I would like a G400 but.........

[RB]

I plan on keeping my present system for another year or so and would like to upgrade my video card to have better 2D and increase somewhat my gaming FPS. I have read just about every G400 review and from what I gather the G400 excels in all areas except for its OpenGL ICD and being CPU dependant. I run my desktop and games at 1024x768 in 16 or 32-bit and have the following system:

Dell XPS R450 PII
Dell OEM Intel SE 440BX AGPset
128 MB SDRAM
10.1GB EIDE, Ultra ATA HD (7200RPM)
STB TNT 16MB AGP
Diamond MX300 A3D 2.0
19” LG Studioworks 995E

I was hoping to see stability and performance improvements in the OpenGL ICD with the new driver release 5.30 for non-PIII, but there doesn’t seem to be any. How’s the Direct X performance in a PII?

TNT 3DMark 99 Max Results @ 800x600 16-bit

3Dmark Result: 3,855
Game 1-Race: 37.0 FPS
Game2-First Person: 40.2 FPS

Any convincing reason I should get a Matrox G400 instead of an nVidia TNT2 Ultra?

Thanks
Bob

[Kruzin]

You don't "have to take the GeForce" by any stretch of the imagination. Youe system is plenty fast enough for good frame rates in games. My P2-450 does great with my vanilla G400, both in D3D and OGL....

Just decide what is more important to you. The best visuals around and speeds that will be fast enough for a quite while to come (plus the dualhead goodies), or lesser graphics with a few fps that you will never notice...

------------------
P2-450(112*4.5=504), Asus P2B (1010), 128meg pc100, MillenniumG400 32meg DH (5.??), 3com 3c905b-tx, SB Live!value, Dual USR 56k Sporsters, WD 8.4&6.4 UDMA, CL PC-DVD, Mitsumi CD-RW

[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 28 October 1999).]

[Frank]

I totally agree with Kruzin.
The G400 is every bit as good if not better than the current generation. Period.
Buuuuut, I must present the option for the discerning gentleman if they wish to wait for the interim technology that is the TNT2A chip benchmarked on various websites.
Is a .22 micron process die rather than TNT2 .25 micron. Smaller.......faster.......less heat.......and costs more