Best CHEAP Video Card for Rebuilding BX PII class box

[wlee]

I have aquired a few BX Chipset PII450 - 600 Class machines. I'm rebuilding these as charity, so I don't want to spend a bundle. What's a decent CHEAP video card that's both BX chipset and WinXP friendly ?
The existing cards range from old STB S3 ?, NVidia VANTA, and Diamond Viper330. The VANTA is particulary bad. Lots of electrical noise in the output. All of these were originally Win98 Boxes. Each one will have 256MB Ram, 30-40GB ATA100 HD and WinXP when rebuilt.

 

[3chordcharlie]

tnt2

 

[nanaki333]

voodoo3 baby!!!

 

[jiffylube1024]

I'd go for an older ATI card, which traditionally have very good 2d.

A Rage 128 AGP (3.3v) or earlier should work well in there. Heck, maybe even a Rage Pro or Rage II+ based card.

 

[Peter]

You'll need a card that still does AGP 2x. At ATi, that feature disappeared with the DX9 cores, will say, the 9200/9250 series is your best bet. Also, you should aim low in regard to the card's power consumption. Use something fanless to be sure (low heat output implies low power demand).

I'd go with an inexpensive 9200SE, or, if that's still too expensive, a 7000. Everything below that is already out of the driver update business.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, 9200 might work, or a 7000/7500. On the NV side, a GF2 MX or TNT2 M64 would also work. A GF4 MX would work too, and be reasonably current, but I don't know what kind of budget for video you are talking about. A 9200 and a GF4 MX have similar performance and price.

As much as the older ATI drivers suck, a Rage128 would actually completely suffice for 2D and DVD/MPEG video-playback, and they are probably a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, ATI's older drivers do suck pretty badly though. I was overjoyed to get rid of my RagePro due to driver issues, even though I really like the video-output and DVD playback support.

I would avoid S3 Savage4-based cards, Trident Blade3D cards, and the like. Also avoid Voodoo3 cards, due to lack of driver support. (Well, you can get 3rd-party drivers (AmigaMerlin) for XP, but they are slightly unstable, even moreso than archaic ATI Rage128 drivers.)

Older NVidia-based cards probably have the most current driver support, newer drivers still work on a TNT1 card, but you have to manually force-install the drivers as a TNT2/Pro, they don't auto-install. Once installed though, they properly recognize the card as a TNT1.

 

[CKTurbo128]

A GeForce 2/4 MX or Radeon 9200 would probably best serve your needs for your PII box.

Originally posted by: Peter
You'll need a card that still does AGP 2x. At ATi, that feature disappeared with the DX9 cores, will say, the 9200/9250 series is your best bet.

I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. The ATi Radeon 9700 & 9800 series are able to run at 2X and in such old AGP slots, as demonstrated by the 3DMark 2003 article posted by Ace's Hardware last year (http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000242) , where they tested a PII machine with a 9700 Pro against a P4 machine with a 9600 to see how much 3Dmark 03 relies on GPU power. Of course, using such a card in an old machine like a PII is overkill, but not totally incompatible.

 

[3chordcharlie]

They're being rebuilt for charity, and need a decent card for a low-end PIII system.

I think the tnt-series (m64 can still be got new for very cheap) is a good way to go. You should be able to go to a store and find a pretty much unlimited supply of tnt2-m64 cards for a good price, rather than having to find them 'here and there'.

And I'll second that the rage 128-pro (and I think I had both an Xpert98 and an Xpert2000) have great 2D quality, are XP-friendly and would also be cheap. They probably are a little harder to find though.

 

[DoughKey]

Does ATI still update the drivers for the M64 line? They're still used quite extensively as onboard video for servers and such. At least the drivers in XP work out of the box just fine from what I've seen.

-D

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: DoughKey
Does ATI still update the drivers for the M64 line? They're still used quite extensively as onboard video for servers and such. At least the drivers in XP work out of the box just fine from what I've seen.

-D

M64 is Nvidia... and they are still supported under the newest detonator drvers, but they don't really update anything.

ATI has kept everything Rage-128 and newer up to date last time I checked (a few months ago). I would doubt there is any new development going on, but the drivers work fine in XP, though OpenGL support isn't fantastic.

 

[DoughKey]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: DoughKey
Does ATI still update the drivers for the M64 line? They're still used quite extensively as onboard video for servers and such. At least the drivers in XP work out of the box just fine from what I've seen.

-D

M64 is Nvidia... and they are still supported under the newest detonator drvers, but they don't really update anything.

ATI has kept everything Rage-128 and newer up to date last time I checked (a few months ago). I would doubt there is any new development going on, but the drivers work fine in XP, though OpenGL support isn't fantastic.

By M64 I mean ATI Mach64 which is used in tons of on-board video situations still.

-D

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: DoughKey

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: DoughKey
Does ATI still update the drivers for the M64 line? They're still used quite extensively as onboard video for servers and such. At least the drivers in XP work out of the box just fine from what I've seen.

-D

M64 is Nvidia... and they are still supported under the newest detonator drvers, but they don't really update anything.

ATI has kept everything Rage-128 and newer up to date last time I checked (a few months ago). I would doubt there is any new development going on, but the drivers work fine in XP, though OpenGL support isn't fantastic.

By M64 I mean ATI Mach64 which is used in tons of on-board video situations still.

-D

Sorry - no idea about that one. If it's still being used I cna't imagine they would stop drver support just yet though.