Looking for a budget all-around 3D card...

[Guest]

Hi, I'm getting into 3D modelling and animation and I would like to know what is the *best* card at the 150-200 dollar range that will allow me to play games and do 3D graphics with the least amount of problems.

This is my setup:

Asus CUV4X-D mobo
2 Pentium 3 800EB
394 MB RAM
Riva TNT2 32MB video card

I'm interested in the Kyro2 card, especially for it's gaming performance and the cost...but I am unclear on it's performance in 3D apps.

Can someone please help me? Thanks

 

[rcf84]

Kyro II looks good. OR get a ATi Radeon 32mb SDR or DDR. There good cards Both comes with the best DVD decoder out there. I would got the Kyro or Radeon. nvidia is looking to much like microsoft after win95 came out.

Check out my RIG <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/rcf84/home.html" target="_new">Rcf84's celeron machine</A>

 

[Guest]

Thanks for responding. Do you know how the Kyro2 performs in Win2k?

 

[rcf84]

Well i dont know. My Radeon runs Half life, Quake3, Unreal tour., and serious sam in 1028x768 just fine.

Check out my RIG <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/rcf84/home.html" target="_new">Rcf84's celeron machine</A>

 

[Guest]

hmmm yeah those benchmarks aren't too bad, though I'm looking for at least 60-75fps gaming performance. I bet I'll get that with a P3 800.

Hopefully the TBR doesn't cause problems in my 3DSmax...

thx

 

[Guest]

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm going for a card that will perform best in 3d modeling but will play games nicely too. Looks like that geforce 2 is the best choice. Kyro II seems to be a fairly week card with a good renderer. unfortunately, that renderer won't do it any good in 3d apps so the performance will be quite low. I don't see it doing too well in 3d apps but only time will tell. Before you buy wait for the geforce 3 to come to retail stores for about 2 weeks and let the kyro II get settled. Then the prices will stabilize for geforce 2 cards and we will be able to see the kyro II in it's true form.

 

[Guest]

yeah that seems to be the best bet. I think I'm going to wait to the showdown this May. Thx for getting back to me.

Are you saying the Kyro2 definitely doesn't perform well or is that just hypothetical? I've heard a lot of people theorize over 3D apps and the Kyro2, but nothing from real experience just yet.

I guess I'll have to just stick with my tnt2 for now! hehehe...

 

[Guest]

I haven't seen the kyro II benched in any app yet but it is pretty certain that it won't fair well. The tile based renderer won't be any good at all with wireframe. In the preview it would be good. 90% of the time you have to deal with the wireframe. The lack of T&L will hurt the kyroII here badly since it's entire performance is reliant on the overdraw of objects which won’t be an issue with wireframe. When your dealing with 3d apps you want the most weight taken from the cpu as possible. I suspect that the kyroII will perform somewhere between a tnt2 and a geforce1.