Best $50ish vid card

[CamNeely]

Upgrading a friends ol' K6 pc, and he will be using it for low end gaming(diablo2, Age of empires, etc...) and e-mail. I've found the GF2 MX vid card and Ati 7000 for very low prices. Which of these cards would you recommend? If not either, then what card for roughly $50 or less? Thanks in advance.

 

[Schadenfroh]

this

or spend a lil more and get

this

 

[CamNeely]

Thanks for the advice. I ended up ordering the apollo 64mb gf4 mx440 for $42 from newegg. Gonna replace his k6-2 with an xp1700, Msi kt7 turbo2 kti33a, and the gf4. I think that'll get him by for a bit.

 

[Schadenfroh]

the thing you ordered has SDram. that thas why i reccomended the chaintec, for the chaintec has ddr. dude, see if you can cancel the order and get the chaintec. that will hurt bandwidth bad if you have sdram

 

[KillaBong]

Get a geforce 3 from somone. I bought a nice gainward one for $55 a little bit ago.

 

[JammingJay]

CompUSA has the Radeon 9100 AGP or PCI 64mb version on sale for $49.99 after MIR. Radeon 9100 is based off the Radeon 8500 core. It is as fast, if not slightly faster than a GF 3. Take the MX back. Hehe. Have 4th of July people.

 

[CamNeely]

Schadenfroh: Thank you so much. In my haste I didn't even realize that it was sdr.

I appreciate all your suggestions. He opened up his spending limit a little and decided to get the 9100 Pro. I found it going for $70 shipped, so he jumped for it. I haven't kept up on vid cards much since I bought my bought my 9600 pro and put my o/c'ed 9500 pro in my other rig (couldn't get rid of it). So my next question is: Is the Radeon 9200 which can be acquired for roughly the same price any better? Thanks again.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: CamNeely
Is the Radeon 9200 which can be acquired for roughly the same price any better? Thanks again.

no, a radeon 9200 is a 9000 with 8x agp. it is slower than a 9100. here is a rundown of atis marketing

8500 (lets use this as a reference)
8500LE (same card, lower clockspeeds)
9000 (a slower cheaper to make card than the 8500, but similar)
9100 (is a 8500LE, no more, no less. they changed the name of it becuase the 8500 was beating the 9000)
9200 (they made the same mistake twice. the 9200 is slower than the 9100/8500 and is the same performance as a 9000)

 

[Pete]

Good lord, that PC is old. I'd recommend trying to find a used ATi 7500 or GF4MX 440 for under $35. 3D speed won't be an issue with that slow a PC and with those games, so your main focus should be on 2D quality (and maybe DVD playback).

If you want to buy new, the $50+tax AR Visiontek 9100 64MB @ CompUSA is a nice deal if you can spend $88 now and wait for the rebates. Alternatively, the $59 shipped FIC AT009 9000 Pro 64MB @ NewEgg is about the same speed but offers many more output options (dual head and TV out), and it includes DVD playback software and a bunch of cables and adapters. OTOH, the Vtek has a lifetime warranty, while the FIC is only one year.

Both are nice budget cards, but they're still a bit excessive for your friend's PC. Schadenfroh's GF4MX 440SE looks pretty nice for the price, too. I'd just go with that--no point in spending an extra $15 on a 9100/9000P for such an old PC. Plus, no fan on the card means no noise.

 

[hans007]

beware of mx440s with 64bit bus. i dont think nvidia even makes the mx420 anymore, thats probably why these cards are now out there.


i know my new mx440 8x agp is 64bit bus ddr. there is even 64bit bus SDR which is really slow. good mx440s have 8 memory chips and are 128bit bus ddr.


granted i had no choice, since i had to have a low profile dvi card, and this was all i could get. but yeah watch out.

you might be able to get a radeon 9000 for $50. look out for that as well.