I have a Pentium 111 600, 128Mb RAM, 18Gig HD. I don't play games that often,but would like to be able to play the more recent games from time to time.
I therefore don't want to pay a fortune for the latest/greatest video card but I do need something that will be work ok. The shops I have tried do not give much advice except to try and sell whatever thet happen to have in stock.
I have read about the Voodoo and TNT 2 and the TNT 2/64. For a general purpose games card that is very compatible with most games and is cost effective, what should I get.?
You may want to get an ATI, I have an ATI Rage Fury. I know there are not too many people out there with them but mine works fine. On top of that, they are relatively inexpensive, and have good features (tv out, hardware decoding for dvd, etc).
Athlon 64 2800+
1xWD 1200BB, 1xMaxtor 200GB SATA
Asus K8N-E
2x512MB Corsair XMS3200
Klipsch Pro Media 2.1
Radeon 9800 Pro, Dell 1801FP - WinTV Theater
Sony CRX320E Combo Drive, Pioneer A04
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro - Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical
Win XP Pro SP2
Personally I'd highly recommend a 32 MB Matrox G400. Maybe even a G400Max, but then with a P3 600 you probably won't maxx out a normal G400's fill rate, either.
The advantages: _excellent_ image quality, rock-stable drivers, and pretty low cost these days. Granted it doesn't have a GeForce's fill rate, but it doesn't have all those problems, either. For the casual gamer who doesn't enjoy tweaking and experimenting with beta drivers and AGP settings, I'd say the G400 is pretty much perfect. You just drop it in, install the drivers and that's it, it works like a charm.
Only thing: don't get a 16 MB G400, even though they're cheaper. Unless my memory fails me, due to the dual bus architecture of a G400, a 32 MB one actually gets twice the memory bandwidth of a 16 MB one. I.e., it actually works quite a bit faster.
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Moraelin -- the proud member of the Idiots' Guild
i think the geforce is too expensive if ur just gonna use it occasionally. And the TNT2 is much better but still a bit expensive.
Id go for the Voodoo 3 3000. Its relatively cheap 180 bucks canadian (OEM) w/ TV-out and u can overclockit to perform on par with a voodoo 3 3500. Atleast my old one did. My Geforce is good and all , but my voodoo 3 performs damn close using the Wicked GL drivers in quake 3 and its 200 bucks cheaper.
Even though teh image quality is not as good, the graphics are still very presentable.
Dunno, a quick look on Price Watch shows that you can get a 32 MB G400 for around 135$, and a 16 MB one for around 95$. The 16 MB one is quite in the same price range as the 16 MB Voodoo 3000, and produces much better image quality.
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Moraelin -- the proud member of the Idiots' Guild
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