What vidcard?

[Yanee]

Hi!

My sister has an AMD K6-2 500 with a trio64 vidcard. She has some older 3d games but has no 3d to play on.

I'd like to buy her a used card but dont want to take out that much money.

My question is what card would be the most cost-efficient? Remember, she's not a hard-core gamer.
- G200
- G400
- V3 (prefer this over v2)
- gf2mx (pic. quality is bad, gf2 too expensive)
- radeon 7500 (seen for very cheap - comparable to gf2mx, i will check)
- radeon
- savage 4 (cheap enough)

System spec:
- Soltek MOBO, VIA mvp3 chipset
- K6-2 500Mhz
- 256MB RAM

[xbnmx]

The one you left out...

Savage 2000

[Greebe]

I can name off alot of others he left out, but that's beside the point

[KvHagedorn]

16mb single head G400. Great card, should be cheap.

[xbnmx]

...

I was saying he should get her a Savage 2000...

[Jon P. Inghram]

I'd say a GF2/4 mx board just because they unload a lot off the CPU which would really help on her system.

[Wombat]

Yeah, we saw the Savage 2000, but honesty nobody here likes them. You don't need to say it twice either. Picture quality bad. Support bad. Fire bad!

[dZeus]

hehe, S3 'broken hardware' Inc.

If you wonder why they never wanted to release the hardware specs of the Savage3D to Linux driver writers.
Or what happened to their TnL engine in the Savage 2000

[DGhost]

Re: ...

Originally posted by xbnmx
I was saying he should get her a Savage 2000...

I used to deal with those things, and also sell them. i always had a hard time recommending them because the cards are crap.

granted, you can get them for dirt cheap, but ugh. total crap. she would be better off getting a different card as all of them with the exception of the Radeon 7500 are not produced anymore.

Yanee:

I've seen plenty of Voodoo3's work on MVP3 motherboards.

I would avoid NVidia on that motherboard. The MVP3 chipsets had numerous issues with NVidia cards (especially the TNT and TNT2 series). Dunno if they ever resolved it with the GF2 stuff.

Radeon 7500 is a fast card. it is faster than the original radeon. of the cards you listed it will be the highest performing one.

G200 is decent, but i would go with a G400 over it anyday. especially because the cost difference is gonna be negligable.

Voodoo3 and G400 are about comparable performance wise. a GF2MX (depending on which one) would be maybe a little faster at lower resolutions, but at higher resolutions is gonna get beaten. Savage 4 is the slowest of them all. Radeons are the fastest of the bunch.


napster bad! sprinkles good!

[Robert Hague]

You can still buy GF2MX's (200/400) surley its the GF3 nvidia have decided to drop.

I would say that the GF2mx (with T&L/NSR) is going to be the cheapest and faster of those cards. Apart from the Radeon 7500 which is faster still (the 7200/7000 use the Radeon VE chipset btw. Avoid! At all costs!!).

The T&L however on the GF would help a lot with that CPU (as someone said) and u will get much more support for games that she has now and *might* buy later. Im almost certain that the GF2mx will out perform the V3's though :s by quiet a margin. They arent that bad but it would also depend on if that mainboard has an AGP slot, if not the PCI is going to be more expensive.

**If she is not going to be playing any more games other than what she has, id go for the G400 her eye's will thank her for it if the most of the time she is in windows.**

[KvHagedorn]

16mb single head G400. Great card, should be cheap.

[Parhelia Pro256]

Gee, I can't think of a good one :P

For now the g400 16mb is good and can reach Max speeds easily
/?<

[Strahd]

I would suggest a 16M Millennium G200 if you could find one.

[X-Caliber]

I am selling a 16M G200 Millenium if someone wants it. I also have the legendary hardware DVD decoder add-on.

[vitocorleone]

if you can find a cheap voodoo3, that's your best solution for that setup (had something similar once-upon a time). Very good 2d (no, not matrox good, but close to the G200) and good 3d. That or a g400 - anything else is overkill because the computer can't keep up with the graphics chip. Trust me - ANYTHING you put in will put the Trio to shame (except maybe the savage 2000).