Best Bang for the Buck?

[Compscott]

Hello all. First time poster, but I have been reading several of your posts for weeks now and I think that you can all help me make my decision.

My current system configuration is:
Athlon Thunderbird 1.4
512mb 266mhz Ram
Geforce 3 TI 200 64mb

I have been thinking about making some changes to my system lately and have been looking at the video card as the best spot to make an increase. However, money is tight and I don't have a ton to spend. What card would you recommend for somewhere in the $200 - $300 range that will give me the best upgrade?

Also, the games that I play the most are Everquest, Counter-Strike, and lately Planetside. If the card that you recommend is an ATI card can anyone who plays these games also give me any insight on compatibility issues? I had a guild-mate in Everquest who had nothing but problems after problems once he purchased his 9700Pro. I am used to the rock solid performance of the NVidia drivers and I would sacrifice a small amount of performace in exchange for stability.

Also, since you are all hardware gurus, is there any other component in my system that would be better off upgrading instead of the Vid card? Am I gimping my rig by sticking with the Athlon 1.4? My current motherboard (ABIT KG7) will support a max of a Palamino XP 2100+ or a T-Bred 2000+. I really don't want to replace my board and I can't find any good info to tell me how much of a performance increase I would see with the 2000 or the 2100.

Any insight would be gratly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Vonkhan]

throw in an extra $20 and buy a 9800Pro from the FS/T forum ... future proof yourself, today!

else, get a 9700Pro for ~$225

 

[Schadenfroh]

the best place you can improve is your CPU cituation. get yourself a athlon xp. a geforce3 is even held back by that thunderbird, so i dont wanna even think how it will bottleneck even a geforce4/9500/9700. spend that 200/300 dollars on a new cpu/mobo

a7n8x deluxe (nforce2) $150 + $100 2500 and o/c it to 3000. = perfect match for geforce3

 

[Corporate Thug]

9700 NON pro and a XP 2200+ will prolly maximize your performance for under $300

 

[Pete]

$205 9700NP for the video card, and upgrade your CPU to the fastest XP you can afford with what's left over.

 

[Mem]

$205 9700NP for the video card, and upgrade your CPU to the fastest XP you can afford with what's left over.

That makes sense to me ,you should be able to get both the 9700NP and XP 2000+ for under $300.

 

[Compscott]

Cool. Thanks for all the input guys. I did some looking around and I found a 9700np at www.mwave.com for $199.00. As of right now that is the way that I am leaning.

As far as the processor upgrade goes, the highest my board will support is a 2100+ Palamino (although I have read success stories about people getting a 2400+ to work on it). If I upgrade to the 2100+ or worst case scenario the 2000+ will I be able to notice a considerable performance boost? I just don't want to invest a lot of money into upgrading this system instead of saving it for buildng a new one.

Thanks again for your insight.

 

[mchammer187]

i think your components match the system perfectly

if you upgrade then CPU and vidcard them mem & mobo will be the bottleneck

IMO there is no bottleneck now because no one thing holding you back (ie components are matched well)

so i would just hold off until you can do a full upgrade

upgrading to a 9700 will get you some gain but not enough to be worth 200 IMO the CPU a little more but the mem and motherboard are still going to be holding you back quite a bit

 

[prometheusxls]

Free advice:

Don't even think about upgradeing the vid card untill you have at least 2.5 GHz intel or 2600+ AMD chip. 90% of todays games are cpu limited so thats where your money should be spent. Get a AXP 1700+ from newegg and OC to 2600+ or so on an epox nforce2 mobo then we will talk vidcards.

AFAIK C-strike is still incompatible w/ ATI. I would prbabbly go with a ti4200 8x 128MB vid card. cheap and runs 90% of todays games as fast as anything out there. The other 10% are mostly IMO crap fps w/ less than 10 hours game time each so those can be thrown out for the most part. If you *must* play u2k3 and other TOTL GPU limited games then buy a 9700P play the games through and then sell it after <2 weeks you won't loose much money in that time.

I reccomend:

1700+ ($44)
Epox Nforce2 ($90)
Ti4200 8x 128 ($80)
Total: $200

More than good nuff for any game out today.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: prometheusxls
Free advice:

Don't even think about upgradeing the vid card untill you have at least 2.5 GHz intel or 2600+ AMD chip. 90% of todays games are cpu limited so thats where your money should be spent. Get a AXP 1700+ from newegg and OC to 2600+ or so on an epox nforce2 mobo then we will talk vidcards.

AFAIK C-strike is still incompatible w/ ATI. I would prbabbly go with a ti4200 8x 128MB vid card. cheap and runs 90% of todays games as fast as anything out there. The other 10% are mostly IMO crap fps w/ less than 10 hours game time each so those can be thrown out for the most part. If you *must* play u2k3 and other TOTL GPU limited games then buy a 9700P play the games through and then sell it after <2 weeks you won't loose much money in that time.

I reccomend:

1700+ ($44)
Epox Nforce2 ($90)
Ti4200 8x 128 ($80)
Total: $200

More than good nuff for any game out today.

C-strike is incompatible with ati?

 

[prometheusxls]

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: prometheusxls
Free advice:

Don't even think about upgradeing the vid card untill you have at least 2.5 GHz intel or 2600+ AMD chip. 90% of todays games are cpu limited so thats where your money should be spent. Get a AXP 1700+ from newegg and OC to 2600+ or so on an epox nforce2 mobo then we will talk vidcards.

AFAIK C-strike is still incompatible w/ ATI. I would prbabbly go with a ti4200 8x 128MB vid card. cheap and runs 90% of todays games as fast as anything out there. The other 10% are mostly IMO crap fps w/ less than 10 hours game time each so those can be thrown out for the most part. If you *must* play u2k3 and other TOTL GPU limited games then buy a 9700P play the games through and then sell it after <2 weeks you won't loose much money in that time.

I reccomend:

1700+ ($44)
Epox Nforce2 ($90)
Ti4200 8x 128 ($80)
Total: $200

More than good nuff for any game out today.

C-strike is incompatible with ati?

I heard that in Cstrike 9500P has a number of rendering problems. I witnissed this my self and I consideredt it a confirmed issue. Am I missing something?

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: prometheusxls

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: prometheusxls
Free advice:

Don't even think about upgradeing the vid card untill you have at least 2.5 GHz intel or 2600+ AMD chip. 90% of todays games are cpu limited so thats where your money should be spent. Get a AXP 1700+ from newegg and OC to 2600+ or so on an epox nforce2 mobo then we will talk vidcards.

AFAIK C-strike is still incompatible w/ ATI. I would prbabbly go with a ti4200 8x 128MB vid card. cheap and runs 90% of todays games as fast as anything out there. The other 10% are mostly IMO crap fps w/ less than 10 hours game time each so those can be thrown out for the most part. If you *must* play u2k3 and other TOTL GPU limited games then buy a 9700P play the games through and then sell it after <2 weeks you won't loose much money in that time.

I reccomend:

1700+ ($44)
Epox Nforce2 ($90)
Ti4200 8x 128 ($80)
Total: $200

More than good nuff for any game out today.

C-strike is incompatible with ati?

I heard that in Cstrike 9500P has a number of rendering problems. I witnissed this my self and I consideredt it a confirmed issue. Am I missing something?

i have played Cstrike on my radeon 8500 for well over a year and sold that and got a 9700 in january and have not witnessed any "rendering problems" that you speak of

the last issue i had in CS was with the Catalyst 3.2 caused a lock when pushing esc and this issue has been addressed in the Cat 3.4's

 

[Pete]

Well, a CPU upgrade should be fairly cheap (Barton 2500+'s are $95, so I'd imagine 2000+'s should be much less), and should offer a nice little boost all around (mostly to your minimum fps). The 9700NP can always be carried over to a new system, and it'll certainly be fully utilized with a 2.5+GHz CPU, but it should still provide a framerate boost over your GF3, and enabling AA & AF should be essentially "free."

I wouldn't upgrade just your CPU and MB, as a 1700+ is only around 1.4GHz anyway, and I don't think an nF2 will provide a huge boost with the same PC2100 memory. Moving from a Ti200 to a 4200 seems like a bit of a waste, too.

I think a 9700 will show the most improvement now, and you can carry it over to a new system later on, where it'll show a nice performance jump.

 

[Jeff7181]

To throw in my 2 cents...

You can look at upgrading 2 ways right now...

1.) You can buy hardware that's outdated, but still runs today's game just fine, and buy it very cheap

or

2.) You can buy state of the art hardware today that will run today's games with all eye candy on, and buy it for a fairly expensive price

... either way, by Q4 of this year or Q1 of next year, you're gonna want to upgrade again because the hardware that's available today just isn't going to cut it for the next generation of games. Look at what's coming out at the end of this year...

The Athlon-64
The Pentium 4 with Prescott core
nVidia's NV40 core
ATI's R400 core
DDRII is in the works
PCI Express is in the works

to sum it up... right now is one of the worst times you can choose to upgrade with the future in mind, because 6 months from now, no hardware that's around right now will be a top performer. And while a 9700 Pro will run Half Life 2, Splinter Cell, and Doom 3 at reasonable speeds, they're not speeds worth spending $200+ for. You're not gonna see any advantage from getting a 9700 Pro that runs Quake 3 based games at 300 frames per second versus say, a 9500 non-pro that runs Quake 3 based games at "only" 180 frames per second.

I would advise you to get either a 9500 non-pro if you like ATI, or a GeForce4 Ti4200. (the Asus V8420S Ti4200 overclocks higher than Ti4600 speeds and costs around $140)

As far as the processor... If you don't like overclocking, I'd say go for an XP2400 or XP2600... if you're willing to overclock, get an XP2500... I hear they're hitting 2.3 Ghz now. Both of those should be just under $100 for retail packaging.

 

[prometheusxls]

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: prometheusxls

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: prometheusxls
Free advice:

Don't even think about upgradeing the vid card untill you have at least 2.5 GHz intel or 2600+ AMD chip. 90% of todays games are cpu limited so thats where your money should be spent. Get a AXP 1700+ from newegg and OC to 2600+ or so on an epox nforce2 mobo then we will talk vidcards.

AFAIK C-strike is still incompatible w/ ATI. I would prbabbly go with a ti4200 8x 128MB vid card. cheap and runs 90% of todays games as fast as anything out there. The other 10% are mostly IMO crap fps w/ less than 10 hours game time each so those can be thrown out for the most part. If you *must* play u2k3 and other TOTL GPU limited games then buy a 9700P play the games through and then sell it after <2 weeks you won't loose much money in that time.

I reccomend:

1700+ ($44)
Epox Nforce2 ($90)
Ti4200 8x 128 ($80)
Total: $200

More than good nuff for any game out today.

C-strike is incompatible with ati?

I heard that in Cstrike 9500P has a number of rendering problems. I witnissed this my self and I consideredt it a confirmed issue. Am I missing something?

i have played Cstrike on my radeon 8500 for well over a year and sold that and got a 9700 in january and have not witnessed any "rendering problems" that you speak of

the last issue i had in CS was with the Catalyst 3.2 caused a lock when pushing esc and this issue has been addressed in the Cat 3.4's

Sorry, But i thought the radeon 9500 - 9700s short comings ijn cstrike were fairly well doccumented in the forum. Jsut search for C-strike radeon and you will see what I am tlakign about. These may have just been addressed in a recent release.

 

[prometheusxls]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
To throw in my 2 cents...

You can look at upgrading 2 ways right now...

1.) You can buy hardware that's outdated, but still runs today's game just fine, and buy it very cheap

or

2.) You can buy state of the art hardware today that will run today's games with all eye candy on, and buy it for a fairly expensive price

... either way, by Q4 of this year or Q1 of next year, you're gonna want to upgrade again because the hardware that's available today just isn't going to cut it for the next generation of games. Look at what's coming out at the end of this year...

The Athlon-64
The Pentium 4 with Prescott core
nVidia's NV40 core
ATI's R400 core
DDRII is in the works
PCI Express is in the works

to sum it up... right now is one of the worst times you can choose to upgrade with the future in mind, because 6 months from now, no hardware that's around right now will be a top performer. And while a 9700 Pro will run Half Life 2, Splinter Cell, and Doom 3 at reasonable speeds, they're not speeds worth spending $200+ for. You're not gonna see any advantage from getting a 9700 Pro that runs Quake 3 based games at 300 frames per second versus say, a 9500 non-pro that runs Quake 3 based games at "only" 180 frames per second.

I would advise you to get either a 9500 non-pro if you like ATI, or a GeForce4 Ti4200. (the Asus V8420S Ti4200 overclocks higher than Ti4600 speeds and costs around $140)

As far as the processor... If you don't like overclocking, I'd say go for an XP2400 or XP2600... if you're willing to overclock, get an XP2500... I hear they're hitting 2.3 Ghz now. Both of those should be just under $100 for retail packaging.

Word,

Right now its all about buying the ultra cheap stuff to cut your losses and waiting till next gen to see if any of the new products coming out will be worth it. In a historical perspective buying a 9700P is like buying a TNT2 32 MB 4 years ago for $250 5 months before the GF2 GTS was released.

 

[Schadenfroh]

people, stop the long quotes!!!!! it make forum hurt

 

[PepperDog]

Interesting thread... I'm in a similar situation but have already done the CPU/RAM/Mobo upgrade - to a 2100+ @ 2.17ghz, 512meg PC2700, Nforce2. But I'm still running a GF2 GTS!

Is a $199 9700NP gonna make that much of a difference over a 4200? I mean, most of todays games should be totally playable (like 60+ FPS) with a 4200, right? To me, playability is all that matters. I don't need to get like 100+ FPS, when 60-80+ is fine for me.

Can someone give me an example / guesstimate of the performance difference between a 9700NP and a 4200 (probably will OC to 4600 speed) in a system similar to mine?

EDIT: And I typically only play in 1024x768 cuz my monitor blows...Gonna upgrade to a nice new NEC FP912 or similar probably in a couple weeks (come on IRS refund!!!) and should be able to up the res. to 12x10 or somethin...

 

[Jeff7181]

most of todays games should be totally playable (like 60+ FPS) with a 4200, right?

Absolutely

If you overclock a Ti4200 to Ti4600 speeds, it'll play just about any game out there with ease. The advantage that the 9x00 series cards have is AA and AF create much less of a performance hit. If you like turning up everything, then by all means, get an ATI... however, in my opinion it's not the best bang for your buck.

 

[thirdchild]

This thread is really really close to my problem, my system is:
Athlon Thunderbird 1.4
512 2100 DDR
ATI Radeon 64MB VIVO
Abit KG7

And my goal is to be able to use my computer as a PVR and improve gaming performance (example games: Neverwinter Nights, Simcity 4)
I was told that PVR stuff eats CPU power like candy, and my budget is $300 - 500...

So should I get a:
1)New CPU (2100+the max the KG&7 supports) & PVR add-on card
2)New MB & CPU & ?Video Card? & PVR add-on card
3)New MB & CPU & AIW 8500 NP
4)New MB & CPU & AIW 9700 NP

Thanks.

 

[Compscott]

Wow, thanks everyone for all the great suggestions. I agree completely that I need to upgrade my processor as well, but since there is all this new technology on the horizon, I think I will go for something more low end for right now just to get me by.

I have an ABIT KG7 motherboard and as soon as I figure out what is the max processor I can use on that board I will look into making that purchase.

However, due to your recommendations I am thinking about purchasing either a 9700 NP or a TI 4200/4600 card for my upgrade. I am still looking for recommendations/link for good cards to buy and where to buy them for the best price!!!

While looking around and reading reviews and stuff I ran across a review for the Albatron TI4680P Turbo. Its a 8x AGP ti4200 that is already overclocked and uses higher memory and stuff. From the reviews that I found it is definately able to achiev TI4600 speeds and maybe even a little more. Has anyone had any experience with this card? Link to card on NewEgg

NewEgg has if for about $150. Are there other TI4200s out there that I would have just as good luck overclocking that are less expensive? Are there any TI4600 cards out there that are also easily overclockable..maybe to give me even a little more longevity out of my video card purchase What is the best price you guys have found for a 9700 NP?

Thanks again guys for all your great information.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: Compscott
Wow, thanks everyone for all the great suggestions. I agree completely that I need to upgrade my processor as well, but since there is all this new technology on the horizon, I think I will go for something more low end for right now just to get me by.

I have an ABIT KG7 motherboard and as soon as I figure out what is the max processor I can use on that board I will look into making that purchase.

However, due to your recommendations I am thinking about purchasing either a 9700 NP or a TI 4200/4600 card for my upgrade. I am still looking for recommendations/link for good cards to buy and where to buy them for the best price!!!

While looking around and reading reviews and stuff I ran across a review for the Albatron TI4680P Turbo. Its a 8x AGP ti4200 that is already overclocked and uses higher memory and stuff. From the reviews that I found it is definately able to achiev TI4600 speeds and maybe even a little more. Has anyone had any experience with this card? Link to card on NewEgg

NewEgg has if for about $150. Are there other TI4200s out there that I would have just as good luck overclocking that are less expensive? Are there any TI4600 cards out there that are also easily overclockable..maybe to give me even a little more longevity out of my video card purchase What is the best price you guys have found for a 9700 NP?

Thanks again guys for all your great information.

best price for 9700 NP is ~$200

i would try to get the cheapest Ti4200 you can find like 80-90 is the most i'd pay check hot deals

 

[beatle]

I'm hoping you won't be disappointed with a video card upgrade alone. I had a tbird @ 1266 and I went from a 32 meg GF2 GTS to a 64 meg Ti4200 that I clocked very close to 4600 speeds. Most games didn't run any faster. Sure, I could run higher resolutions without a performance hit, but the newest games were sluggish. My advice would be to limp along until you can save up enough to upgrade your components all at once and eliminate bottlenecks.

 

[railer]

If you can live without AA or AF, a 4200 is the way to go. They're faster than crap with AA and AF off.