Zmid Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 If you were going to go with a GeForce, I'd go with the Mentor Geforce 128Mb FX5200 TD Dvi, as, in that list, it's the least likely to require upgrading from in the future. The best one there from the ATI range is probably the 128Mb DDR ATi Radeon 9200 SE, but if you could stretch your budget a little, I would definately recommend going for something with a little bit more oomph, such as a GeForce FX 5600 or Radeon 9600, as I think they give a good compromise between performance and price (unless, of course, you are a complete nut about being able to run absolutely everything on max settings, in which case, mortgage your house and buy a GeForce 6800 or a Radeon X800 when they hit the shelves :P ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hogosha Ookami Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 well about the max settings, the 9600se can run even Unreal Tourniment 2004 with all settings at max. The only downside to radeon in my usage si that battlefeild doesn;t like it and yu ahve to stick to medium settings. thats about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThetaOrionis01 Posted June 19, 2004 Author Share Posted June 19, 2004 We're not talking about maximal gaming experiences for this card - it's a cheap upgrade from a TNT2 I'm looking for. I mean, it's going into a computer with a 600MHz processor! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormscape Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 *litters thread with ATi subliminal messages* "ATi is good. The Nvidia fairy seems to agree." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cactoblasta Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 I'd go with the 9200. They are really good cards for the price - and if you want to, they're quiet, cold and small enough to use to run a MP3/CD/DVD player for the lounge room. I use one of them for that and it works great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgoth Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 I guess it's time to back up the said things with a few benchmarking results. I've taken this from a gaming mag that came out in March '04, so it isn't too old. They've run three benchmarks with Far Cry, UT 2k3 and Elite Force 2. It might be worth mentioning that except the GeForce FX 5200, none of the chips mentioned above does even appear in those benchmarks. The results for the FX 5200 are: Far Cry: 18 fps (1024x768, 32 bit)Far Cry: 12 fps (1280x1024, 32 bit)UT 2k3: 52.8 fps (1024x768, 32 bit)UT 2k3: 36.5 fps (1024x768, 2x Anit-Aliasing, 4:1 Anisotropic Filter)Elite Force 2: 46.3 (1024x768, 32 bit)Elite Force 2: 23 (1024x768, 32 bit, 2x AA, 4:1 AF) For the other hardware they used more or less the best stuff available so that the results depended only on the graphics card. As can be seen, the FX 5200 has quite decent performance, the significant drop in case of Far Cry can be blamed on its DirectX 9 support (IIRC) - it calculates all the nifty new effects although its performance actually does not suffice to do that. Unfortunately, not every game is like Morrowind and allows you to turn shader effects off. AFAIK both performance and the performance drop in case of cards that support DirectX 8/9 is even worse with the other models. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vandorssen Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 If you are looking for something reasonably good but inexpensive I would look perhaps to the used market, either local or online. The one computer shop in town here routinely strips older (trade-ins, lightning damage, etc.) computers of their working and then they sell those components individually. Why go for this year’s mid-range card when you could get a better performing card (last year’s top-o-the-line model) for the same coin? From that perspective, a nVidia geForce 4 TI 4600 would likely fit the bill. Also, for multiple brands of cards using the same chipset (i.e. an Asus Radeon 9600 vs. a Sapphire 9600) the main difference is going to be in extra features, not performance. In that case you may want to look at an OEM card (white-box) if you do not need all the extra software and the like. By buying OEM myself in the past (particularly CPUs and video cards) I was able to save quite a bit of money. If you can buy a new OEM Radeon 9600 for the same price as a retail 9200, why not? The only caveat I have seen with purchasing OEM is that the products usually do not carry as long of a warranty. It is not that they are in any way inferior (they are identical in every way to the retail product), but the OEM companies presume the computer system manufacturer will provide the warranty. There are my two cents: Used or OEM. Hope it helps. p.s.I have a Voodoo 5 5500 (64MB, 2 VPU, AGP) you can have if you want it... Or even a very rare Voodoo 5 6500 (128MB, 4 VPU, AGP, Ext. power supply)... but that will cost you ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmid Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 Theta, I'm right in thinking you're British? If so, do you have a Maplins near you? If so, you might want to have a look at their website, as the one near me generally has no problem ordering something in if they don't have it in store. The reason I mention this is that, on their website, they have a 256MB version of a GeForce FX 5200 for £79.99, which is pretty cheap. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 She's not British ... she's Scottish. You're only British if you're English, everyone else simply imitates :D Anyway...you may want to read this telling review (http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/VGA/Inno3D_FX5200/) about the FX 5200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmid Posted June 19, 2004 Share Posted June 19, 2004 She's not British ... she's Scottish. Aaaah, good. She's of the elite of the British. :P Anyway...you may want to read this telling review (http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/VGA/Inno3D_FX5200/) about the FX 5200. Hmm, they did seem to have quite a few driver problems at first. Good thing Nvidia got their act together and sorted them, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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