To Replace or Not to Replace?

[Guardian]

I'm thinking of replacing my Viper TNT 2 Ultra graphics board with a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX graphics board. I will put this in my P-III 600Mhz ABIT BE6-II homebuilt running 256MB of PC133 ram. I've got a great 19" monitor.

Question is I usually play Strategy Games, i.e., Red Alert 2, AOEII, etc, and only occasionally RPGs,i.e, Unreal, Quake, etc. I don't fly airplanes or race cars on my PC.

Am I wasting my money on the upgrade (about $150) or should I just wait until the vN20 cards come out which should drive down the price of the GeForce2 Ultra cards?

Opinions?

Thanks

[Xayd]

I wouldn't consider the MX much of a step up from the TNT2 Ultra.

I also don't think the NV20 or the Geforce2 Ultra will come close to justifying their price tags.

The route that 3dfx and Nvidia are taking here is trying to give you enough speed in the vid card to run at 1280 x 1024 and above in 32 bit color, with anti-aliasing. Both companies would have you believe that playing with that "eye candy" off is a thing of the past, and you need a new vid card to make things look as nice as they do on your friends' machines.

I disagree wholeheartedly. The difference between 32 bit and 16 bit color is nil, especially when you consider the price tag on these new Nvidia cards. The performance hit on both the Voodoo5 and the Geforce2 64 meg card is enormous with anti-aliasing on. For 500 bucks I keep the TNT2 and get another 128 megs of RAM and a gigahertz processor. People are always quick to run out and buy the biggest, baddest video card that can be had down at Best Buy, but that card won't greatly improve your speed in processor intensive games like Quake and Unreal Tournament if you're still using a P2 450 with 64 megs of system RAM.

This only applies to the first person shooters that you mention playing, of course. What vid card you have means absolutely nothing in the single player games that you said you play. As long as the visual quality is good, which it is on the TNT2, the rest doesn't matter.



Xayd

[Guardian]

Ok, great. Thanks for the reply. I've been switching video cards for some time and in all honesty haven't found a great deal of difference from one level to the next. I've been satisfied with the Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra but wanted to hear someone say I wasn't missing anything.

I really like the idea of saving my cash and upgrading to a new 1Ghz cpu. At the prices the Athlons are going now, it probably would be a better deal, but, I'll have to buy a whole new MB now! Still, that's proabably the best way to go.

Thanks.

[Tiretool]

I'll stay with the bandwagon on this particular one... agreed that you wouldn't get the difference in night and day by upgrading from TNT2 Ultra to GeForce 2 MX. Agreed that the next generation video cards won't come close to justifying their outrageous prices.

I do though, disagree that the difference in 32 bit and 16 bit is nil. "I" can tell a big difference between the two and it is a vivid, more crisp difference. The only games I still play in 16 bit are games based on the Unreal engine.

I still say that if you're going to "upgrade" go with a GeForce 256 DDR card. More performance than the GF2 MX and the price is dropping every day.

[Xayd]

Heh, Tiretool may be right on the 32 bit color. Still being a 3dfx lackey myself, I'm still new to the idea of 32 bit color . Plus I'm very near sighted, and play with a cigarette hanging from my mouth so my vision is inherently clouded.

I guess it depends on what you play more. 90-100 frames per second looks alot better to me than sharper contrasts and smoother lines, but then again I'm a first person shooter player.

Xayd

[Edited by Xayd on 12-14-2000 at 03:41 AM]