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New 3d Card, what to buy?


NightFallMyriad

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Well, in about 3 weeks I'll be the ripe young age of 17 and natrally I want to blow all my money on something that will make JO better.

 

Which begs the questiong: What video card should I get to replace my obsolete voodoo 3 3000 AGP?

 

I was thinking about the GForce4 Ti.

 

Yay or nay?

 

:confused:

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Hey mang:) Some good advice....

-1)Do not buy a GF4 Mx card , whatever you do. They stripped those cards of various key OGL gpu coding and also dont have vertex-shader support to save costs.

 

2)The GF4 Ti cards are nothing more than a GF3.5 Ti. Faster, thats about it along with a couple minor coding instruction enhancements. Don't waste yur hard earned $300-$400 on any of those cards.

 

3)You would be much better off getting either a VisionTek or GainWard GF3 Ti200 card. These can be had for roughly $150 and can be easily overclocked to GF3 Ti500 performance quality!

-Check http://www.newegg.com ;)

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300 - 400 huh?

 

I take it that's $ US yes?

 

I happen to be (*gasp*) Canadian so that translates to what? A million dollars CDN?

 

Lol, ok more like 550 - 600$, but still that is roughly what I wanted to spend.

 

So what's the difference between the Gforce3 and 4 Ti?

I'm rather in over my head since I used to be a 3DFX fan until it got bought out. All I know is I want to get an Nvidia since it was the buying company.

 

What should I look for?

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i'm using a radeon 8500 64mb retail box version, runs awesome

its getting alot cheaper, below $300 now at a few different sites -

http://www.ncix.com is pretty reliable, bought a few things off them, and they're located in canada here. the geforce 4 is a decent card but really, for the price you pay, the radeon 8500 gives performance on par with a gf3 ti500 yet costs alot less.

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Originally posted by S!TH!NAT0R

Hey mang:) Some good advice....

-1)Do not buy a GF4 Mx card , whatever you do. They stripped those cards of various key OGL gpu coding and also dont have vertex-shader support to save costs.

 

2)The GF4 Ti cards are nothing more than a GF3.5 Ti. Faster, thats about it along with a couple minor coding instruction enhancements. Don't waste yur hard earned $300-$400 on any of those cards.

 

3)You would be much better off getting either a VisionTek or GainWard GF3 Ti200 card. These can be had for roughly $150 and can be easily overclocked to GF3 Ti500 performance quality!

-Check http://www.newegg.com ;)

 

W-W-WA WAHHHAAAAAT?!?!??! Hell NO!! The GeForce 4 IS NOT a faster GF 3 Ti 500! It's an ENTIRELY NEW CHIPSET! That's not even possible. The GF 4 Ti 4400-4600 cards are really fast, and have a TON more rendering features than the GF3 chipset has, such as dual vertex and pixel shaders, AccuView antialiasing, and many, many more.

 

Bottom line, your best bang for buck is the GeForce 4 Ti 4400, running around $250 at http://www.newegg.com. Newegg.com has awesome service, and really low prices. If you go to pricewatch, yeah the prices are cheaper, but the shipping is tripled or quadroupled in price, also many companies on there are really cheap bastards, and often screw you over.

 

Get the GF4 Ti 4400, it's MUCH more powerful than the GF3 Ti 200 level card, another popular one. Three times more powerful, infact. You'll be able to run next-gen games like SoF2, Unreal 2, Doom 3, very smooth on the highest level of detail. When looking for new hardware, always get the best you can afford, never less. It'll last you a really long time, and you'll be glad you bought it.

 

Trust me, I speak from experiance.

 

 

Hope I helped :D

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Well I'm rather sure about getting an Nvidia card, its just a matter of which one. Someone mentioned computer processing speed though... that could be a problem.

 

My current system specs are:

 

Win 98

550 Mhz

128 mb ram

crappy voodoo 3 3000 AGP

 

 

Odds are the next comp we get will be a laptop for me going off to university so a getting a new desktop comp is a little far fetched. Ok, more like outright impossible right now.

 

Given the system I'll be running it on, should I still go for the gforce4? Or should I stick to a gforce 3?

 

Doh, getting older sux0rs...

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I've seen one well thought out post, posted by someone who actually knows something about video cards. It's pretty sad that people talk about gf4 being just a little different from the gf3. Read some reviews, go to http://www.nvidia.com and look at the specs. Between the gf4 Ti 4200 and the ati 8500 LE, I'd go for the 4200. You can go over to http://gamershq.madonion.com and look in the latest 3d news for a review comparison between an 8500 LE and a 4200. The 4200 did quite well when compared with the performance of the 8500. The 4200 64mb should be around 179$ and the 128 mb around 199$.

 

Here's the link to the review, might as well post it:

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/hardware/features/8500levti4200/index.shtml

be warned, that site was pretty slow when I went there

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Gotta disagree with you who think ATI's drivers still suck.. that was a major concern for me when I decided to upgrade my video card.. I went ahead and scored a Radeon 8500 and with the current drivers it is fantastic.. I have no regrets.. my cost as a computer supplier is $260 CDN compared to $500 for a G3 Ti 500..

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Originally posted by NightFallMyriad

Given the system I'll be running it on, should I still go for the gforce4? Or should I stick to a gforce 3?

 

 

i doubt you can afford anything now. considering you'll need to get a laptop later on.

 

getting a new videocard will be a waste because you system is too damn slow.

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I have a Geforce3 Ti 200 and I went to Nvidia and analyzed my computer and it says that the Geforce4 Ti 4600 is only 23% faster then my card

 

Geforce 3 Ti 200 - 100% (my comp) - around $150

Geforce 4 Ti 4600 - 123% - around $350

 

Unless you're rich - get the Geforce 3 Ti 200 - It will run any game currently on the market and most likely any game coming out this year.

 

My game runs smoothly with my GF3ti200 and 384 mb ram. And I use a pretty high screen resolution. That's my recommendation. Make sure you have enough money to have at least 384mb RAM and 512mb RAM would probably be recommended.

 

If your computer is fast enough to handle it that is since you haven't said your other specs.

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You're going to college next year? Then I'd say I don't think you should spend a lot on a graphics card. It might be nice to have some really nice graphics for awhile, but you won't be able to play on the computer while you're at college (I assume) and your processor is a pretty big bottleneck.

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Originally posted by arctic_series

 

i doubt you can afford anything now. considering you'll need to get a laptop later on.

 

getting a new videocard will be a waste because you system is too damn slow.

 

Very well said. Your CPU is crap, so a new video card won't do much good at all.

 

 

ATI drivers may not disappoint you that much, but once you've gotten your hands on nVidia drivers, you'll know how far superior nVidia's are.

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