Please help!! I'm looking for some reccomendations on a graphics card for a system I built. I don't do any heavy gaming. My system is Abit KT7 w/ AMD Duron 800mhz with 128mb ram. Current card is old - ATI 3D Xpression+pc2tv 4mb pci. Would like to take advantage of agp slot but don't want to spend a lot of $...Any ideas, what to buy what not to buy??? Thanks!!
Go get a Geforce2mx.. they're cheap and offer nice 3d performance. I'll past on all the previous generation card such as TnT2 or voodoo3 since there is only a little price difference.
------------------
Vegetarian stands for Lousy Hunter!
Austin Texas,where men are men,and sheep are scared.
Posts
35
S3 trio 2megger pci model you can get at used computer store $5
no-games =2d only????
stick with what you got......
Some games Geforce 2mx 32 megger would be a good choice,some come with Tvout and twin view ect....$100-130 good 2 d
Geforce DDR 32 megger about $100 will cream the MX real gamers card.great 2 d
You can get a TNT2 32 megger for around $50-60 this will be pretty good for games,good 2 d
matrox has some good cards probably the best 2d out g400 32 megs maybe $100-125 will play games pretty good.they have a dual head for 2 monitors aswell.
Kick butt card would be the GTS2 32 meggger around $165 will play all games real fast and at high res,faster then the GF DDR
your choice tell us more about what you want to spend and what exactly you will be using it for.
If you are not really a heavy gamer I'd look for one of Matrox's cards, perhaps a G400 16 or 32Mb, they don't cost much, give very good image quality, and do have some gaming ability. More importantly they have stable and well developed drivers, and pretty good support.
Fallguy
I would go for Matrox G450 or stick with what your ATI. Why 450 and not 400 becouse it requires less power and dessipates less heat, and it is more stabile then G400 series.
GeForce MX would be downgrade in 2D image quality so I do not recomend you Geforce series, and they are exclusively gamers cards.
------------------
The worst system is not the one that has slowest QIII frame rate, but one that not works correctly.
Aye, for mostly 2D work, a G400 or G450 is excellent. And you get an excellent dual-head implementation, and very easy to use TV out. And from what I see in the computer shops around here, a 16 meg G450 is actually very cheap.
------------------
Moraelin -- the proud member of the Idiots' Guild
I too would highly recommend a MAtrox card. I would get either the G450 or the G400, dual-head. The dual-head feature is great as long as you have another monitor or a television you can use. The G400 offers excellent 2d image quality and will still be able to play games if you want to.
does the g450 support opengl?,I plan on using it for 2d graphics(photoshop) ,but I've heard opengl is needed for 3D rendering(3dsMax).
Here is the system I want to put it in :
Motherboard : Abit KT7A
Processor: AMD T-Bird 1GHZ (1.2GHZ)
Memory : 256 PC133
Case : Full Tower/300watt PS (400watt PS)
Video Card: Matrox G450 32MB
Hard drive :Maxtor 30GB 7200RPM ATA66
I'm still in the process of figuring out what I want in it.
Wonderinguy34, I'm pretty sure it does support OpenGL, my G400 does and I see no reason for them to change it, especially when they would exclude themselves from this very important market sector. It runs Quake III OpenGL fine and 3D Studio MAX R2 as well I seem to remember (I don't have it on my system anymore).
If you do really want blazing OpenGL performance you might be interested in the ELSA Gladiac cards which use the Nvidia Quadro Pro chipset. This is a professional card though, and probably far more expensive. Anyway, I imagine the G450 will knock it into the corner when it comes to your 2D pixel work in Photoshop and general display quality. Welcome to the world of Matrox .
If you've got your money for nothing, who cares if the chicks are free!
I heard about those instances where a ge force can be a quadro. Done through jumper messing right? Btw. Matrox is the way to go for non gamers, especially those in design. My dorm neighbor has that and it looks...GORGEOUS..especially when taking advantage of dual head
------------------
my specs:
AMD T-BIRD 750MHz
256MB RAM
MAXTOR 12.7 gb UDMA66 7200 RPM
SONY CD ROM 48X
PANASONIC 8X4X32
SIS 10/100 ETHERNET
SOUND BLASTER LIVE VALUE
DIAMOND VIPER 770
300W SUPPLY
CAMBRIDGE FPS 1000
17 " GEMSTAR MONITOR .25 DP
ABIT KT7
WINDOWS 2000
wonderinguy34 I think you have chouse good components for your system.
Just make sure to buy good CPU cooler if you can order Alpha cooler or something that is good as Alpha.
Buy brand name memory and do not seek for PC133 but for 7ns (ns - nanoseconds) memory.
Hard Disk is O.K. thoug slightly to loud for my taste.
MB is O.K. but befor you buy it go findout what is the last rev of that MB and buy last revision.
also it would be good to buy MB with latest KT133A chipset A is very important and it can give you great perfromances and joy of overclcoking. you could setup your CPU as 9x133MHZ and it would be faster then 12x100 what would be default if you buy plain KT133 based MB.
But if you don`t take any of my advices system while again work great but only without any space for 0$ cost perfromance impruvments in the future.
Reply With Quote
.
Bookmarks