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About a Video Card... [message #7380] Tue, 18 March 2003 08:03 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bearxor is currently offline  Bearxor
Messages: 137
Registered: February 2003
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OMG, do not buy a Radeon 7500. That is like buying a bad GF2.

If you want to spend 80-100 dollars, your only real choice right now are a Radeon 9000 Pro, or a GF4MX:

Radeon 9000 Pro - Basically a Radeon 8500. You can find the 64MB version retail for 99.99,and the 128MB version for 129.99. Awesome Image quality, DirectX 8.1 compliant. This would probably last you a good couple of years.

Geforce 4MX - Basically a Geforce 2. An enhanced memory controller and higher clock speeds make it faster than the GF2. Not as fast as the 9000 Pro, however. Image quality is sub-par and it is only a DirectX 7 compliant card. The good thing about these is that they have been out for over a year and a half now, and are fairly cheap, in the 80-100 dollar retail range. I belive the majority are 64MB.

If you want to spend up to 200 dollars, your two choices are the GF4 ti4400 and the Radeon 9500 Pro:

Geforce 4 TI 4400 - Slightly slower than the 4600, but cheaper and falls into the 200 range. Most 4600's in retail stores are in the ups of 250-300. Good image quality, good frame rate, good overclocking ability. You could easily turn one of these into a 4600. Only available in 128MB, DirectX 8.1 compliant. Takes a HUGE hit when FSAA/AF are enabled.

Radeon 9500 Pro - On par speed-wise with a 4600, but simply blows it away when you enable FSAA/AF. Runs 220 retail for a 128MB version with a 20 mail in rebate, so 200 bucks. DirectX 9 compliant. AWESOME image quality.

I don't know how many time I have to say this, but you can not buy a video card based on frame rate alone. If you have never used FSAA/AF at runable speeds (and those of you that have GF2/GF4MX have not), then you have no idea. I reccomend to anyone that has a GF4MX to go out and buy a 9000 Pro, just to try it out... you can always return it. When I upraded my video card form a GF2 GTS to a ti4200, I was excited. Then someone convinced me to take my 4200 back and try out a 9000 Pro. While the 9000 Pro was slower than the 4200, the image quality knocked me back in my seat and prompted me to spend the extra 70 dollars to buy a 9500 Pro. Most of you have no idea how good renegade looks with 4X Anti-aliasing and 16X ansiotropic filtering at 40 frames per second. If i turn all that crap off, i get in the ups of over 100, but then it looks like shit.

Before you make a descision, just buy one and try it out for a couple of weeks. take it back and get something else. Find the compromise of image quality/speed that works for you.

EDIT: If 3DM2k1 scores work for you, here is a good breakdown on my machine.

My original GF2 GTS got around 3500. Remeber, a GF4MX is basically a GF2.
Then I got a ti4200. It scored around 7500-8000 points.
Then the Radeon 9000 Pro. It scored around 6500-7000
Then the Radeon 9500 pro. It scores 9000-9500.
I also get around 3500 in 3DM2K3.

This is on a Athlon T-bird 1.2 with 384MB of ram.


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