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Exactly as the title suggests. I am looking to start a round of computer upgrades in the near future. Currently I have an nVidia GeForce2 MX400 with 64 MB of RAM.

Now, I am planning the following upgrades:
A) Upgrade the CPU to an Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 GHz)
B) Upgrade the RAM to 1024 MB.

My questions:

1) If I planned to get more games, is my video card good enough for the system as it is?

2) If not, what would be the best nVidia GPU to replace it with, if I wanted to get the most performance for little money. And what sort of graphics memory size should I look for?

That card won't keep up for much longer.

As for which card to get, I'm not really sure. I haven't kept up with nVidia's convoluted marketing schema, so I don't know what's 'good' and what's 'budget'.

If I were in the market for a new GPU, I'd probably get an ATI card.

GeForce4 4200Ti I think is a good choice...though I myself run an ATI Radeon 8500LE.

teh GeForce4 Ti4800 is a sexy card, but Christmas is coming up so its probably best to wait.

Must it be NVidia? I'm quite Happy as an ATI man, myself. that said, a 9700 pro would do nicely and is quite affordable, IIRC.

One of the GF4 Ti series would be good, though you might look into the GeForce FX as well. Newer drivers are closing the gap with ATI's performance lead.

GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. Good price at under $200 and very competative performance.

I had the same thing you had. Two weeks ago I bought a GeForce 5200 FX 128mb card for like $100 at bestbuy. Seems to be a very solid card.

Nothing less than a GF4.

I suggest any of the new cards from both makers, EXEPT for the awful 5800.

if you want budget, take a 9200, medium, 5700 or high end 9800XT.

nVidia cards got their ass kicked on the benchmarking with Half-life 2. I suggest a Tyan Tachyon G9600 Pro ATI. 128MB with 600mhz VPU. It is rather cheap and up to modern standards. Also a Directx9 card.

Cal Wright wrote:I had the same thing you had. Two weeks ago I bought a GeForce 5200 FX 128mb card for like $100 at bestbuy. Seems to be a very solid card.

Yeah, other than the fact that it gets its ass handed to it by GF4's.

If you're going for the FX line, don't accept anything less than a 5600. If you're going for the GF4 line, don't go for anything less than a Ti4600.

When you start paying for my computer upgrades, then we'll talk. LoL

Super-Gagme wrote:nVidia cards got their ass kicked on the benchmarking with Half-life 2.

Old news and not true anymore. Plus it isn't indicative of real world performance given that ATI was given months of optimization time. Or didn't you know about the $6 million distribution deal between Valve and ATI?

I saw a $200 GFFX 5900 non-ultra at Newegg the other day. That's a fucking amazing price for a card that will only be beat by a 9700 or better.

nVidia cards got their ass kicked on the benchmarking with Half-life 2.

And ATI gets its ass handed to it in any OpenGL game, like Jedi Academy. Hell, there are benchmark tests that show a Radeon 9800 Pro barely beating a Ti4600.

No one card will be superior in every way.

That said, the new 5700 cards get very good reviews, and pick up a lot of the slack in DX9 tests.

If you ask for nvidia, then I guess I'll give nvidia suggustions. Your Geforce2, anyways, won't last long.

If you can afford a 5700 Ultra, I'd say go for that. It runs current games very well, and will be fine for the first Direct X9 games. Don't get anything above 128MB - it's not needed right now or probably any time soon, and usually 256MB versions are slower RAM, which hurts performance much more than doubling your RAM will improve your performance.

SPOOFE wrote:

nVidia cards got their ass kicked on the benchmarking with Half-life 2.

And ATI gets its ass handed to it in any OpenGL game, like Jedi Academy. Hell, there are benchmark tests that show a Radeon 9800 Pro barely beating a Ti4600.

No one card will be superior in every way.

That said, the new 5700 cards get very good reviews, and pick up a lot of the slack in DX9 tests.

Er, Jedi Academy is based off Quake 3, isn't it? With a good enough processor, wouldn't the difference between such high-level cards become negligible?

It really amazes me how much ignorance of PC hardware there is in the world ESPECIALLY when it come to video cards and this stupid ATI vs. nVidia debate. Wake up people, don't make your decisions off of a single benchmark and remember that it is all about price/performance/reliability. The latest 5950/9800 may be all the rage but I doubt more than 1% of the people on this board can justify a $500 video card.

If another person fucking talks about benchmarks for a game that doesn't exist yet (Half-Life 2 maybe?) or who goes off saying one company is completely superior to the other, I swear I will go give Ein head to come in here and Railgun the whole lot of you...

...sorry, don't know what came over me...

Can I be the 1%? so what if I get "ripped off" for something that gets outdated, call me stupid, but I LIKE dropping all settings to ultra high, and having little bragging rights, and the SMALL thing called super high preformance, I went out and got a 9700 Pro to run my beast of a PC, I paid TONS, but I can't say I didn't need it.



end tiny little rant

My 2 cents is that any video accelerator over $300-something is simply extravagant right now, mostly because differance between say, a 9800PRO XT and a 9800PRO don't really exceed 10% at most. The extra RAM may help in the distant future (I mean, over 2 years), but if you really are thinking about that, get a midranger now and get a better card when you need it.

Mind you, Ace Pace, the 9700PRO was helluva expensive - but also helluva faster than a Ti-4600. The 9700PRO was simply worth it, because it was easily 20-30% faster overall at the very least. And still it barely trails behind a 9800PRO.

I just won't recommend an 9800PRO XT or 5950. Their prices jsut aren't jusified.

Ypoknons wrote:
Mind you, Ace Pace, the 9700PRO was helluva expensive - but also helluva faster than a Ti-4600. The 9700PRO was simply worth it, because it was easily 20-30% faster overall at the very least. And still it barely trails behind a 9800PRO.

I just won't recommend an 9800PRO XT or 5950. Their prices jsut aren't jusified.

I never said specificly those cards, but there is NO reason if you can, and if you want to run games at high detail, get the high ends, find on price watch, or other sites, a simple 9700, or a R9800 regular, don't go to XT, the "overdriving" dosn't go over 10 MHZ overclock.

How are the ATI cards' Linux drivers? I've heard some bad things about them, but that was a long time ago. Have they improved?

Drooling Iguana wrote:How are the ATI cards' Linux drivers? I've heard some bad things about them, but that was a long time ago. Have they improved?

Wish I still had that quote Mike made in my sig. I'll try and reproduce from memory.

"ATI should just put a big sign that says "Fuck you Linux users!" on their website to save us the trouble of figuring out their Linux strategy for ourselves." - Darth Wong

Can I be the 1%? so what if I get "ripped off" for something that gets outdated, call me stupid, but I LIKE dropping all settings to ultra high, and having little bragging rights, and the SMALL thing called super high preformance

Yes, but when the OP says "most performance for little money", it's not terribly helpful for you to jump up and say "THROW AWAY HALF A GRAND!"

If you need your game resolution set at 1600x1200 in order to sleep at night, go right ahead. Most sane people don't tie their ego to their hardware.