Tay-Mar Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 I need some advice from the tech heads out there. Which, in your opinion, is the best 3D card to run the QIII engine ? Has any 1 out there got a GeForce 3 card and how does QIII run with it ? If u had an un-limited amount of cash, which 3D card would u buy and why ? I only ask 'cause I have a substancial amount of cash and a need to purchase a new 3D card, my Voodoo 5500 is getting a bit tired. I'm looking at 2 possiblities here - The Elsa Gladiac 920 and The Radeon 8500, please help me spend this obscene amount of money Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Millions o' Monkeys Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 qauke 3 runs beutifully on almost any 32 meg card so it dosnt really matter. BUT i would reccomend the radeon 8500 or a geforce 3 ti Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outlaw Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 Both the GeForce 3 and the Radeon are good cards for Quake 3 engined games. Been playing the Medal of Honor single player demo which is using a very similar game engine to what Jedi Outcast will use. The Readme states that they recomend a 64 meg videocard to run max detail settings! The max detail settings make a difference and are well worth the added video memory. I have a 64 meg Geforce 3 ti 200 and all my Opengl games look and run great in 32bit color. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnlyOneCanoli Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 My GeForce 3 runs it beautifully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_FinnSon Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 Elsa Gladiac 920 is too hefty, if you ask me. Instead, you might wanna check out Leadtek Titanium 500 TD(quite soon they are also going to publish TI200-TDH [GeForce3 Ti200] that has 128MB ram), because few reviews said it has best image quality of all GeForce 3 Ti cards and it has also much more reasonable price. I'm waiting for GeForce 4 though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 how much is Geforce 3? I have a Compaq Presario 600 Mhz Celeron with an Intel 810e Chipset, and it doesn't have AGP, but it has like 2 open PCI slots. Would a Geforce 3 run on my computer? and if so, how would i install it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Simpson Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 Rogue15, a GeForce 3 card requires an AGP slot. To my knowledge there are no PCI versions of this card. A GeForce 3 Ti 200 is around $150-200 I believe. A GeForce 3 Ti 500 is $300+. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 what about geforce 2? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 Ok, I have a situation here.... My system currently is PIII 550 mhz, 640 mb RAM, and a 32 mb Nvidia TNT 2 Viper card. This summer I'll be building my dream system for college next year, and I'll put the most current video card in it. But right now, I want to able to play JO when it comes out with good performance. What I need is a fairly inexpensive card 100-150 dollars that will suite the game and the other graphics intensive games out there now. I don't want to spend more than that since I'll be spending a **** load on a card towards the end of the summer for my new computer. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tay-Mar Posted January 13, 2002 Author Share Posted January 13, 2002 Rogue I believe that a GeForce 2 is available in PCI but they're a little bit more expensive, if u're gonna go for 1 then I would recomend the Creative version. If u don't wanna spend that kind of cash then the Hercules Prophet is a very nice budget card, it lacks the bells and whistles of the Nvidia chip set but runs quite nicely at high resolutions. So the Elsa 920 is too hefty and the Radeon is, as yet un-tested. So any GeForce 3 Ti 500 card should allow me to view these ' retina shattering effects'. Well there goes £300, thanks Guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Seeker Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 I'm looking into the 64MB GeForce MX400 AGP Viceo Cad. ONl sale for $80 bucks this week at Best Buy. Is that one a good one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_silvergun Posted January 13, 2002 Share Posted January 13, 2002 Rogue15, there are several GeForce2 cards available in PCI form. If memory serves me correctly, they are all on the lower end of the market, usually the MX and GTS versions. pinkpanther718, the card for you is the Kyro2. Dirt cheap and better performance than the GeForce2 MX. I reckon you'd get a decent enough framerate in medium graphics settings in Outcast if you put this card into your current rig. Check out what <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidcards/hercules/3dprophet4500/">[H]ard|OCP had to say about this card</A> and then look at <A HREF="http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/3592-1.htm">this Pricewatch page</A> to see up-to-date street prices for the card. I think you'll be quite surprised. The only problem with it is that it doesn't support Hardware T&L, so it will be slow in games which use it. However, JK II doesn't, so as an interim upgrade, you'd be hard put to find better bang for you buck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 Thank you very much for that info about the Kyro II chipset. My only questions are, will that measure up to the GeForce II which I believe by now should be in that same price range. And secondly, what exactly is t and l, and which games use it extensively? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherack Nhar Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 Huh, the Quake 3 engine does support T&L... but since having a T&L card is facultative, the framerate difference isn't substantial. T&L, pinkpanther, is the short name for Transform and Lighting. It's a new way to process 3D graphics (especially in the lighting department) and it is becoming more and more popular. The difference is not in the visuals, but rather in the framerate. There is quite a few game that supports it extensively right now (from the top of my head: Q3, Mechwarrior 4, and every other DX8 games, I think). It should be noted that the upcoming Star Wars Galaxies will require a T&L card to run the brand new 3D engine. It's a first for MMORPGs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 So basically T&L = better frame rate on games that support it? If so, I definately want a card that implements it. Any good lower priced cards that have this feature? Do any of the GeForce 2s, or lower end GeForce 3s have T&L? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 Well, as I said before, i have only a PIII 550 mhz, so I don't have much performance as far as CPU goes. I have been reading up on cards for a while tonight, I've pretty much discounted that Kyro II by now, since it doesnt have the T&R and also because it didn't match up to some other cards in its price range. I have a question about ATI Radeon cards, since they are the ones I am looking at the most right now. How do they perform on low and high resolutions? I really want something that performs well on both, but more preferably low res, since I am more a performance guy than a visual prettyness guy. Secondly, what kind of differences would you see between 32 mb of DDR RAM and 64 mb of SD RAM? Those two cards are very simalarly priced, and I am steering towards the 64 MB SD RAM version, but should I opt for the DDR, even though its less RAM total? Thanks for all the help folks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSM Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 I recently purchased a PNY Verto GeForce 2 MX400 PCI w/ 64mb. It runs EF at full graphics and is probably the best PCI card available AND it has T&L support, but most important of all, it comes with a lifetime warranty from PNY. Furthermore, the total price AFTER shipping was $93 from http://www.enpc.com. I should also mention that i'm running this card on a PIII 600Mhz and 190 mb RAM, which definantly helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_silvergun Posted January 14, 2002 Share Posted January 14, 2002 Originally posted by Sherack Nhar Huh, the Quake 3 engine does support T&L... but since having a T&L card is facultative, the framerate difference isn't substantial. Sorry, I'd got my facts wrong. Q3 does support Hardware T&L, but with the spec of machine we're talking about here, and bearing in mind this is an interim upgrade I wouldn't worry too much about it at this point. Certainly, if you're planning a major upgrade in the summer anyway, I wouldn't make Hardware T&L a major motivating factor in your choice of card right now. Also, don't bother with anything faster than a GeForce2 MX or a Kyro II in that spec of machine, it simply won't take advantage of it. Having said that, an alternative approach to take would be to blow a whole lot of money on a GeForce3 Ti500 right now, knowing that your machine won't use it as it is, but simply because you will then be able to put the card in your new machine in the summer knowing you'll get top performance. This would avoid the unpleasantness of having to part with two lots of cash for basically the same thing. Just a thought... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 While you made some real good points, from what Ive read, the ATI cards are excellent. For about the same price I can get either the Radeon with 32 mb DDR, or the one with 64 SD..... I still am wondering which I should go for? Also, can anyone reccomend any really good up to date video card review sites? Gamespot is so out of date, as is Cnet. Thanks for the help guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_FinnSon Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 Check these sites out: http://www.digit-life.com/ http://www.tomshardware.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psycoglass Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 If you have a fast proccessor then get a GeForce 3 Ti 500, it's the best card out there, or wait for the GeForce 4 to come out. If you have a lower end proccessor just spend that substantial amout of cash and get a new motherboard and proccessor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GB_StormTrooper Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 I have a Radeon 7200 64mb card....is this good enough? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_silvergun Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 Originally posted by pinkpanther718 While you made some real good points, from what Ive read, the ATI cards are excellent. For about the same price I can get either the Radeon with 32 mb DDR, or the one with 64 SD..... Yes they are, but there's no point having a super-fast graphics card in a setup where the CPU is too slow to feed geometry and vertex calculations to the card. Put simply: the video card simply draws the picture on your screen. To do so, the CPU must first tell the card what to draw and where. In your PC, by the time you've put in a reasonable graphics board (GeForce2/Kyro II 32Mb SDRam, or that class of card) you would see virtually no framerate increases if you were to upgrade the card further, because your CPU is the limiting factor. Your machine would probably be no faster with the latest GeForce3 Ti500 in it than with a 32Mb GeForce2 MX. There is only so much a video card can do to increase performance. The way I see it, you have two paths you could go down: a) buy the cheapest card you can lay your hands on on the grounds that whatever you buy will be faster than your TNT2, or b) say "sod it" and do a major graphics upgrade now, to save yourself the trouble of forking out twice. My own preferred approach to upgrading is "do it properly or not at all". Whatever you buy, I'll say this now, so you won't be disappointed: don't expect big performance increases. As I said above, upgrading your graphics system will only make so much difference. You mentioned too that you're not much of a visuals guy, and are more of a performance guy. I should also warn you, bearing this in mind, that a graphics upgrade has greatest impact in the higher resolutions, and that if you want to increase performance in lower resolutions, the CPU is a far better component to upgrade. If you want, I can explain the resons for this in more detail. I hope I'm not making you think "Christ, is it really worth upgrading if it's this complicated?", but I do feel that if someone asks for advice about upgrading, you should tell them as much as possible about the potential rewards and benefits (or lack thereof) as no-one should spend substantial sums of money like this without first being made aware of the possible pitfalls. Hope that made sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Lando Posted January 16, 2002 Share Posted January 16, 2002 I'll put in my two cents. If you are going to buy a card and hold on to it fro a while I would reccomend you get a directx 8 card. Right now your only choices would be the Radeon 8500, GF3, GF3ti500, and GF3ti200. If you upgrade cards often just get like a GF2ti or Radeon 7500. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinkpanther718 Posted January 16, 2002 Share Posted January 16, 2002 Thank you very much for all your input Ed. That made a lot of sense actually. What I might do is wait until JK comes out, see how it runs on my system, and go from there. See how people are doing with it, with their various setups, and then make a descision then. The main reason I want a T and L card is due to the fact that quite a few games are going to be supporting it, this spring i believe, and spring-summer is a big gamming time for me, what with school out and all. I'm gooing to do some more pricing, then try and play it easy til JK II comes out. BTW, if anyone can still help me with the question I asked earlier about SD vs DDR? Would it be wiser to go with 64 mb SD on board RAM or 32 mb DDR? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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