Help Me Decide!

[KRAMER]

I need to but a new video card and I was wondering what you guys would recommend for say $100 or less. I've got a 400 Celeron on an ABIT BX2, and I mainly play games and surf the net. While your at it, how 'bout a good cheap sound card? Thanks.

[lost1]

You'll probably get a bazillion recommendations, but here's mine:

Creative Labs Savage 4 (PCI or AGP)- has 125MHz clock & 32 megs of RAM for $99 at Circuit City. Beautiful color and great 3D, especially in Quake II. Driver updates very simple through CL's website.
Soundcard- ISA (save those PCI slots!) SoundBlaster16- simple, reliable, no software conflicts. With 2nd day air from kdcomputers.com- $33. Hard to beat.

I run both of these items in a PII300 w/64megs of PC100 & couldn't be happier. Good luck.

[This message has been edited by lost1 (edited 09-11-99).]

[BBA]

I'm more thinking a 16M TNT2... You can find them for about $95.00-110.00, and they clock to 150/170. It's a poor mans TNT2 Ultra...

For cheap sound cards, I like the SB's. Try a AWE 32 or 64 value. Their real reasonable nowadays.

BBA

[dawgtuff]

I agree with BBA......DawgTuff.

[clough]

Get a Viper 550 16meg.Should be in that price range.

[daveleau]

Sorry lost1, but your rec on the Savage 4 is the first one i have heard. I sell supplies part time and it gets returned every time one is sold. I am glad you got it to work well though.

[lost1]

daveleau- That comes as something of a surprise to me, as I've heard pretty good things about the new S4's. I got mine after reading a review in the Sep '99 issue of Computer Games mag, where the S4 powered Stealth 3 beat out the 16 meg TNT on almost every one of four different benchmarks up through 1024x768x32, and fared pretty well against the Viper Ultra, up to a point. My brother also has one in his machine, so I got a chance to preview it before buying.
However, your experiences as a reseller should also be taken into account by Kramer before he buys- it's valuable information that should be considered.
As with anything, I recommend the person try to see the candidates in action before buying- saves a lot of headaches down the road...
Good day to all! /forum/smile.gif

[RobRich]

The 16meg TNT2 is not a bad idea, esp. once its o/c'd. I've got my 32meg CL TNT-2 at 160/170 stable, not to bad for a non-Ultra card. Another card to consider is a v3 3000. These can be found a pricewatch starting at $102 US. www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com)