What's the best video card for my son's system?

[Guest]

I want to upgrade my son's system with a faster 3D video card and can't figure out what the best option would be. Its a Celeron 333 on a ASUS P2B with 64M (440BX chip set). Right now it has Diamond Speedstar A50 AGP, now I want to get the fastest 3D card the MB/CPU can support. Is a GeForce2MX card a good option?

 

[yoda271828]

The <b>best</b> card is a Geforce2 Ultra (By Hercules, Asus, Creative Labs just to name a few companies that make cards based on this platform). This card is unbelievably fast, due mainly to it's super fast memory. The downside to this technological wonder is it's price tag. I saw a Hercules Prophet II Ultra for $500 in a store the other day. If you have that kind of money to spend on a card then by all means get it, but if you only want to spend $100-150 then the Geforce MX cards are a great value. They have excellent performance for a much smaller price. in between those two cards are the <i>regular</i> Geforce 2 GTS and the ATI Radeon series cards. Both are good choices. It all really depends on what you want to spend. Whatever you do though, don't get a 3Dfx Voodoo5 (or the Voodoo 2, 3, or 4 for that matter). They are way overpriced for a card that performs only slightly better than a Geforce MX. Hope this helps.

 

[Ncogneto]

no way dont be misled your money can be much better spent that to get the gforce ultra at this point. Your 333 would be to slow a processor to fully utilize to potential of the ultra and you would be just throwing away your money where on that system the mx ( 100 bucks) would perform equally as well. For starters what kind of money we talking here? How much are you willing to spend? that is the most important question.

 

[Guest]

Thanks. I'd like to keep it under $150, so it sounds like one of the GeForceMX cards would be good. I still haven't figured out if my MB supports AGP 2x or if that would even matter.

 

[Ncogneto]

Shop around and you should get the mx slightly under 100 bucks. If you eak out another 50 bucks and up your budget to 200 then you can also afford something like a cely 566-633 and you will once again be the apple in your son's eye

 

[Atman]

Good choice...go with the Geforce MX... any more money and it's silly. You could run in a new mainboard and cpu for that money. You can check prices at http://www.pricewatch.com and/or http://www.pricegrabber.com
Then http://www.resellerratings.com
hth
Atman

 

[TazMo]

Geforce 2MX is a great buy and would be a good choice even in an upgraded system. Video cards that support AGP4X are backward compatible with all forms of AGP, so if you have the slot it'll work.

 

[glazenuts]

Hold on there,
You may have trouble w/p2b agp. I bought one last year and the agp slot didn't have enough power for a tnt2 ultra(xentor32)It was brand new mb and video card. The vendor rma'd the motherboard,(asus replaced it with p2b-f) it still sits in my spare parts. I bought a abit bx6.v.2.04 'cause it took about 2mos. to get the asus board back. I'm not bad mouthing asus but the early bx other boards had problems with power hungry video cards. Just giving U a heads up, so your not taken by suprise.

Jeff in LA.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by glazenuts on 11/25/00 10:03 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Majeskty]

Check out the Radeon 32 DDR I purchased the retail version for $199 (+tax) + $50 rebate= $150 at CompUSA. You can the OEM versions on the web but the clock speed is slightly slower than the retail. Plus this board is already HARDWARE ready for DirextX 8 and software that will take advantage of it later in the year.

 

[Guest]

pls hold on. the P2B do have a problem of the agp bus speed.
when 66mhz fsb in use, the agp run at 44mhz only!!! this is another reason why some graphic board were not working correctly with P2B early revision. P2B-F added a agp bus ratio selection jumper to address this issue. i don't know Asus add this jumper to later board revision of P2B or not, my P2b v1.02 do suffer from this issue. 100mhz fsb will do the job normally.

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