Which card

[Alex007]

Right now I have a Geforce 2 MX 400 card that came with my comp, but its getting harder to play newer games (GTA3 lags a lot) and I want something better. I have a limited budget though, $200 or less.

here are my specs:

Windows XP
Pentium 4 1.5 gigz
768 MB of PC133 SDRAM

Right now I am thinking about ether a Geforce 3 TI 500 64MB or a Geforce 4 TI 4200 64MB. I'm unsure of which one to get though, I’ve heard that GF 3 has more bandwith? Also, does the card manufacturer mater (Chaintech, Gainward, Visiontek, ect)?
And what does it mean if it says its an OEM?

Basically I want the best and fastest card of the 2 I'm thinking about getting.

Any link where I can buy any of the two at the cheapest prices would be helpful too. On pricewatch.com the GF 3 TI 500 seems to run around $140 and the GF 4 TI 4200 around $160.

-Thanks

[BipolarBill]

The GF4 is a quantum leap over the GF3. If you plan on running Doom III when it arrives, you'll want to have the Ti4200. Plan for the future. Visiontek is nVidia's pet card maker, so they are a safe bet and usually priced best.

OEM cards are either white-boxed or in just the anti-static packaging. These are the cards that builders get by the dozen. There's usually no software included and sometimes no drivers. You can download the drivers. The software is usually lame anyway.

[Alex007]

Is the 128MB card that much better than the 64MB (geforce4 Ti 4200). The extra 64 MB adds about $60 bucks to the price tag.

[BipolarBill]

IMHO, no. Save your money.

BTW...Welcome to SysOpt!

[tvtech]

The 128 MB of memory will extend the life expectancy of your card. As games become more complex, cards must be able to process larger textures. A card with 128 MB DDR memory will be able to display acceptable framerates far longer than a 64MB card.

Keep in mind though, these games are not on the shelves yet and will slowly be made available over the next few years. By that time, surely there will be videocards available that you "must have".

[BipolarBill]

Oh...you mean the 4400 vs. the 4200? I would go for the 4400 if I had the bux. It has other advantages too. Wait a few weeks and I predict that the 4400 will come down to around $200.

[Alex007]

Thanks for the welcome Bill

Anyway, I found a GAINWARD CARDEXPERT GEFORCE4 TI 4200 64MB DDR PURE (retail) for $154 at: http://avlogic.com/product.cgi?code=11002239

What do you guys think of that? (thats about the price I can afford)

For some reason I could not find any Visiontech GF4 TI 4200 with 64MB, they only had 128MB cards.

[BipolarBill]

That's a good card for a sweet price. Gainward is very creative with their hardware and drivers. It should be fun.

I din't know there was a 128MB Ti4200. Considering the price, I would just get a Ti4400 instead.

[Alex007]

I'v never installed a video card before, I have done minor stuff like adding more memorys a PCI cards. i was looking at the AGP slot my GF2 card is in and right by the slot it says, "1.5V AGP cards only".
Does anyone know if the GF4 TI 4200 (http://avlogic.com/product.cgi?code=11002239) will be able to work on that slot?

[uncle_jimbo]

It will work, Ti4200s use AGP 4x slots, the voltage of 4x slots are 1.5v.


-- uncle_jimbo

[NDD]

It will work fine, and Gainward is one of my favorites.
Good Luck, begin to Enjoy

The GF4 is a quantum leap over the GF3. If you plan on running Doom III when it arrives, you'll want to have the Ti4200.

I wouldn't put my money on this one, GF4 is just the same as GF3 when rendering multiple textures in single-pass, here Radeon 8500 is far more superior even to GeForce4 Ti4600. BUT ... nVIDIA's OpenGL drivers were always better, and still are. Besides, GeForce is a development platform so I think Carmack will try to please nVIDIA here

[BipolarBill]

So I guess we can look forward to better DirectX performance from the Radeon and OpenGL from nVidia in Doom III. Whadaya think, Videodude?

[deadkenny]

Since I didn't notice anyone else mentioning it, I would suggest you do something about the fact that you're running SDRAM with a P4 before worrying about the video card. It means that you would have to upgrade your mobo, but either DDR or RDRAM would be much faster with a P4. The other thing you can try is running at 16bit colour rather than 32bit. It usually doesn't make a big difference visually, but it does have an impact on performance, especially with the GeForce2MX card. You could also try OC'ing the memory on your current video card. Although the memory spec stayed at 166MHz, most MX400 cards have faster memory that can run at over 200MHz without a problem.

[Alex007]

How exaclty do you go about changing the kind of ram your computer uses? I'v installed more ram before, but the slots are only for PC133.

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by deadkenny
It means that you would have to upgrade your mobo, but either DDR or RDRAM would be much faster with a P4.

Easy to miss, no?