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How bad is my video card? (1 Viewer)

Larry Seno Jr.

Supporting Actor
Joined
Feb 28, 2002
Messages
527
I have a 2 year old Asus Geforce2 GTS w/32 megs of SDR memory. How far behind the Geforce3 or 4 am I in terms of REAL speed? Is it worth it to upgrade to a Geforce4 MX440 w/64 megs of DDR memory or would I not notice that much of a difference? I feel like Im in need of a card that does FSAA because Tiger Woods 2002 runs and looks like SHIT and I have a 1gig processor with 700 megs of ram, so that cant be the hold up.
 

Justin Lane

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2000
Messages
2,149
I have Geforce 2 GTS with DDR card in my rig (800 mhz) and it still performs fine for me. The SDR ram does slow the card down some. A better card would help, but to maximize your performance a new card and CPU is probably the way to go.

J
 

Scott L

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 29, 2000
Messages
4,457
Just sold my Elsa Gladiac GF2 GTS 32mb DDR for a Radeon 7500 (needed the dual-head) and I have to tell ya even though my new card has 64mb of DDR, the opening of UT ran much smoother with the Gladiac. :frowning: Sad but true. Bless nVidia and their Detonator drivers.
Tom did a pretty good markup of all the cards and benched em on 4 different games. Check it out:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...418/index.html
 

Rob Lutter

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2000
Messages
4,523
Whatever you do... DO NOT get a GeForce MX model. The GeForce4 MX cards actually run SLOWER than the GeForce 3 cards (think of a GeForce4 MX as a GeForce2.5). I have the GeForce3 Ti200 card [64MB DDR] and it works like a charm (around $140). :D
 

Drew Wimmer

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Feb 18, 2002
Messages
61
yeah, that's pretty far behind, a lot has happened in the most recent two generations of gpu's that nvidia's released, aside from the clock speeds, though right now i'd upgrade to a radeon 8500le right now if i were going the budget route (particularly since they can be oc'ed to regular 8500 speeds with no problem, poor-mans's equivalent of the gf4 ti4200 w/ a little creative cooling ;))
if you go with ati, make sure you get the retail version, not oem/white box/brown box/etc. because those ones are clocked slower, this is particularly important if you don't intend to overclock
and yeah, by all means avoid the gf4mx series as if your life depended on it, those were meant to go in dells, comcraps, and the like, stay away
 

Larry Seno Jr.

Supporting Actor
Joined
Feb 28, 2002
Messages
527
Sorry guys, ATI cards are utter crap. No offense to the owners, but they work RARELY out of the box with most games, and seeing as this is PURELY a gaming machine, i can't take chances with cards other than Invidia. I find it kind of disheartening that the mx cards suck as they are cheap, I guess you get what you pay for :)
 

Kimmo Jaskari

Screenwriter
Joined
Feb 27, 2000
Messages
1,528
Ok, can we put a damper on the hyperbole there for a second?
ATI may not have the driver department that Nvidia has, they do have problems with the 8500 series gamma (which affects HTPC users, the rest of the gaming world doesn't care as much) and your chance of running into trouble in some games under some circumstances is greater.
That said, the ATI cards produce a noticeably better picture and are fast - not as fast as the top of the line GeForce 4 but once you achieve 120 fps in a game, how much more to you really need...?
In other words, ATI cards are not "utter crap". They are in fact very nice graphics cards, even though Nvidia still is a small notch ahead on compatibility and raw speed. For me, picture quality is a big point in ATI's favor over the Nvidia lineup.
Personally I'm still gaming on a Geforce 256. The original first generation one. With SDRAM. :P
 

Brad_V

Second Unit
Joined
Mar 8, 2002
Messages
356
I'm using a 3D Prophet/Geforce 256 (32meg SDR) and haven't run into any problems with most things up to 1024x768 using 16-bit color, 32-bit color takes a good bit of wind out of its sails, but you need some serious hardware to get good performance with FSAA, so if you want fast play with FSAA on, yeah, you're gonna need something newer (and probably expensive).
 

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