VWBB - Best video card on the market? Help

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Posted by Mr. Fury on 03-20-2002 08:58 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Apothess
i have a GF3 titanium 500 and although its exellanct it has a few problems with FS2 and ihave been told that its too fast for the game and thats why i the game stuters at some points in the game well thats wot the Manager of the GAME store told me

Nope, the problem is in your video card drivers, motherboard chipset drivers or settings/tweaks.

Update all of your drivers, patch FS2 to latest version (1.20) and check out BIOS settings. If you can, play around with general windows and video card settings and tweaks. I have Ti200 and FS2 does not stutter or stuff.

System can't be too fast, unless you talk about old dos games.

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Posted by Strider on 03-20-2002 10:19 PM:

Im runnin win98, but I can get 98plus or XP, or Millennium, whatever all that junk is....

What IS the best windows operating system for games anyhow? Microsoft sucks, but thats all there is.....so which is best? Is 98plus good enough?

RE: whats the difference between the GF3 Ti200 and Ti500?

Radeon 8500 and Radeon 8500LE?

I am upgrading to a Athlon 1.x gig in summer, with 512 ram (SD or DDR?, whats best?) and new mobo.

Keep in mind.

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Posted by Coconut Joe on 03-21-2002 12:19 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Strider
I am upgrading to a Athlon 1.x gig in summer, with 512 ram (SD or DDR?, whats best?) and new mobo.

DDR, definatly. I think you will find it hard to get a motherboard that doesn't support DDR. The Athlon chip is designed to work with DDR. When getting DDR memory always go with Crucial memory. Their DDR memory beats the pants off of other brands except maybe Samsung who are Crucials closest rival in terms of memory speed. Crucial are still better.

As to the differences between Ti200 and Ti500 I could find out but I'm sure that others already have. I'll let them explain.

Posted by Kazan on 03-21-2002 03:07 PM:

Get the Radeon 8500LE 128MB DDR AGP4x, TV--out ( retail) $300 Canadian

best bang for your buck [BTW: I own a company buidling computers so I'd know!]

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Posted by Raider on 03-21-2002 06:11 PM:

Take the GF2. No on needs a GF3 or even GF4, there are hardly games supporting their features and an GF2 is much cheaper. With some additional cooling IÂ´ve overclocked my 3d Prophet2 MX up to 215 Mhz.
And with the money you save, you can have many, many beers in your favority bar

Posted by Fahd on 03-22-2002 04:23 PM:

Depends on what strategy you follow for buying graphics cards. The way I see it, there are two ways:

1) Get the latest greatest thing but do so only every two or so years (3 years if you can push it that far), or

2) Get the cheap model graphics cards which are good for now and then upgrade every 6-18 months.

I prefer following method 1 as oppsed to 2, as I like to burn lots of money every 2-3 years rather than burning small amounts of money. Of course your mileage may vary

Anyway I'm getting a GF4 Ti 4400, my Voodoo 3 3000 needs to be replaced

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Posted by JC Denton on 03-22-2002 09:09 PM:

GeForce3 Ti200 and Ti500 Specs

The main difference is the speed of the GPU. Observe:

quote:
Taken from nVidia's website:

GeForce3 Ti 500

Graphics Core: 256-bit
Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Fill Rate: 3.84 Billion AA Samples/Sec.
Operations per Second: 960 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 8.0GB/Sec

GeForce 3 (original)

Graphics Core: 256-bit
Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Fill Rate: 3.84 Billion AA Samples/Sec.
Operations per Second: 960 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 8.0 GB/Sec.

GeForce3 Ti 200

Graphics Core: 256-bit
Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Fill Rate: 2.8 Billion AA Samples/Sec.
Operations per Second: 700 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/Sec.

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Posted by Alphakiller on 03-23-2002 03:40 AM:

Gee Kazan, I know a guy who owns his own company who advocates GF line cards. Asus in particular, for various reasons (they don't neccessarily use the reference nVidia design if they can get some more performance out of another, they use high-quality PCB, et cetera) ...

Anyway.
The other thing about the GF3 Ti200 is you can overclock it to Ti500 levels - in most cases so don't expect it. I still advocate Gainward as a brand here.

Similarly, the Radeon 8500 has hardware DVD decoding. So? Unless you're running a Pentium-II 400 there's no need for hardware decoding. And I personally like WinDVD's decoder...it looks great compared to my friend who has a Radeon and hardware decoding. YMMV, of course.

And last but not least, image quality is by far subjective. I know quite a few people who - in 2D - don't see a difference between high-end GF3s (e.g. Leadtek, Visiontek, Gainward, Asus) and Radeon8500s ... in 3D, well, I don't think something as nebulous as 'image quality' really works...with AA my GF3 looks pretty damn sweet, and without it, it all depends on the game engine. I imagine the same is the same for the Radeon. Keep in mind most GF2s have crap 2D; this was before nVidia started cracking down and getting manufacturers to use better 2D filters and all. I had an Asus GF2 with pretty bad 2D, but really good 3D. My Gainward GF3 has great 2D and 3D.

IMO, you're best off with the GF3 Ti200; it's the current sweet spot of price and performance at $235CDN. I would *not* get a GF2. If you want to play today's games, fine. If you want to be in any way prepared for the next twelve months, get a GeForce 3. Seriously. GF2s are potent now but newer titles will definitely tax them beyond their limits. Doom3, Unreal 2...et cetera.

If you do decide for a Radeon 8500, be warned that the OEM version is slower than the retail. Yup. 250/250 as opposed to 275/275. Very strange on ATi's part, but there you go.
...oh, and be sure update your drivers, so you don't get that Quack3 crap. man, that was just wrong.

An actually important edit.
By the way, I ought to explain. I never advocate getting the most expensive card on the market - in this case either the Radeon 8500 or the GF4 Ti4600, being the two most expensive cards from ATi and nVidia, respectively. This is because they're ludicrously overpowered; software is lagging well behind hardware in terms of utilized power. So, you're paying a price premium because it's the newest thing on the market for almost no gain. So if you get something just a notch below the top, you get very good performance, a good 'shelf life' because it'll last quite a long time AND it saves you money so you can repeat the process a few years down the line; say the GeForce6 is the hottest card on the market, get a high-end GF5 or something. At least, that's how I card-shop. When the GF3s were brand new, I got a GF2u, when the GF3 Ti500s were top of the line, I got a Ti200. (For different computers, mind you. I don't have hats made of money! )

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Posted by Kazan on 03-26-2002 03:20 PM:

I advocated the 8500LE [Light Edition] for a reason

the 128MB DDR 8500 itself is USD 299
the 128MD DDR 8500 LE is UST 199 - the LE is just missing the multiple monitor / HDTV dongle connection

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Posted by IceFire on 03-26-2002 03:25 PM:

I think the best card on the market is a S3 ViRGE 2mb

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Posted by Skullar on 03-26-2002 05:23 PM:

Shouldn't we move this thread to GENERAL DISCUSSION ?
This is TBP

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Posted by Mr. Fury on 03-26-2002 06:42 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Skullar
Shouldn't we move this thread to GENERAL DISCUSSION ?
This is TBP

I agree, although I'd fix the last sentence "This is not TBP".

Posted by Alphakiller on 03-27-2002 12:33 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Kazan
I advocated the 8500LE [Light Edition] for a reason

You know, it'd be nice if you explained your reasoning; like I did. Otherwise it sounds a whole lot like "listen to me because I am the best and you don't need any other reason" ... which I doubt is your intent so you might wanna explain yourself a bit.

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Posted by Remora on 03-27-2002 04:25 AM:

Ask and ye shall receive.

Posted by Alphakiller on 03-27-2002 06:30 AM:

arr, beaten to it by the remora!
I was going to come back and move it but noooooooo you HAVE to beat me to it.

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Posted by killadonuts on 03-27-2002 10:44 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Fury

System can't be too fast, unless you talk about old dos games.

I know all about that. The old Descent games are impossible to play anymore on my new machine.

Posted by killadonuts on 03-28-2002 02:20 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Strider
Im runnin win98, but I can get 98plus or XP, or Millennium, whatever all that junk is....

What IS the best windows operating system for games anyhow? Microsoft sucks, but thats all there is.....so which is best? Is 98plus good enough?

RE: whats the difference between the GF3 Ti200 and Ti500?

Radeon 8500 and Radeon 8500LE?

I am upgrading to a Athlon 1.x gig in summer, with 512 ram (SD or DDR?, whats best?) and new mobo.

Keep in mind.

There is no "good" Windows operating system. Just stick with whatever you have and if it works fine DO NOT UPGRADE.

Posted by JC Denton on 03-28-2002 02:39 AM:

ME was a farce, 98 doesn't take advantage of all your processor capacity/memory (upper limit on RAM utilization is 256 MB), and XP costs a helluva lot, plus not everything works under it.

98se is probably your best bet, but since Microsoft will be dropping support for it pretty soon, you won't be able to get patches and the likes for it.

XP isn't too bad. It's just the initial investment that hurts. Although it isn't "crashproof" as many claim it is. I've still managed to pull a BSOD or two out of it. Most of the time it recovers before something _really_ bad happens. In the 2 months I've had it I've only had to reinstall once. A new record for me.

Posted by Manko on 03-28-2002 02:49 PM:

The diffrence between the Geforce 3 Ti 500 and Radeon 8500 in speed is that the geforce has 250/275 and the Radeon 275/300.
And the drivers are constantly improving and it's now faster than the Geforce 3 Ti 500... At least in the tests i've made with the latest drivers on both parts with Windows 98.
Oh and the Radeon works just fine with win 98 for me.

Posted by Alphakiller on 03-28-2002 10:51 PM:

Numbers are a bit off:
Radeon 8500 (retail) 275/275
Radeon 8500 (OEM) 250/250

I think your GF3 Ti500 numbers are off too...I remember the core is 240, the memory's higher; forget what though...

Anyway, were I you: GF3 Ti200 for $235CDN or the retail (can't stress that enough) Radeon 8500 64MB for $270CDN.
Those, IMO, would be your best choices should you decide to go nVidia / ATi respectively.
However, $30 for an extra 64MB RAM on that Radeon 8500 (getting Kazan's pick, the 8500LE for $300) ... ehn. That's personal preference; I don't think with the 8500 chipset you'll need the 128MB. With GF4-series and whatever ATi's successor to the 8500 ( 8800?) chips come the real use for 128, because they have the GPU cores to really use it. So that's my take on it.

So remember: Don't get a GF4 MX. At all. EVER. And OEM nVidia = fine. OEM ATi = bad.

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