If you are from US then you should be able to get Radeon 7500 for that amount(considerably better than Radeon 7200 and somewhat faster then Geforce 2 GTS)
prices start at 71$
check http://www.pricewatch.com
in Europe its still hard to find it for under 130$
It is the Visiontek Xtasy 5632 Geforce 2 GTS-V. Newegg is selling it for $48 plus $5.00 shipping.
The ratings by newegg customers are excellent, and appears faster than an MX400, and some say faster than a Geforce 200ti. Some are also overclocking the card. I am not sure how it compares to the Radeon.
Steve
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ASUS CUSL2-C
1 GHz P3 @ 1.2 GHz
256 MB PC150 RAM
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Elan Vital T-10AB case
ASUS CUSL2-C
1 GHz P3 @ 1.2 GHz
256 MB PC150 RAM
40GB Maxtor 7200rpm
20GB Maxtor 7200rpm
Gainward Geforce 3
Creative Audigy
Lite-on 40x12x48x CDRW
Lite On 163 DVD
Elan Vital T-10AB case
For the money you're looking to spend, I would suggest a Geforce 2 Ti500 card at $122. The Geforce cards have rock-solid drivers and are compatible with everything. ATI has had driver problems for YEARS, and they still do. John Carmack (Quake lead programmer) says the same thing. Try www.newegg.com, look under mfgr GAINWARD/CARD EXPERT for some great deals.
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wow! John Carmack said so! must be true
ATi have done a great job with their drivers as of recent, though my main rig has a Gainward Geforce 3 Ti 550 my old system has a Radeon 7500 now, and it smokes any Geforce 2 card i have around here.
Well sure a Geforce2 MX will lose-out to a Radeon, but not the Ti500!
And if John Carmack is not a reliable source, then who is? I mean let's face it, the main reason we need all this graphic horsepower is for first-person shooters, a
genre that Mr. Carmack invented!
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Athlon XP 1500+
Abit KG7
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 400 supply
Calif PC Products all-steel full tower case w/casters
MSI Geforce2 Pro 64MB
19" Mitsu DP-900u monitor
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz w/Yamaha MIDI board
Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller
Maxtor Atlas 10K III SCSI drive
Pioneer slot-load 6X DVD-ROM SCSI
Teac 24X CD-RW IDE
KDS 75-disc PC-controlled CD organizer
Win2000 SP2
Go easy dude, he's gotta live up to his name. No offence, Peabrain.
John Carmack is a modern-day genius, of that I have absolutely no doubt. But if you asked him face to face what he'd rather be playing his next generation game, Doom 3 on, I'm sure he'd take a Radeon 8500 or 7500 anyday over a GF2. The Gainward naming policy is quite confusing, are you sure you didn't mean a GF3Ti 500?
The 8500 is arguably more efficient than even the GF4 in the up-and-coming game, as it can access 12 textures per cycle whereas the GF4 can only access 6. Of course the nVidia card is likely to win out on brute strength, and ATI's drivers are undoubtedly inferior (although they get better by the week and now are pretty damn good). I hope ATI's next offering really, really kicks ***; the 8500 is 6 months old now and was designed to compete with the GF3/Ti. ATI have incredible economical leverage due to their amazing ability to find strategic business partners and score technological licenses. They also much better than nVidia at making money, and that's what counts!
The GeForce2 GTS-V is a good card. The GeForce3 Ti200 is another good one for the prive and overclocks good. Never get the GeForce2/4 MX they all suck for the money. The Radeon 7500 and 8500 are both good cards. The Radeon 8500 XL (or something like that) is comeing out with a 300Mhz speed and 129MB DDR. Next is the R300 core. The Inbquirer says it is sooner than anybody thinks. Likely it will be early sumer. This card should rock. The GeForce4 Ti4200 is another bargain card, but has no release date yet. It should run $200 retail.
The KyroII has a massively overclcoked version coming out now with some new driver features. This card should be pretty cheap and might perform pretty good. The original was clocked at something like 125Mhz and beat the GeForce2 MX pretty bad. This new one has a 200Mhz core and a software T&L engine that is supposed to be pretty good. VIA is looking to perchase them. This chipset would rock as an integrated chipset. It uses little memory bandwidth and would be a very powerfull solution. They also have a KyroIII chip that will be out soon. This one might bring it up to the GeForce3 Ti500/Radeon 8500 range of performance. It will have 4 pixel pipelines and DDR memory (instead of 1 and SDRAM). Their tile rendering system makes their card about 2-3 times more efficiant. It likely will not be the best performing, but it will be cheap with a small core and lower speed DDR then most cards use. It will be priced closer to the GeForce4 MX series and perform much better.
I'm still waiting for reviews of the newer KyroII to hit. Herculies just anounced the new card at CeBit. Hopefully it will be soon.
AMD Phenom II x4 945 3Ghz | ASUS M4A77TD | 2X WD 1TB SATA 2 hard drive | 2x2GB Corsair XMS3 | nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS | ATI TV Wonder Theater Pro 550 | Antec P-160 case | Antec 650w Earth Watts | LG Blu-ray Super Drive | LG DVD RW | Windows 7 Pro
The guy who asked for advice said his price range is $100-$120, so that rules-out the Radeon 8500. And checking Anandtech, his review shows that Geforce2 Pro beats the 7500 in almost every benchmark: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1517
And the Geforce2 Ti500 is even faster than the Pro version. As far as Doom3 goes, by the time that comes out we'll all need Geforce4 Ultra to get decent framerates!
Let's not reward companies like ATI who have screwed us for YEARS with bad drivers. Nvidia is the better choice IMHO.
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Athlon XP 1500+
Abit KG7
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 400 supply
Calif PC Products all-steel full tower case w/casters
MSI Geforce2 Pro 64MB
19" Mitsu DP-900u monitor
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz w/Yamaha MIDI board
Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller
Maxtor Atlas 10K III SCSI drive
Pioneer slot-load 6X DVD-ROM SCSI
Teac 24X CD-RW IDE
KDS 75-disc PC-controlled CD organizer
Win2000 SP2
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