Graphic card experiences

[CHHAS]

As many of us are contemplating new graphics cards at the moment, I thought it would be nice if people would summerize their opinion on the newer cards they've tried.

I know comments have been made before this, but a collective thread with comments would be nice IMHO.

So I'll start

Powercolor Evil Kyro 64 MB:

Bad 2D .... BAAAAD 2D. The speed was good (around MX level, maybe a bit better), drivers seemed good both Win98 and Win2K. Good at FSAA (small performance loss compared to other cards).
Oh, did I mention that the 2D was bad ?

ATI Radeon 32 SDR:

Have had 2 of these, the first I returned because I wasn't completely satisfied with the speed. Come to think of it, I honestly don't know why I bought another ?

The 2D is good, almost Matrox level, and certainly good enough for my standards.
The speed is good I suppose, but I'd read a lot about there being no performance hit at 32 bit colours, and 16 bit looks plain nasty.
Well, UT thunder demo at 1024x768 gave me 70 fps in 16 bit and 50 fps in 32 bit.
50 fps in the Thunder demo really isn't good enough for me, so I got stuck at playing in 16 bit colours, and that's just not good enough for me.

Overall it seems like a nice card though, Win2K drivers aside.
I guess the DDR version is better, but a bit too expensive for my taste (no cheap LE's in Denmark).

[This message has been edited by CHHAS (edited 07 May 2001).]

[Gurm]

50fps isn't enough, huh?

*pshaw*

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[CHHAS]

Well, I suppose I could get by with 50 FPS
But my G400 got around 45 FPS in 16 bit colour, and looked about the same, so why should I spend money on getting the same performance ?

Besides I was expecting almost equal performance in 16 and 32 bit, and that's just not the case.

[az]

To get back to the topic: I've been happy with my Millennium for the past 4.x years, but I really need a faster computer now

I've never had any trouble with the Millennium, except for jerky motion in Commander Keen 4

AZ

[rugger]

HI,

Current Card:

Creative Geforce Pro (geforce 256 DDR)

Quite good 2d (enough for me), probably not enough for > 19 inch monitor. Fast 3d, good linux support. Requires a decent motherboard with decent power regulation (old LX boards won't work with it), gets far too hot, should come with bigger HSF.

Older Card:

G400 Single head 16meg:

Excellent 2d quality, good linux support, decent windows drivers. Happy with older motherboards. Decent 3rd person forums (here)
reasonable 3d.

Really Old card:

Gigabyte i740 (intel 740, 8 meg ram):

terrible 2d quality (don't use on anything bigger than 15 inch screen) with significant ghosting. Farily good 3d for its time, very good price/performance. Works on older motherboards. 2d support under linux only. 2d performace subpar, patchy under win95.

Even older card:

s3 virge/dx 4meg

everything about this card sucked, even price. Nothing good to say about it. bad 2d (speed and quality), worse 3d. One word: useless.

can't remember much before that.

[2Whyzzi]

Lets See:

Had a 2Meg ViRGE. Hey - it worked.

Canopus Pure3D LE (the one without the TvOut)
Great for the Original Unreal game, provided you got used to the banding. Also had the dos version of Carmageddon modified to use it too, although it didn't last long before it crashed. Didn't use it much - now in storage.

Tried an i740. Couldn't get it to work in my SS7 motherboard I had at the time. Returned it a week later and had to pay a restocking fee

Moved up to Matrox G200, Pentium MMX 233 and ATX Case. Great 2D card for its day, some nice 3D capabilities. Ran in my first SS7 board at AGP 1x (oh well). I must admit, the Pure3D played most levels of the 3D game "Frogger" alot better than the G200.

Built a second system sometime in here. Moved my G200 into it, and bought a Creative Labs Voodoo Banshee OEM for SS7. I was impressed by the 2D (250 MHz DAC), and it had glide support. The Banshee was the best 3D card (unless your after Multitexturing) for SS7 platform. Hands down. Never a problem.

1999 I bought a G400. I tried to put the G200 in the SS7 System. All PD5 (not 6) drivers after release 530 sucked rocks for SS7.

My G400 still rocks to this day. Matrox made the best and most stable drivers since PowerDesk release 6.

Wanted better support for 3D and GL in my SS7, so I went out and bought a Diamond SpeedStar A90 Savage4 16Meg (do not get 16 meg savage4s) April 2000. Stupid BIOS was not compatible /w SS7. Once I had updated that, no problems - provided I stayed in 640x480 res and used a tweek driver. Decent picture quality. BTW: UT kicks butt when using S3's METAL driver (Too bad I don't really play it).

Believe it or not: in 16bit/640x480, the Savage4 has the fastest quake3 framerate (39fps) out of all the cards I tried (G200-19fps / G400 -32fps / Banshee - 35fps) on a K6-2 500MHz.

So I cracked under the wait and have a Radeon LE. Sweet card for a sweet price. Thankfully there are many tweak programs available for me to experiment with. Visual quality is good (couldn't tell the difference on my cheap 17" monitor, even if I tried). Drivers are a royal pain -- but thats problably only because I'm running the beta Win9x's 7103.

[Paulr]

Card in my current main system:

Gainward GeForce II Ultra 500 Golden Sample

Pro's:
Amazing overall performance.
No visible drop in frame rates in games, even when there is a lot going on screen.
Very mature drivers, very few issues in games / professional applications.
Very easy to install & setup.
Overclocks well, if that's your thing.

Con's:
Visably worse general image quality over my G400 MAX - not bad, but if the Matrox is considered the very best, I would consider this adequate.
Joining the NVidia crazy release schedule - you've been outdated before you get the card installed.
Lack of some nice features, namely dual-head & EMBM.

And so concludes the report on my current card.
The card cost me £250 inc VAT & Delivery and will stay in my main system (however much that changes) for a minimum of 12 months, by which time I hope all major video card companies have sorted their direction out.

[Ali]

Ill start from the 486 days, because my memory isnt good enough to go back any further.

Had a S3Trio 512K. It was good on a 14 inch monitor.

Got a 20Inch monitor, and wasnt happy, so bought a 1Mb S3trio and was happy for a few months.

Had spare money, so bought a 4Mb Millenium1 and was amazed. The monitor for the first time was used to its fullest.

Upgraded to a Pentium 100 and kept the Mill1, Still very happy with it.

Got a P166MMX and changed the monitor cables to BNC. Made no difference.

Got a P233MMX and a Mystique 170 for gaming. The 2D was still perfect, but it added nothing to gaming at all. Wasnt happy, because a couple of days latter Intel anounced the P2 and AGP.

Got a P2 233 and an LX mobo. Though I would have to try this flash AGP thing so I bought a Millenium2 AGP (I was very happy with my mill1, and not so happy with my mystique, so thoguht I would go abck).

That computer was exactly the same speed as my Pentium Classic 233MMX, but cost a shit load. AGP did nothing, and the P2 wasnt used in current software. The Mill2 8Mb was a beutifull card though. Better than the Mill1, which I wasnt expecting.

3D graphics were leaving me behind, so I went out and bought a Diamond FireGL something (1000 or 3000, cant remember). It was OK, but had issues with fog and stuff, so I sold that and bought a Voodoo2 12Mb. That was AMAZING. It was so good I went out the next week and bought another.

For quite a while there I had the flashest computer you could get. I had a P2 333 at that stage, 128Mb RAM, Millenium2AGP 2D, and Voodoo2 SLI 3D on to a 20 inch monitor. That must have been my favourite computer Ive ever had (for the time of course).

The G200 came out, so I bought a MilleniumG200 8Mb (wasnt touching a Mystique again). That was nice, but after a while I put the Voodoos back in. Used the G200 for DX games, and the voodoos for all the Quakes and take offs. I think I had a Celeron 300a at 450 on an abit Bh6 then.

Then I got the G400 32MB DH (before the MAX was announced). That was Beutifull! I was still using the same 20 inch monitor from my 486 days, so went out and got a Hitachi 21 inch for primary, adn stuck the 20 on the secondary system. I was very suprised to notice the older monitor was slightly clarer, so stuck that 21 inch on my girlfriends computer (Riva128 and my old Voodoo2s) and it looked OK.

Sold that G400 and got a GeforceSDR when they first came out. Kept it a week and returned it. It wouldnt run my monitors, and had graphical glitches in Quake3.

Bought another G400 32Mb DH, and still have that today. Using a Panasonic E70i 17 inch for secondary head.

Ive also had an i740, it was shit. Had a S3savage, it was OK, but 2D was very very bad, and didnt have the signal strenght to run through the voodoo2s.

Over all I would say the Millenium 1 was the best card at the time Ive ever owned. The Millenium2 was also a wonderful card. After that I would say the G400. I wish I had kept my Mill1, that way I could use it to run a second head even if my next card isnt a DH one.

As you can probably tell, I havent had too many non Matrox cards in my systems. Im ready to buy another card, I was going to buy myself one for last Xmas, but Matrox fell through. I have lots of money waiting to be spent, and its looking like its Geforce3 time. I realy dont want to do that though, because I will miss PowerDesk (that zoom thing is very handy, and I would need to find some software to replace MuliDesk.

I might just go out and buy another Diff lock for my Rover instead though

Ali

[breezer]

1mb cirrus logic with my 486

8mb g200, which I've still got with my k6-2.
I can still play games with it and use a encore for dvd out to tv.

I use a 400max at work, have previously used/seen gforces and radions in action and don't think (yet) there is a new card worth purchasing.

breezer