best 3,3volt agp gaming card please

[Frank Marshall]

My brother-in-law has limited fundage to upgrade his recently acquired first computer, a PII 350 with a BX board (hey, it only cost ~US$250). The AGP slot is a 3.3 volt, 2x jobbie but he wants to play games that his Trident card is bawking at (some Spiderman thingy). Obviously we're not talking about the latest and greatest card or games here, just the best gaming graphics you can do on this platform, new or used. Maybe a PCI card would be better?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Rob(QG)]

Most AGP graphics cards should support 3.3v operation.

Certainly all the ATI one's do except for the Fire GL X1.

http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html

[lecter]

The best AGP 2x card you can find is a TNT2 Ultra, while on PCI a Radeon 9000 is the highest they got....however Rob is right, the new voltage thing is not backwards compatible but older boards do support the new graphics cards, as long as you have at least a 300w power supply to avoid problems.

[K6-III]

The KyroII is FAR better than the TNT2 Ultra and comes in AGP2x...

[Rob(QG)]

Correct me if I am wrong, but could he not just stick a Geforce4 or Radeon in there, and not lose too much performance over using 4x AGP?

[Wombat]

Re: best 3,3volt 2x agp compatible gaming card please

Originally posted by Frank Marshall
My brother-in-law has limited fundage to upgrade his recently acquired first computer, a PII 350 with a BX board (hey, it only cost ~US$250). The AGP slot is a 3.3 volt, 2x jobbie but he wants to play games that his Trident card is bawking at (some Spiderman thingy). Obviously we're not talking about the latest and greatest card or games here, just the best gaming graphics you can do on this platform, new or used. Maybe a PCI card would be better?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Umm, that "Spiderman thingy" might the the Spiderman game that REQUIRES DX8. That will seriously limit your options. Also, how much RAM does this box have?

[gt40]

Spiderman require T&L support.

[Frank Marshall]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

If just about any card would work then a couple of new caveats come to mind. Firstly we need a card under about US$50. Sorry, I didn't want to burden you guys with that information since I thought we'd be stuck with older, cheaper cards. If new cards are an option then we wouldn't want to waste money on a card that is going to be limited by that CPU, so overkill is a concern.

I originally thought an GF2 MX400 would be the right starting point as it seems to be the most popular startup gamers card at the moment. That was until we ran into the voltage issue but now it could well be an option. Can anyone varify that and what do you guys think of this card keeping in mind we're talking about a PII 350 here.

Sorry to add the budget constraints to the problem parameters and please excuse my ignorance regarding voltage issues.

@lecter:
I doubt the machine has a 300w PSU. I take it 300w would be a requirement for the Radeon rather than the TNT card. Does the TNT2 Ultra have the T&L functionality that GT40 says is necessary for the Spidie game and the DX8 compliance that wombat suggests?

@K6-III:
Is the Kyro II affordable with reference to the budget constraints I mentioned?

@wombat:
The machine has 128MB RAM. Are you saying that we should be sure to get a DX8 compliant part? Are the cards being bandied about here DX8 compliant? I doubt the TNT card would be...

@gtforty:
Within the constraints of our budget, can you think of some cards that have T&L. I think the GF2 MX400 is okay in this regard and should be DX8 compliant as well.

Thanks guys. Please keep it coming.

[lecter]

The TNT2 Ultra does not have T&L unfortunately, nor does the Kyro2 (at least not in hardware). The GeForce2MX 400 is DX 7.0 compliant, I think the cheapest DX8 card is a Radeon 9000. I don't think Spiderman requires DX8, it probably has DX8 features, but should work just fine with older cards. U should be fine with a sub 300w PSU for an older card, but sticking something like a GeForce3 would be risky. I'm not sure about the Radeon, it doesn't seem too power-hungry though. If second-hand hardware is not an option, the GF2MX is the only card that will be reasonably fast and fit ur budget.

[Wombat]

Unfortunately, the short answer is:
<I>That</I> computer is not at all likely to be playing <I>that</I> game.

[K6-III]

Spiderman works with the KyroII via 3DAnalyze, which emulates T&L via the host cpu.

Just don't expect more than 5fps with that config...

[Frank Marshall]

which MX400 card?

A big thanks to all who helped. It appears that backwards compatibility is not as problematic as I thought and we're gonna go for a GF2 MX400. Only trouble now is which one?

I've found three cheapies, the Espco "Eagle", the Kobian "Mercury", and a "HIS" (Hightech Information System) card. All appear to be 64MB SDRAM puppies.

Anyone have experience with any of these?

Is the presence of a fan on the GPU a factor?

What about the size of the capacitors? The "Eagle" has significantly larger capacitors than the others, but no fan!

Thanks again.

[lecter]

Hmmm, HIS is the only remotely familiar name on your list.....can't u get something like Innovision or Daytona? They're also cheap but a bit better than "made on a ship" brands.

[Ovi]

Hi Frank!
I have the Mercury GeForce2 MX400 (64 MB SDRAM). I would not recommend getting this card, as it features 64 bit SDRAM instead of 128 bit SDRAM or 64 bit DDR (as is generally found in better brands). Mercury has really cut corners on this one. But the worst part is that when I bought this card, they had been advertising it as having 128 bit SDRAM!! Later when I found out that this was not the case, I wrote to them, but the most that they did was remove the false claim from their web site. That tells you something about this company!
The use of 64 bit SDRAM severely cripples the performance of this card, and in some cases makes it slower that a TNT2 Pro (with 128 bit memory)!! I would suggest that you get a better brand like the MSI GF2 MX400, as the other cards are dirt cheap for a reason!

[Frank Marshall]

Thanks for the warning Lecter and Ovi.

I was in a computer shop yesterday purchasing my new CD burner. While there I got to talking to the guy about the graphics card and he insists that installing a 4x (or 8x) AGP card in a 3.3 volt slot will fry the card. Now I'm confused again.

Maybe we should just play it safe and get a TNT2...