neverwinter Nights. If you are going to go with a Raedeon card , why not get one of the new 9000's. It is supposed to be the current king of all videocards, having only just recently been released.

[Animal]

Stay away from MX cards. They're just glorified Geforce 2 with no Pixel Shaders or DX8 support. The GF4 Ti4200 is good card and can overclock to Ti4600 speeds. IF you want awesome performance the ATI 9700 is the king right now, but nVidia is due to release a new chip soon. I'd go with the Ti4200 myself. You should get at least a year out of it before needing to upgrade again.

[flibulzbuth]

A year out of a Ti 4200??? I Hoped for more. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I've checked the ATI 9000 being in my price range. They seem excellent cards, but they are not officially win98SE compatible, only winME and up. Since i won't be able to upgrade my OS, i'll have to stick with Nvidia or older ATI.

From what i saw (benchmarks, reviews, this thread), i think i'll stay away from the MX. So the Ti4200 is pretty much the best bet. The XFX is pretty sexy too with it's chrome-covered fan, almost looks like a porsche [img]tongue.gif[/img] .

Thanks all for the input.

[True_Moose]

Well consider this...I emailed id, and my G4Ti4200 should be sufficient to run Doom III at at least 1024x768 resolution. Fine by me.