which gfx card: Radeon 8500 or GF3?

[jamesblond]

Pleeze help me?!

I am about to buy a new graphics card. But I really lost track in the forest of new cards. I'm seriously thinking about getting the Radeon8500 Pro/128, or even the new 9700Pro. But considering my CPU, that might be overkill (Athlon 900). I don't play that many games, but I value decent picture quality and smooth gameplay. The game I play most often will be Neverwinter Nights (impossible on TNT2!!!!). Can anyone help me make up my mind? PLEEZE?

MSI K7T Pro 2
Athlon 900/133
1024 MB PC133 SdRAM
20 GB Seagate Barracuda ATA66
NVidia TNT2 M64 32 MB (currently)
Sblive! Platinum 5.1
Rockwell 56k modem
Creative 52x CDrom
Plextor 40/12/40 CD-RW

Thanks for your help!

 

[Oracle]

Go for the cheapest. Both would make a fine upgrade to your lame TNT2M64. Or if money is no object (as you seem to be interested in the R9700Pro), go for the GF4Ti4600 as the R9700Pro will be of no use for you with that setup.
And why the hell do you have that much RAM?


<font color=red>Do ya feel lucky, Punk? Well...? Do ya?
Then go ahead and buy that C3 CPU!</font color=red>

 

[Ghostdog]

Won´t even the ti4600 be bottlenecked by the processor?

<font color=red>I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I´m all out of bubblegum...</font color=red>

 

[Col_Kiwi]

Ti4600 might be bottlenecked by that CPU, but is definately not worth the $200CDN more then Ti4200 it costs here. If you're willing to spend cash, i think the best value for you is a GF4 Ti4200. it offers all the optimizations of NV25 at a low price. Great quality card, and your CPU should be enough.

-Col.Kiwi

 

[phsstpok]

The Athlon 900 will be the bottleneck as someone already mentioned. However, the 9700, 8500, Ti4600, Ti4200, or even Geforce3 Ti500 and Ti200 are so far ahead of the TNT2 M64 (which is a low-perf verision of the TNT2 and only performs on par with the original TNT). Any of these cards will give you 6-8 times the performance in 3DMark2001 and at least 4 times the performance in real world games, even with your 900 Mhz Athlon. You'll be able to play many games at 1024x768 with most detail levels enabled where you are probably stuck at 800x600 or lower with that M64 with minimal details. With the most powerful cards you might even be able to enable Anisotropic filtering and FSAA (pretty sure about the former, not sure about the latter). One last advantage is you can also use higher resolutions (assuming your monitor is capable).

With your current system you won't get the most from any of the above video cards but you will still get plenty. Further, the better the card you buy now the better off you will be should you upgrade the CPU/motherboard later.

If you are going to stay with your system for quite a while and you don't plan on going any higher than 1024x768 then you don't need to buy the best (because you won't get all the potential gains).

I think the Geforce4 Ti4200 is the best compromise to price and performance.

Take a look at <A HREF="http://service.madonion.com/servlet/Index?pageid=/orb/projectsearch" target="_new">Anandtech.com's Sub $200 video card review</A> to see the affects of CPU scaling. It's old (date April 2002) but it might help you decide. You won't see Ti4600s and Radeon 9700s listed but the information is still very useful.

One concern, the new video cards demand a decent power supply, especially with early VIA chipsets.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 09/06/02 02:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>