Question for G400 Gamers

[MarC]

I'm returning my Diamond Viper II (S3's Savage 2000) tomorrow. Cause I'm sick and tired of all the bugs, glitches and low performance in D3D games. Quake3 and UT are good, but there's a massive amount of games that just don't go with this card.

The vendor recomends me the G400 DH 32 MB. It is a more stable solution?

It works good in most D3D games? The games that I worry about are Need For Speed 5 and EA's Formula 1 2000. They play well in a G400 card?

And what about OGL games like SOF, Quake3, Half Life & Unreal Tourney?

My setup is:
Soyo 6VBA133 VIA 133 Motherboard
Pentium III 550E oc'd to 733
128 MB RAM PC133
Sound Blaster Live Value

Is the G400 DH a good deal, or should I add extra cash and get a GeForce card instead?

Thanks for any help.

[Johnny Ray]

MarC

I haven't played Need for Speed 5 or Formula 1 2000 on my G400Max, but UT is super smooth and absolutely beautiful in D3D (you don't want to use OGL with this game) at 1024X768 with all details on high, and I play TFC with OGL (1024X768) all the time and love the image quality and good frame rates.

If you're interested ONLY in OGL frames per second, get the GeForce. It is a newer generation card. You might want to check other Discussion groups for some problems common to this board, if that's a concern. But if the G400's other features are attractive to you (price, image quality, dual head, etc.), there you go. I wouldn't even consider a Geforce for the way I use my computer (some work, some play....work's more important), so ultimately it depends on what you expect. I'm quite happy.

John

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PIII750 => 840 MHz, Asus P3B-F, G400MAX (PowerDesk 5.52), lots of PC133 memory, Aureal SQ 2500 (Vortex2, 2048 drivers), Klipsch Promedia V2.400 speakers, DirectX 7.0A, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and Fireport40 Dual UW SCSI controllers, Quantum Atlas 10K and WD Enterprise HD (no more...it died!), Plextor UtraPlex Wide, Plexwriter 8/20 CDR, the last ISA modem, etc.

[paulcs]

I'm with Johnny Ray here. UT is not an OpenGL game. It is a Glide-based game with good Direct3D implementation and, to use the manufacturers description, "experimental" OpenGL support.

Soldier of Fortune is a new game, and, I believe, a little buggy.

You can expect the GeForce to be faster than the G400 in most situations. You can expect the G400 to have nicer image quality in all situations.

As far as I'm concerned, anything would be better than Diamond.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Thundrchez]

The Matrox is the king daddy of video quality. The GeForce boards vary from creative to guillemot to elsa to asus, etc. They are generally good, but definitely short of the G400.

As far as speed, the G400 does very well in the minimum fps. Only with some of the very latest nvidia drivers does the geforce finally get up to the G400's minimum fps when the action is really dense, and most manufacturers still have old driver releases. The geforce cards do tend to have an advantage with the max fps, but I am more concerned about the min fps.

Unreal Tournament is super spectacular in D3D on the G400. The geforce does have a bit better OGL implementation than the g400, though.

IMHO, the G400 is a spectacular value. Great performance at a good price. I would skip the current crop of geforce cards, though. There is not enough advancement over the previous generation.

[MAB]

Just read other topics in this branch, - it seems that G400 has problems with TurboGL on VIA chipsets. But I'm not shure...
Anyone knows exactly?

[DuRaNgO[MU]]

with the cpu you're running, you'll be very impressed with the performance in virtually all games

check what EMBM can do
HERE
jim

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Abit BE6 with P3 500 @ 5*124=620
14.6 gb Maxtor ata66 and 128mb ram
G400 vanilla 32mb @ 168/210
Sblive with Altec Lansing speaker combo
384k DSL and Realtek nic
Windows 98se with DX7a
3dMark2000 = 2956
Worn out reset button :O)


[This message has been edited by DuRaNgO[MU] (edited 05 April 2000).]

[CannyOne]

I have an Athlon system with a KX133 board. The Turbo GL drivers don't work well with with VIA chipsets at the moment. But from what I've heard you might try just using the regular ICD instead. Sorry, but I don't play Q3, and all my other OGL stuff works fine.

[EdSki]

Well I have been using G400DH for a few months now. It's great in d3d games, not so great in ogl games.

Quake 3: Runs well in 800x600(Latest TurboGL)
UT: GREAT, fast
Formula 1 gp, runs well (Had to take it easy on the details)
Half life, runs well
SOF, ouch...crashes every few minutes

Sys: PIII 500@560, 256 mb, Asus P3BF
Soundblaster live value