$50/100/150 Best bang for the buck video cards-> all the same

[JEDI]

$50 for a geforce2 ti200 that will be outdated in a year
$100 for a gf3 ti200 that will be out dated in 2 years
$150 for a gf4 ti4200 that will be outdated in 3 years

the avg is $50/year for each of the 3 cards.

if u get the gf2 now, next year u need to upgrade. and by that time, the gf3 ti200 should be $50. so u buy that, then the year after that the gf4 ti4200 should be $50, so u buy that. thus you've spent $150 in 3 years. same as if u spent $150 now for the gf4 ti4200. actually, it'll be a little bit less if u spread the purchases over 3 years, due to inflation plus you can ebay the old cards to get some of your $ back.

Your thoughts?

 

[rogue1979]

Your upgrade plan is right on target. I prefer to upgrade the same way, sometimes selling my old video card and coming close to breaking even. I now have 5 rigs running in the house and buying 5 Geforce 4's right now would be too expensive. The Radeon 32MB DDR and Radeon 8500LE could fit in that plan also. Although I just sent the 8500 in my rig back because I never could get it running right.

 

[recha]

Maybe I'll go buy the best Geforce2 out there...My friend has a gf2 and his graphics rock. Is it really worth to spend the extra 100 bucks to be up to date w/ technology? Within 1 yr of buying a new vid card, there will be something new out there that will catch your attention.

 

[JEDI]

u can definitely make most of your $ back if u go w/the lowest priced card, since it probably wont drop significantly more

u can buy the gf2 ti200 (same as gf2 pro) and get avg fps (~30) and no AntiAliasing. or u can get the gf3 ti200 and get avg fps (~30) using 2x AA. or u can spend the $150 and get max fps.

pros+ cons:

gf2 ti200: almost outdated the moment u buy it. no direct X 8 support. no AA at a decent fps. but it's cheap, and u can re-coop most of your $ when u sell it next year. (just look at the prices the tnt2 is still fetching)

gf3 ti200: best of both worlds. direct x8 support, nice fps w/AA on. decent price.

gf4 ti4200: paying a premium for bells+whistles that games probably won't even take advantage of till next year. human eye cant differentiate anything above 30fps, so again, you're paying for power thats not noticible. but very scalable. in the fastest cpu out (p4 2.4ghz) the cpu is still the bottleneck. thus u can probably pop this card into a p4 4+ ghz in 2 years and u still still have a nice decent machine that will still play games adaquately.

like i said in the title, it doesnt matter which to get. it's a tie-> everything balances out.

 

[spanky]

i think ur plan is valid when ppl HAVE to play the newest games. i am still stuck on playing CS... i won't need to upgrade from my gf3 & radeon8500 anytime soon (hopefully)

 

[stilz]

IMHO what you said makes really good sense. but f it all works like that though, shouldnt you just get a ti420 in th beginning so you could probably enjoy it for 3 years instead of 1 year on each card?

 

[Lithium381]

sounds like a good plan, i've been running my Rage Fury Pro(rage128, ATi) for two years now and i'm badly in need of an upgrade, i doubt i'll be able to sell this one, but i'll give it a shot to pay hopefully 1/4 of a new card(around 40), since i'm planning on the Radeon 7500(i'm on a budget)

 

[Agamar]

Yep, I bought my GF2 GTS-V from newegg about 8 months ago and I am just now starting to see games that I cannot play at 1024x768 with full details on. I will probably wait until I cannot play them at 800x600 anymore and then I will buy the GTS-V of that day. Sure, I can't play the games right when they come out, but after I upgrade I will be able to play all the games. It will be like Christmas.

 

[J3anyus]

Originally posted by: Agamar
Yep, I bought my GF2 GTS-V from newegg about 8 months ago and I am just now starting to see games that I cannot play at 1024x768 with full details on.

Yep, same here. I have to run GTA3 at 640x480 to get it to play smooth. I'm actually planning on getting a GF4 Ti4200 and OCing it up to Ti4600 speeds. Should last me for a few years before I need to upgrade again.

 

[rogue1979]

If you guys want some decent fire power on a budget, this is what I use.
I just bought a Pine Technologies Geforce2 Ti from newegg for $66 shipped. I run my desktop at 32-bit where I can notice a difference. For gaming I use 1024 x 768 4X FSAA with all details on. If I have a game which slows down, I run it at 16-bit for a huge boost in performance. I really can't tell much of a difference from 16-bit to 32-bit in most of my games. This works well for a Geforce Pro or Ti after they are overclocked, a regular Geforce GTS might not cut it. This Pine Technology was sort of a poor overclocker for the 5ns ram, but it still runs smoothly at 275/425. I absolutely do the low pass filter capacitor mod, the 2D results are equal if not better than a Radeon! While not the fastest video card in town by any means, Unreal Gold averages about 75fps at 1024 x 768 at 32-bit 4X FSAA. However to play Mech 4 smoothly I definately drop to 16-bit.