Get G400MAX now or wait for G450?

[aaroncgi]

Hi everyone. I've been reading this forum for a couple months now with great interest. It's finally time for me to upgrade my computer, will be buying the remaining pieces for it next week! I may have the spare cash to buy the video card then, but at the very latest, about a month from now. Naturally, I'd settled on the G400MAX, then I read that the G450 may be coming out in July (could be as late as September though).

I know this is speculation, but will the G450 perform significantly better than the G400MAX, such that I'll be kicking myself? Also, if it takes as long to get stable and fast drivers for the 450 as it did for the 400, well in that case I'll stick with the oldie, though I don't forsee that happening.

It may be important to note that I don't care about the highest FPS, the dual head feature is what really sold me, and one reason I bought the ATI I have now. It was a year old when I bought it, and no real speed demon, but it runs games of it's vintage good enough and had the features I want (S-video and composite out with simultaneous monitor and TV display). I also play almost no first person shooter type games, Quake, Unreal, etc, though I hear some of the driving games I like can be pretty taxing on a card too.

If it's important, I'll be using a Celeron 566, and may or may not overclock it to 700-800, depends on how it works stock.

Sorry for the long post, thanks for any insight you can give!

Aaron

[Stringy]

I would say wait a bit, don't stregtch your budget now, with the release of the G450 I'm sure the Max will go down...

Now will the G450 be as fast as the Max, I'd say it's gonna be close... and the driver situation really isn't an issue as I think the G450 uses the same drivers, after all its just a modified G400 core - Die shrink, Intergrated TV-out, 2nd RAMDAC and DVI controler...

You'll be happy if you wait for the G450 too, especially since you are truely interested in DualHead, the G450 includes a 2nd RAMDAC which makes the send head of the G450 able to do much higher res.

Craig

[This message has been edited by Stringy (edited 15 June 2000).]

[Dyre]

G450 also is suppose to be very cheap... about as much as the 32meg DH G400's are right now, i would guess.

[SockPuppet]

They better be cheap, because if the card is base on g400 technology, the performance will not be upto par against the competition when they get release in Q3

[xortam]

Obviously, the longer you wait, the faster and cheaper things get. Maybe you should 1) milk what you got for a while longer, 2) hold out for the G800 (assume it will still be DH) or 3) get an OEM G400 DH (you can always slap on a good HS/fan combo and OC it). The only thing the Max will do for you versus the "vanilla" G400 is drive higher resolutions (didn't mention your monitor size) and give a bit more FPS than the OCed vanilla (which apparently isn't important to you). You may find that you're perfectly happy with the vanilla G400 straight out of the box. Saves you a little money in the short run and gives you time for something even better later. Also, remember that these cards do like some CPU muscle ... might want to check the benchmarks that used your CPU.

[aaroncgi]

I think the idea of the plain 'vanilla' G400 Dual Head is good, it's considerably cheaper and you're right, I don't care much about the highest FPS. My monitor is a Daewoo 15", I'm surprised it's still working after 6 years, can't believe I paid $400 for it! Next month I plan to buy a 19" Samsung flat screen. I was going to go with a Celeron 566, possibly overclock it to 700-800MHz, but now seriously considering Athlon, only $30 more for similar clock speed! No brainer there, assuming it will work with the Matrox, new thread...

[Danielm7]

If you are going to overclock a celeron 2 566, at least take it to 100 fsb, so 850, that way everything stays in spec.