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Best bang for my $150 video buck?

Jammer53

Jammer53

Golden Member
Hello. My first post here coming over from Ars. I have a question for all you gamers. I am currently running an ATI Xpert 2000 32mb card in my box. I am looking to get into a little gaming action and was wondering what your opinions are as far as upgrading this card. I don't have any information re: frame rates or anything like that for this card, so I don't have anything for you to compare it to.

Also, I'd like to spend like $150 or less, if that's even possible. ( I do have bills to pay. 🙂 )

Thanks for your time.

J53 😎
 
I like the ATI Radeon. I think it has a great balance of speed, price, features, image quality. Not quite as fast as a GF2 GTS but I think it beats it in most other areas. For $150 you could easily get a Radeon 32DDR. I know ATI has a $30 trade-up program for the radeon. I think you can trade another ATI card in for $30 towards a Radeon. Maybe the Xpert is included. If so, then you could probably get a Radeon 64 VIVO for around $150.
 
Err, I'll take a bit of a different angle here, what types of games are you looking to get into?

What are your system specs(CPU, mobo, RAM etc)?

How long do you plan on keeping the card?
 
BenSkywalker

Here's the box I just built:

InWin Q500n
MSI K7T Pro
Duron 700
Quantum 30G LM/7200rpm
Kingston 128mbPC 133 Cas3
ATI Xpert 2000 32mb
Hitachi CM615 (17&quot😉

Games: I just picked up UT, StarWars Rogue Squadron, Alien vs Predator. The Rage Expendable game came w/the vid card. Also, have Half-Life and my son has a bunch of sports related stuff.

Peak: Thanks for the links.

To all: thanks for your opinion. I noticed a lot of ATI fans so far. Quite the departure from the Geforce crowd. Refreshing actually. Although I have nothing against nVidia as I have one of their cards in my other box.

Anyone else?

J53 😎
 
V5 ..if you are playing UT & HL/CS & sports (racing) games ...I have owned a Radeon & GTS2Pro ...go V5
 
I'd get a Radeon32 for its very good balance of speed and features, or an Elsa/Visiontek GTS for its very good speed, while still having good image quality.
 
if you can get the 64 MB VIVO Radeon, get that. I mean, you did want best bang, and the Radeon definitely has the most features--VIVO, DVD, image quality, 2d quality, etc.
 
For under $150 there are a lot of choices you can get; Radeon 32mb DDR, maybe a Radeon 64mb DDR w/VIVO, 32mb DDR Geforce 2 GTS, 32mb Geforce 2 MX, 64mb Evil Kyro(power vr 3). Your best bet would probably be the 32mb DDR Radeon, or a 32mb DDR Geforce 2 GTS card.
 
Well guys, unfortunately, the Radeon cards are not available through ATI's trade in program. Here is a quote from the FAQ's on their site:

"What ATI cards are available in the trade-up program? ALL-IN-WONDER 128 PRO - 32 MB version of our award winning
multimedia graphics cards
RAGE FURY MAXX - The ultimate gaming card featuring dual ATI
RAGE 128 processors.
RAGE FURY PRO - All around performance with Video input and
output for video capture..
ATI-TV WONDER - A great add-on to any system, featuring ATI
Intelligent TV and much more!

Guess I'll have to look into this further. Thanks alot.

J53 😎
 
voodoo5 if you want glide and fsaa, with great graphics quality but there out business, good price on the agp v5 models now. good drivers at this point.

a radeon 32 mb ddr is the best deal these days, but you have to put up with crappy drivers causing graphics issues, done that been there. fsaa sucks compared to voodoo5

geforce mx good price half way decent drivers, not enough power to play many high load games at 1280x1024 or higher

geforce gts, nice card, not the greatest graphics quality, but not bad. it's fast, but no glide and fsaa is soso
 
Strange. The Radeons were part of that promo. If you look at the US order form, the Radeon is listed. $185 before the $30 rebate for a 64 meg VIVO. I'd print one of those suckers out.
 
The trade-in at ATI's site is not a good deal. I just went from an Xpert 98 with ISA TV tuner to a Radeon AIW. I got a much better deal here (thanks Hawk) than I could've gotten at the ATI site, and I sold the Xpert 98 & tuner for about what ATI would have given me for it.

BTW, I love the AIW for its many features, and did I mention I got a great deal on it? I think Hawk also has other Radeon cards FS, look for a post in the for sale section from him.
 
oldfart (geez, I feel awfully disrespectful)

I stand corrected. I only went by the listing in the FAQ page. Suppose I should have dug a little more. Thanks for the link.

J53 😎

PS: I'm not exactly a spring chicken myself.😉
 
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