GEFORCE2 Ultra Cards - Which one is better?

[dinoX]

Well after installing Max Payne on my ass kickin computer
-1.2 GHz AMD Thunderbird (for some reason I kept thinking it was a 1.3. oops.)
-256 MB pc133 RAM
-VisionTek GEFORCE2 GTS 32 MB (Detonator3 12.41 drivers)
-Windows 2000 Pro OS

Anyways, at times it seems a bit sluggish and sometimes it freezes for like a few seconds. The slowdown was occuring in Deus Ex, but an upgrade to the 12.41 driveers fixed that. I have not tweaked out the card much, and am not sure excatly how to tweak it. I get great FPS for all online games.

This leads me to my question...I am considering either giving my GEFORCE2 GTS to a friend or putting it in another computer. When and/or if I do this, I intend on maybe getting a GEFORCE2 Ultra. But who makes the best one? I have been looking and I narrowed it down to four different manufacturers:

-Elsa Gladiac Ultra 64 MB
-Creative 3D Blaster Annhilator 2 Ultra 64 MB
-Hercules 3D Prophet 2 Ultra
-VisionTek GEFORCE2 Ultra 64 MB.

Now which one of the Ultra cards is the best? Of the best, can anybody give me a couple places where I could buy one (offline or online)? Any help is much appreciated...and of coures...if I can somehow tweak out my GEFORCE2 GTS 32 MB without having to buy a card with more memory, that'd be cool too.
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[FatBurger]

I'd go for the Hercules or the Elsa, though all 4 would be pretty close.

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[dinoX]

My eyes are really set upon the Hercules, but its like $400...I'd be better off getting a GEFORCE3 for that price!

Maybe I'll check out Best Buy this week and see how much they want for it...

 

[FatBurger]

Then get a GeForce 3
I'm not the one who included the Hercules in the list

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[noko]

GainsWard GF3 is the best GF3 card. That is interesting because I am playing Max Payne at 1152x864x32 on my stock Radeon without any slow downs. This is with everything maxed, anisotropic filtering but no FSAA. You can adjust some of the features down in the game to give you smoother game play if need be.

Since it is such a rich textured game maybe you are running out of texture space with the 32mb card which will make it rely on AGP for textures causing about a 6 times slower memory access killing your frame rate. Have you tried 16bit and less resolution?

<b><font color=blue>1.5</b></font color=blue> T-Bird
<b><font color=red>2.1</b></font color=red> P4 Speed<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/31/01 05:07 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[dinoX]

haven't tried lower than 1024x768 and 32 bit yet...might try it at 16 bit....I just wanted the game experience to look as realistic as possible unlike some of the screenshots of the game from the past few years where it was all scratchy.

But I believe I'm gonna look around and try to get the 64 MB Ultra. My father is interested in my 32 MB geforce2, so i have no problems gettin rid of it.

 

[noko]

If you use 16 bit and it smooths out then my best guess is your running out of local texture memory and starting to rely on AGP texture memory.

<b><font color=blue>1.5</b></font color=blue> T-Bird
<b><font color=red>2.1</b></font color=red> P4 Speed