3D Gaming Card Recomendations

[Guest]

Ok, ATI(8500 /8500LE), VisionTek, Asus, (Geforce3 /4)..... Which 3d Gaming card do all of you knowledgeable people out there recomend on an AMD 1.2ghz, -w- 512MB DDR Ram system which will primarity be used for gaming? In the $150.00 to $250.00 price range, and 128MB on the card would be nice..... Multi monitor, video capture NOT and issue. GAMING is. Thanx for clearing the 'smoke'

Am lookin to possibly upgrade some of the below components, and want the Graph Card to stay current for at least a FEW months.

AMD 1.2ghz
512 MB DDR
9 GB Seagate Barracuda SCSI HD
80GB Maxtor 7200rpm HD
60GB Maxtor 7200rpm HD
Plextor SCSI CDr & CDRW

Thnx
Yea, It's Awl Good.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by WillieRpberts on 05/22/02 04:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pr497]

your system looks pretty current (more or less) and either the R8500 or the geforce 3/4 will work nicely.
i think you should either get the R8500 64mb retail or the geforce 4 ti4200 64mb....the R8500 can be had for about $150 and the geforce4 can be had for about $180....give or take...
the geforce4 ti4200 64mb is slightly faster than the R8500.
both cards are very good and will last you atleast 12 months...
just FYI...i personally have the R8500 64mb retail and i love it.

<b><font color=red>ATI</font color=red>'s drivers are like a broken faucet, they both keep on leaking...</b>

 

[ATi]

If you plan on playing only current games, the geforce4 ti4200 IS slightly faster than a radeon8500 (with no aniso etc). If you plan on playing upcomming games like doom3 you'll want to go with the radeon8500 because apparently pixel shader 1.4 is going to be supported. If doom3 (and the games which will no doubt be based on its engine) does indeed support pixel shader 1.4, what that means is that the radeon8500 will be able to render a scene in 1 pass, where on the geforce4 (all models) it will take 2-3 passes.

I'm currently VERY happy with my radeon8500. All my games are run in a minimum of 1024x768x32 with 16x anisotropic filtering. The framerates are smoooth as silk, and the image quality is top notch... I can't really comment on the geforce4 line as I've never seen one in action, but from what I've seen in benchmarks the ti4200 only performs slightly better at stock settings (no aniso) and with AA (which I find useless at higher resolutions). So again, my vote goes for the radeon, and don't just look at my name and think "biased!", because although I am somewhat biased I wouldn't hesitate to buy a ti4200 if I thought it was better