Best graphics card?

(Agrado) #1

I currently have a GeForce 2, and it’s getting a bit tedious playing at 5fps.

What new graphics card should I buy? Must be under £100, preferably more like £50.

Looking at dabs.com, they have “GeForce 4 Ti4200-8x 128MB DDR AGP” for £75, is that good? Would it be able to play Half Life 2 on my 1.4Ghz PC, when it comes out?

They also have, e.g. “GeForce FX5200 256MB DDr AGP RP DVI VO” for £82, is that better or worse? Does anyone know what all the acryonyms mean? (I know what AGP means though :wink: )

(=TAC=Chron) #2

DVI digital video in
VO video out
RP - not real sure, but i am sure it some digital video feature…

the fx5200 is the better card i have a 128mb version and can get up to 250 fps but generally run about 85-125 fps on high video settings.

for the minimal price difference i would go with the fx5200.

the TI-4200 would probably play half-life also.

but the biggest thing you need in a vid card now is DX9 support, and programmable shaders for the new generation of games.

(Sauron|EFG) #3

DDR = Double Data Rate
RP = Retail Package? (Just a guess)

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-14.html

According to that the FX5200 (non-Ultra) performance can be compared to that of a GF4 MX440, at least for Quake 3. The GF4-4200 looks like the faster card, and I know that it’s possible to overclock to almost match a 4600.

With the FX5200 you get DX9 acceleration, but according to Valve HL2 will default to DX8 on these cards due to crappy performance (though it actually doesn’t perform that good with DX8 either).

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1863&p=8

I’d say that both cards are good enough for ET, but the TI4200 is better for HL2 . The FX may be better for other upcoming DX9 titles, but personally I would go with the 4200.

I don’t know the system requirements for sure (I’ve heard something like 1 GHz CPU), but you should be able to run it on your system. Just don’t expect to run it at high resolution with all the eye candy we’ve seen in the teser movies.

(fkfen) #4

There is gigabyte radeon 9600 for £91.35. Difference between that and pro version is that 9600 gpu/mem is clocked 325/400 and pro version is clocked 400/600. Pro version would cost over £100 though.

Here is link that shows 9600 pro getting most fps/£ from valve`s mouth. http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/hl2_performance_preview_part1/page2.asp

RTCW and likely ET too are more limited more by processor than gpu. Radeon 9600 scored 104,6fps at 10@7 resolution and radeon 9600pro 127,7fps. This was with cpu of 3066Mhz. Radeon 9800pro scored 130,6. This graphics card wouldn`t be bottleneck in this situation.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/sapphire-2-p2.html

Geforce 4200 is slightly faster than radeon9600 pro in most older games (almost all games on market) including ET(old engine). Radeon 9600 can do directx 9.0 games with possibly acceptable frame rates. Geforce fx5200 is slower than geforce 4200 and runs directx 9.0 games very slowly(not acceptable frame rates). Geforce fx5200 isn`t much faster than geforce 2 either. It is upgraded version of their value line cards gf4 mx series and gf2 beats some slowest gf4mx cards on some occassions.
http://www.bjorn3d.com/_preview.php?articleID=264
http://www.beyond3d.com/misc/traod_dx9perf/index.php?p=2

(Wraith2k3) #5

Does anyone know what all the acryonyms mean?

The acryonyms like DVI and VO are to do with digital video input/output.
If you just want a graphics card that runs games on your PC then they wont really affect you. It’s always nice to have extra features, but don’t pay more for something that you’re not going to need.

DDR and AGP is a good thing to have however.

(damocles) #6

Do NOT buy an FX unless it is the ultra (read: pricey) version. The non-ultras are the equivalent of the old MX series GF cards (in other words, they are shite).

GeForce 4 Ti4200-8x 128MB DDR AGP" for £75

I have this exact card, and I have a 1.4 GHz computer with 512MB ram. This card is a brilliant card, but only if you have an 8x AGP compatible motherboard, other wise it’s still a great card, but may not quite cut the mustard in some of the heavy processing games (much like HL2, Doom3, etc will be). If you have 8x AGP board then this card will run HL2 quite happily. The only drawback is it’s a DirectX8.1 card which means some of the REALLY advanced DX9 features aren’t supported. In HL2 terms this means two differences - the aliens won’t have that shimmer effect on them (but the scenery will) and some of the terrain features like foliage will be reduced in draw distance (no biggy).

If you want cheap then get that card, I can run most of my games in maximum resolution (that my monitor can handle) at great framerates. Only the latest crop of games can’t run in stupidly high resolutions, but I still can run them in 1024x768.

btw - I hate NVIDIA - when I bought that card it was £145 :disgust:

(DrGonzo) #7

[ad]i own the GF-TI4200 (128MB) and it fits to my sys perfectly (512MBRAM, AMD-Athlon2000+). i play ET (and similar games) with full details in 1024x768 with great framerates!! moreover, it has tv-out, which is great for watching movies on your tv! its a great card, BUY IT!!![/ad] :smiley:

(Wraith2k3) #8

I have the same (with a athlon2200+) and it works great for most games out at the moment. I’ll have to upgrade in the future of course, but this card gives me good FPS for every game I want to play right now.

(Agrado) #9

Wow, you have my exact computer :wink:

I have a Dell Dimension 8100, I think it is AGP 4x. Assuming that’s right, does that change the recommendation?

Thanks for the responses everyone by the way!

(damocles) #10

I originally had it on a 4x but not for long. It wasn’t a bad card, it was still very good (and compared to a GF2 you’ll have your socks blown clean off) but I did see quite a jump in the smoothness of my games when I got an 8x board

(weasel) #11

Whatever you do, don’t get a FX5200. They’re only a little bit better than your current card. I recently got a Asus Ti4800 for about $165 (~100£). I’ve been really happy with this card. I’ve got it running a 3200x1200 desktop across two monitors, and I’ve got S-video and composite input and output. With antialiasing and anisotropic filtering turned off, the Ti4800 performs significantly better in benchmarks than the FX5600 Ultra, and it costs less too. I looked around a lot when I was getting my new card, and this was by far the best value around.

(Salteh) #12

NEIN!
Digital Video Interface -> so you can plug a TFT-screen in… using one of those modern DVI-connectors, instead of the older VGA connectors :>

My Radeon 9700pro has one… I’m using it to connect my 2nd CRT monitor, using a converting thingie I got with the radeon package…

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20000821/images/dvi_vga.jpg

so it outputs video, just like a VGA output :slight_smile:

AFAIK with todays gfx cards, the differences between an 8x card in a 4x or 8x mobo are very very very very small(5 fps maybe? :]) so don’t worry about it if you’re still using a AGP 4x mobo…


NV18 and NV28 are the 8x cards, NV17 and NV25 the 4x cards.
http://www.darkcrow.co.kr/Review/Review_Content.asp?board_idx=90&contentpage=7 is the full article.

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(twiFight) #13

LOL I have a Geforce 4 Ti4200 128 mb DDR too.
Plays like crap! But that is just because I have a
P3 600 mhz to go along with it. Trust us, it is a
fine card, you won’t regret buying it, but…
you won’t be top-notch in the games to come.
You can play halflife 2 just fine, doom 3 too -
although not every detail maxed out, but for later
games you might have to be satisfied with lower
framerates

(damocles) #14

You can’t trust benchmarks, unless you happen to have exactly the same system as the one they are testing on.

I did notice a sizeablt difference between 4x and 8x. Especially in Splinter Cell - on the 4x setup the game sometimes got a little choppy in places, but it runs like a dream on my new 8x board.

Part of this may be down to the fact that the motherboard is also superior to the old one (I had an abit via and upgrade to a Soltek NForce2) so that of course counts for some of it.

I don’t think UT2003 is a good test for benchmarking. It never gave my card (both 4x or 8x) so much as the slightest sign of pushing it. We could really do with a HL2 tech demo to push the cards to thier limits :slight_smile:

(Salteh) #15

:roll: :bash: :roll:
The article shows many other benchmarks… including Q3A, 3dmark, specViewPerf, codecreatures, etc…

many many many many many other benchmarks have shown the same, very small difference between AGP 4x & 8x :>

I blame your evil via chipset! :slight_smile:
I will move away from my own silly via chipset soonish too… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

(twiFight) #16

Yep. He’s right. It does improve performance but the result is quite minimal

(damocles) #17

Of course, the one thing we haven’t mentioned - get the 8x card. It runs on 4x boards no problem, so in the future, if you get a new mobo with 8x you can benefit from the extra bandwidth.

(Salteh) #18

yeh, that was the point of our discussion :stuck_out_tongue:

(Agrado) #19

OK guys I’ve just oredered the GF4 Ti4200-8x 128MB DDR AGP from dabs.com, so I’m stuck with that decision now :wink:

I figure I’m unlikely to be disappointed anyway, if I get consistent 25fps at 800x600 I would be over the moon :smiley:

(damocles) #20

I get consistently over 60fps at 1024x768. max detail. I usually get over 100fps but heavy action makes it drop to around 60 (dammit!!!) :smiley:

Coming from your GF2 to that card you will be exceedingly impressed.