Registered: Aug 2001
Location:
Posts: 145

I have a PIII 733 256 SD ram, soon to be 512 SD ram.

I want to be able to play Quake3 engin run games with MAX graphics and stuff. Currently, with my GeForce2 MX 400 its at medium and low settings.

Of these cards, which is the best buy?

CANADIAN dollars folks! Rememer that! And I cant really afford a GeForce4 Ti 4600....:


G4 MX440 64M DDR DV-i, TV-o, AGP4x Special Edition (with Golden Orb VGA Low profile fan ) $180 Canadian

G3 Ti200 64M 4.4ns DDR TV-o, AGP4x, TV-Out $235 Canadian

Gf-4 Ti4600-TD 128M DDR w/ TV-out, DV-i, AGP4x (retail box) $600 Canadian

Radeon 8500, 64MB DDR AGP4x, DVi, DB15 Dual display, Video-out $315 Canadian

Radeon 8500 64MB DDR AGP4x, DVi/DB15 Dual display, Video-out (OEM / retail) $260/270

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

G3 Ti500 64M 4.0ns DDR DV-i, TV-o, AGP4x $450 Canadian

G2 Ti100 64M DDR VIVO, AGP4x $180 Canadian

G4 MX440 64M DDR DV-i, TV-o, AGP4x $185 Canadian

Hercules Prophet2 Titanium 64M DDR AGP4x $210 Canadian

Hercules Prophet 4500 64M SDRAM AGP4x $145 ($185 w/ Tvout) Canadian

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Mönchengladbach, NRW, Germany
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...this thing perfectly fits to another place...

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Registered: Jan 2002
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Posts: 92

ok, this is officially scary, i go by Strider at alot of places, and am canadian, ugh, scary

go for the GF3 then

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 1362

yup id take GF3 anytime because it is older and more mature than GF4

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 650

probably the second one if you don't have a LOT of $$ to spare...

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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Well, it'd help if we knew what your price ceiling is. If you've got the money, bag the best one.

If you can't afford the G4 Ti 4600, then get a bank loan and go buy it! (j/k)

If you want my opinion, then get a Geforce. But _not_ any MX-class vidcard. The MX series was designed for budget-minded casual users that have never even heard of Quake 3. I'm not saying that they're bad in any way, it's just that there's something better available.

Since the 4600 is likely out of the question, then go for the G3 Ti500. If that's still too much money, then the Ti200.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Go for a GeForce 3 if your keeping to a budget. Stay away from the MX cards and you'll be happy.

Depends on what you currently have too. An upgrade for me to a GF3 is worthless because I have a GF2 GTS and its not that far behind most of teh GF3's....perhaps GF4 or 5 I'll go for later

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Registered: Feb 2002
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I have heard NOTHING but horror stories about the GF 4. I know 2 guys that bought them and they fried as soon as they started thier computer. Thank god that Best Buy has that 30 return program. I would have been majorly bummed if that happened to me. Especially for $400 too!

GF 3 series cards are more than good enough.

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: England
Posts: 2275

the geforce 4 may sound good, but one of my friends has gotten a radeon8500 and loves it.. depends on your budget, but it's debatable whether the gf4 is really worth the extra.

this may help - radeon8500 vs gf4

http://www.gamespy.com/hardware/march02/rad8500vsgf4/

saying this, Geforce have better reputation for drivers than ATI, but ATI tech is in my experience normally pretty much rock solid, while nvidia's tech can be a bit iffy with some chipsets. Nvidia cards are the most popular, and therefore better support in games and newer versions of directx is likely, espescially in light of the nvidia/microsoft partnership in the breeze block that is Xbox

edit - oops, u said u couldn't afford a GF4.. hmm.. the ATI card is faster than a GF3.. according to gamespy it compares favourably - considering the price difference - with a GF4. So I'll recommend that, on the strength of my friend's recommendation and this news article.

quote:

---

NVIDIA is still the speed king, but at what cost? At half the price, ATI may be the better choice.

---

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Last edited by Xaphod_x on 03-20-2002 at 02:21 AM

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Bracknell, England
Posts: 71

Going by my own experience with ATI I would aviod them. I don't have their latest card (Radeon 8500) but I did get the standard Radeon when it first came out. Half of the games I ran didn't work with it correctly. Freespace 2 being one of them. Later on the drivers did eventually improve and a few of the games worked fine.
However, since the Radeon 7000 and above came out I have had nothing but trouble with the drivers. They tried to combine all of their drivers within a certain range of cards into one package. Their drivers are about 13 meg normally because of this.
When installing the latest drivers it picks the wrong one. It installs the Radeon 7200 instead of the Radeon DDR and because of this every game you can run on it has half of the textures missing and then after about 5 mins your machine would crash. Hardware Texture & Lighting doesn't seem to work with the new drivers too. When installing the drivers manually the list of available drivers is a mess. Every driver is repeated about 5 times and there is no driver for my card anymore even though in the readme and on the website it says that this driver package supports the Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO.
A mate of mine also had a Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO and he is running Windows XP. He has exactly the same problems.

Now, I know you arn't concidering this specific card but from what I have heard in the past this sort of thing does happen to a lot of their cards. It is for this reason I changed it to a GeForce 3 and it has worked perfectly. I can't fault it. I am going to stick to Nvidia from now on unless ATI miraculously improve their performance. The latest Radeon may work fine but I'm going for quality over price.

If you can afford to, I would get a GeForce 3 unless you want to wait and let the GeForce 4 prove itself. Depends on how desperate you are.

To anyone who reads this, I apologise for boring the hell out of you with my own problems but I think it applies in your choice of graphics card.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 2894

Do not, under any circumstances, get a GF4 MX. they're worse than GF3s :P

If you have an EPoX board (specifically the 8KHA+) don't get a GF4. Someone didn't play fair with AGP specs and you'll get capacitors hitting one another. Bad.

I would get a GF3 Ti200 myself. It's pretty much the sweet spot for price/performance, plus if you get a good brand *COUGH*GAINWARD*COUGH* it can be overclocked really high. (other brands besides Gainward can do so, but I find Gainward cards better and they also guarantee an oc, IIRC nobody else does.)

I also have found ATi = driver problems. Not everyone - I know a couple people with radeon 8500s that love them, but even then there have been some driver problems. So for drivers, nvidia drivers > ATi drivers. It's a factor you should consider.

On a side note, I'm very happy with how this has remained a rather mature discussion.

(Ice: only until dx8 effects start getting used for real. Which will probably happen when gf5s are around )

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Some results I am finding all over various forums are that:

ATI Radeon 8500 is a suberb card and recommended by 50% of the people. Most here seem to be pro-Nvidia.
ATI Radeon 8500 drivers are a problem. If you are lucky, its okay. But drivers do stink.

GeForce4 MX series stink.

GeForce4 Ti series too expensive.

Herculese and other cards I dont know jack about.

Conclusion:

GeForce3 Ti series. Im told that they are better suited for direct X 8.1, as with the ATI Radeon 8500. The GeForce4 is not suited for DX 8.1, but 8a.

This will factor in to future games. Im also told that all of these cards are good for future uber engines like the Unreal2 and Doom3 engines.

I want a card for JediKnight II: Outcast, using Quake3 TA tech.

I have....well lets say $300 Canadian for a card, but dont wanna spend alot.

FINALE:

Do I go for a GeForce3 Ti 200

Or I go for a GeForce Ti 500

What is the difference between the two? Speed? Both will be 64 meg cards.

PS- No ATI? Card is super, many say. Many. Driver issue is it.....and what is LE? -(Radeon 8500LE 128MB DDR AGP4x, TV--out ( retail) $300 Canadian

This seems good....better than the GeForce3 Ti 500 for $450 and Ti 200 for $235....cause its better than the Ti200.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

GeForce3 Ti 200, 500, or ATI Radeon 8500?

Im thinking Radeon........take chance on drivers. Using win 98, so Im kinda safe.....er than other windows crap.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Revealed on a need to know basis... And you don't need to know...
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I have a RADEON 7200,

I must say I went with my fair share of problems with that one but it is now all solved.

I had the problems when I was still running a PIII 400, with an INTEL mobo. The darn thing always locked up when I was playing games, even when I had the latest drivers.

Now I'm running an AMD XP 1800+ on a GIGABYTE mobo with WIN XP. Now, I play FS2, Ghost Recon, Deus Ex, FS2k2 all at resolution of 1024x768 and I get good Frame rate. Ex: FS2k2 at 45 FPS (that's a lot for a flight sim).

ATI are almost like Diamond, they work often on new drivers (especially since they made the RADEON).

So, The RADEON 8500, should be a good buy. I am not currently dissapointed of my 7200.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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IMO the driver problems of Ati are greatly exaggarated. The problems came from old os's and from bad mobo/agp driver revisions. The stupid-user is also a bit valid from what I've heard, but not big enough to cover really anything.

Nevertheless, it's a common fact that 8500's drivers are not yet in shape. On the other hand, it tops GF4's in image quality, has better dvd support, and it costs hell of a lot less. Stay away from GF4's and GF4MX's, they're really ripping the cash out of them.

You should also consider your cpu power. 733Mhz is still a lot of that, but it's not fast enough to keep up with very latest cards. It could be all the same would you be running a GF3 Ti200 or GF4. So try to look out for some tests of vid cards not run with 1.x GHz machines.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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Posts: 397

quote:

---

Originally posted by Strider
Im thinking Radeon........take chance on drivers. Using win 98, so Im kinda safe.....er than other windows crap.

---

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Canada
Posts: 436

best card in the market by far is
Gf-4 Ti4600-TD 128M DDR w/ TV-out, DV-i, AGP4x (retail box)

WHA? $600 Canadian ONLY!? i'm gettign it now.... and here I was gonna get a GF3 Ti200 thinking its the cheapest i could afford...

By the way, I have a TNT 2 card (not even Ultra) and its RAPES thru Quake 3... up til 800x600 anyway, so why is your Geforce 2 MX slow with Quake?

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 1362

because he dosent EVER format the drive and has all of the drive fragmented

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 371

GF 4 MX is upgraded GF 2 MX .... Don't buy...

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Chichester, United Kingdom
Posts: 189

I don't think debating about this subject is ever gonna really do it any justice. I've been on about four other different forums (CGI-related) in the last fortnight, talking to people about the best graphics cards - in the GeForce3 or GeForce4 ranges - and can safely say the only way you'll know is by using two approaches:

1) Read a review at GameSpot or somewhere like that,

OR:

2) Get the team to uut a Poll up on this forum about it.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: good old Scotland
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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

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