My system has a built in Intel 82810E Graphics Controller. I'd like to get a better 3D card. What's the fastest PCI 3D card and what can I expect to pay for it?
The choices are Radeon PCI SDR and Geforce 2 MX PCI. Shortly, you should be able to find a Geforce 2 MX-400 PCI and a Kyro II PCI. There is also the discontinued 3DFX Voodoo5 PCI. I have not seen any head to head comparisons
. Maybe you can collect some benchmark results and get a feel for these cards.
Can't tell you which one is fastest having only installed a Radeon SDR PCI. I installed this in a Dell L800 which has the Intel 810 chipset (not the 810e). I Did not have much opportunity to benchmark but in games the Radeon PCI just about matched my Geforce256 SDR but only up to 800x600x32. At higher resolution the card was very sluggish. The only benchmarks I had a chance to run were 3DMark2000 and 3DMark2001. The Radeon scored about 3600 on the former and failed to complete the latter. Didn't have any time to tweak and fix. The card worked for my friend's two games, Need for Speed 5 and Grand Prix 3, and that's all he cared about so we left it at that. When my friend has time I will update the drivers and try again.
The best is supposed to be the Radeon PCI, but I tested it and it's very slow compaired to any modern AGP card-too slow for most newer games, too slow to play DVD without chopiness. Get a better mothreboard. The CUSL2 is good, the CUSL2-C is good, the CUSL2-M is a Micro ATX version, should you only have 4 slots available.
Marv I bought a Radeon 32MB from ATI and I think it suckes!!
It has problems with some games like Star Wars Rogue Squadron and others and their updated drivers aren't worth a dam!!! Go to ATI's Web page and do some research for yourself before you buy,,,
the best will be the kyro 2 pci (maybe they are hitting the streets now)
because of TBR kyro 2 don't need better than even pci (see the tomshardware kyro 2 review it was made in pci mode)
elsa just released the gladiac 511 pci wich boasts virtual agp performance on a pci bus. it is a geforce 2 mx400 chip with 32 megs sdram. thats all i no about it though.