Which Graphics Card

[aaaheavy]

I am building a compupter for my brother and I'm on a pretty tight budget for hardware inside the tin.

The board and chip: EPoX EP-8KTA+ with a AMD T-Bird 1.2, 200FSB chip. (256-133SDram))

I'm now trying to decide which video card to get and I have it narrowed down to the two below. I know there are better and more expensive cards out there, but these have the features that I like, and are within budget. (W-TV out - above 16mb Ram)

* 3DFX VOODOO3 3000 W/TV 16M AGP RETAIL
* HERCULES NVIDIA GEFORCE256 32MB AGP W/TV RETAIL
................................................
--- Retail Box, NO OEM!!!!!!!
3DFX VOODOO3 3000 W/TV 16M AGP RETAIL.
Manufacturer: 3DFX
Price: $45

Product Specifications
16MB SDRAM AGP
166MHz Core Clock Speed
7 Million Triangles/sec
333 Megatexels/sec.
Supports resolutions up to 2048x1536
Full 128-Bit 2D accelerator
350 MHz RAMDAC
TV/S-Video out
DVD Hardware Assist
Supports DirectX, Glide and OpenGL
Alpha-Blending
Single Pass, Single Cycle Bump Mapping
Single Pass, Single Cycle Trilinear MIP-Mapping
Patented Multi-Texturing
Programable Fog Tables
Sub-Pixel and Sub-Texel Correction
Gouraud Shading
..................................................
--- Retail Box, NO OEM!!!!!!!
HERCULES NVIDIA GEFORCE256 32MB AGP W/TV RETAIL.
Manufacturer: GUILLEMOT
Manufacturer 3D PROPHET SE
Price: $45

Product Specifications
Revolutionary 3D features provided by GeForce 256tm
100 % hardware triangle set-up
256-bit rendering engine enabling

Unrevalled visual quality in games
The rendering of 32-bit (true color) games
Hardware transform engine
Hardware lighting engine (8 hardware lights)
Four-pixel-per-clock pipeline engine generating an unprecedented and amazing 15 million triangles per second and 480 million pixel per second!
Most advanced 3D functions: anti-aliasing, fogging, mip-mapping, fully operative bump mapping, 32-bit Z-stencil buffer for greater depth & details
Most advanced supports for OpenGL and Microsofts DirectX 7 such as cube environment mapping, vertex blending and projective textures.

Supreme Acceleration
Inegrating worlds first Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the revolutionary 256-bit GeForce 256tm generates up to 15 million triangles/second
W/ TV OUT
32MB high-speed memory
256-bit quad pipeline processing
480 million texture-mapped pixels/second
AGP 4X with Fast Writes
............................................

I don't quite understand all the mumbo jumbo in these specs so I thought maybe some of you more knowledgeable folks with all the expertise could help me decide?

BTW My brother isn't a heavy "Gamer" per se, but is into graphics, hence 2 monitors and more memory.

I also have a question (has nothing to with these cards): Is DDR Ram on a video card backward compatible with SDR Ram on a MoBo that doesn't support DDR.

Thanks, aaaheavy

 

[Guest]

While I'd encourage you to save up just a bit more and go with a Radeon (either 32 or 64 MB), between those I'd definetely go with the GeForce.

Also, when a mobo supports/doesn't support DDR RAM, that refers to the system RAM. The video RAM is completely independent of that, and will work just fine if DDR.

<font color=blue>Jesus saves...</font color=blue><font color=red>and takes half damage!</font color=red>

 

[Dani_mq]

check out pricewatch.com, you could get a geforce2 mx400 thats a lot better than either the voodoo and the geforce 256 or a radeon le and get it fixed.

 

[aaaheavy]

Thanks dani_mq
I been to Pricewatch, all the good cards are too expensive.

 

[aaaheavy]

mahtarthezod

I'd like to get a better one, but he will have to upgrade himself later on if he wants a better one. This is his first PC so it won't matter that much at first.

On your answer to my question, I was thinking that, but I wanted to hear it from someone that knew for sure. So I 'CAN' use a DDR video card on a SDR only board. That's good to know.

Thanks for the good info.

 

[Negaverse23]

Out of those two cards, I would go with the Geforce because Voodoo is no longer supported,. dead.

<font color=blue>Another waste of bandwidth on the web. :tongue: </font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

aaheavy, since you can afford 45$ for a GeForce256, maybe you can go up to 51$ for a Radeon LE (mentioned in Pricewatch). The Radeon 32 DDR is 63$ and almost equals to GeForce2 GTS in performance. I wouldn't spend 45$ for a 2 years old card...

<font color=blue>Get a T-Bird...
Impressive CPU + House heater in one package. What do you need more?</font color=blue>

 

[reapur]

Is gainword a "good" card maker?
I have a Visiontek GF2 Ultra currently, and I don't really like them.
They don't answer the phone (55minute hold times) they don't answer email, and the manual completely sux.

I'm looking for a GeForce3 Titanium 200 and gainword makes one at a reasonable price.

Also in what order of "budget" manufactures would people go with?

Cheers,
reapur

 

[aaaheavy]

I wasn't aware of this,

--- ...because Voodoo is no longer supported,. dead. ---

where can I find out more.

 

[aaaheavy]

Thanks ilker_eryilmaz

but I already ordered the GeForce256.

 

[aaaheavy]

I ordered the GeForce256.

 

[Negaverse23]

<A HREF="http://www.3dfx.com/" target="_new">3DFX.com</A>

<font color=blue>Another waste of bandwidth on the web. :tongue: </font color=blue>