Need rational advice on what vid. card to put into new system.

[BEAGLEGOD]

Well ive been without a descent PC for a year and am finaly trying to put together a fairly good gaming PC. Ive descided on everything except the video card. mind you Im not married to J Loe and Bill Gates is not my daddy soooo. Im on a budget.the system will look like this-

1 AMD XP 2100
2 Gigabyte GA-7VAX VIA KT400 chipset motherboard
3 40 gig HD from seagate 7200 RPM
4 512 PC 3200 DDR RAM (kingston)
5 Windows XP PRO
6 Onboard Sound

So as far as a vid. card goes I was looking at a gainward geforce 3 ti 200/450 golden sample for 105 bucks or a chaintec geforce 4 ti 4200 for 145 bucks. Of course my wife wishes I would only spend 10 bucks but thats another story.any advice is much apreciated. :D

[BipolarBill]

Why not compromise?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=N82E16814145038

:D

[BEAGLEGOD]

I was just thinkin that wouldnt it be better to get the 128 meg version as aposed to the 64? while were on the subect what about a good ati card? I hear a lotta horror stories about compatability issues they have I was wondering if that was still the case. Are 128 meg cards worth the extra cash?

[BipolarBill]

Picky, picky, picky! Beggars can't be choosers.

More memory just gives you the ability to play at ridiculously high resolutions. I don't know about you, but I have a GF4 Ti4400 and I still play at 1024x768. The GF4 has hardware support for pixel shading, advanced bump-mapping and 8x FSAA. The GF3 can't quite match it.

I'm using a Chaintech Ti4400 and it has been beddie, beddie good to me. :D

[BEAGLEGOD]

sooo 64 megs should do provided i dont wanna play at 100000 x 900000 res. so would you consisder any ati card as worthy competition for ti 4200? last question:x

[BipolarBill]

Take a look:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-02.html

Only the ATi 9500 Pro competes. They start at $170. :eek:

[BEAGLEGOD]

well Im almost convinced to abandon any thought of purchasing an ati card, and I m leaning towards the 64 meg geforce 4 ti 4200,so the last thing I was wondering is will I see a difference between the 64 and 128 meg version, now im not talkin 3d marks and what the card scores 5000 feet underwater:) Im talkin playing morrowind and asherons call 2 and lovin it. so whata ya think? ive got my credit card in hand,and the new egg site open:r

[BipolarBill]

There are more pages on this stuff at Toms Hardware. Look at all of the benchmarks.


Just buy it and stop pestering me! :(

[BEAGLEGOD]

will do, thanx alot, but watch out Im sure Ill be pestering you again about soething else soon:r