Graphics card question?

[Tony Glass]

In your opinions what is the best 3D card out there for $200 or less.

thanks.
tony

[fade2black]

Just one question, which of the three following do you value most? 1. Speed 2. Visual Quality 3. Features

The Nvidia GeForce cards are speed demons, 3DFX Voodoo5 cards add visual polish with FSAA while maintaining acceptable framerates, and the ATI Radeon is the most feature rich of the bunch. This is my 2 cents on the current market, hope it helps to give you a better idea of what will work for you. There is a lot of competition in the video card market so there are a lot of choices right now.

[Tiretool]

Anyone who is an avid NVidiot like I am is going to tell you to go with the upper echelon of Geforce 2 cards, either the GTS or the Ultra version. I don't endorse the MX version of the GeForce 2 cards because they are a scaled down version and they are "limited" in their abilities barely surpassing the performance of a GeForce 256 and being overshadowed by the performance of a GeForce 256 with Double Data Rate memory. However, the GeForce 2 MX is the obvious economic choice merely because it is in your price range.

If you go with a 3DFX product, don't choose the Voodoo 4. It's barely better than a Voodoo 3 and very inferior to the Voodoo 5.

If you go with an ATI board, I would suggest the Raydeon. I've learned that it's an acceptible supstitute for a GeForce, actually beating it in certain benchmarks and resolutions.

[PeteS99]

I just read today that Nvidia has a new 'gpu' coming out next quarter, that will blow the socks off the GeForce. Its the IV20 or something like that... that should throw GF2's way below $200..

[Xayd]

GF2's are well below 200 bucks as of the last week or two, to compete with 3dfx's price drop on the Voodoo5 for Christmas.

I'd consider the Voodoo5 and the 32 meg Geforce2 a wash. They're pretty much the same performance wise. 64 meg Geforce2's are faster by about 10 frames per second.

Geforce2 Ultra? 450 bucks for a video card? No thanks. I used to pick on people who paid 500 bucks for a pair of Voodoo2's, and I'll also pick on folks who pay 450 bucks for this GF2 Ultra .


Xayd

[Tony Glass]

Thanks, bump. I'd like some more opinions.
Some people don't Readon and some don't like voodoo.
Seems most like Gforce2 but it's a little expensive.

I saw an AGP VooDoo 5 for $189. Good Deal?

[PeteS99]

Hey Xayd, its just disgusting how fast those things dropped... a month ago I was helping my roomie shop for one, and we were pushing $300!! I'm glad I don't buy those things. I got a Viper II 32MB AGP4x (Savage 2000) for $39, and am most satisfied.

pete

[Xayd]

Yeah, either the 32 meg Geforce2 or the Voodoo5 would be a great buy. Get the Geforce if you play primarily OpenGL and D3D games in low resolutions for raw speed (i.e. Quake, Soldier of Fortune, Half Life). Get the Voodoo5 if you play Glide games (Unreal Engine stuff mainly, like Rune, UT, etc.) or if you want to use the anti-aliasing and other such eye candy.

Xayd