Best PCI Video Card for Games?

[EglsFly]

A friend of mine has a PIII 800MHz PC that only has PCI slots with integrated Video.
He had upgraded about 1 year or so ago with a Voodoo5 and still has it.

He is looking to upgrade again if possible.
The best I could find is a GeForce2 MX400 PCI card.
Not sure how the MX400 performance compares to a Voodoo5 in the new crop of games like Ghost Recon, RTCW, Aliens vs. Predator 2, etc...
At least this card would have new supported drivers and work ok with current games and probably be tested on them.

Is there any higher end GeForce cards available in PCI card format?
Is there any plans by some of the manufactures to come out with a PCI card using the GeForce Ti line?

Ultimately he needs to replace his motherboard and get one with an AGP slot.
But for now looking to see what we can do with what he has got.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[RudeBoie]

Well.......as I remember the V5 drivers were always pretty good to begin with. For some reason, I'd favor the V5.

 

[Rand]

The Voodoo5 5500 is far and away the fastest PCI graphics card available.
You lack driver support but 3dfx's drivers were always excellent and even now their still rreliable. And the 3dfx user community is almost fanatical in their following and reverence for anything 3dfx and hence there are many many third party 3dfx drivers and some are quite good.

Besides that, the only decent alternatives are from ATi in their PCI Radeon SDR, and nVidia in their GF2 MX400.
Both the Radeon core and the GF2 core are extremely reliant upon AGP's advanced feature set and hence take a very large performance it. A GF2 MX400 in PCI is barely faster then an MX200/TNT2 Ultra/V3 3000 or 3500 level graphics card.

The V5 took no advantage of AGP at all, and was for all intents and purposes a PCI card in an AGP slot and so it takes an extremely small performance hit by going with PCI.


Look at it this way... you can go with a PCI V5 which comes pretty close to a GF2 GTS. Or you can choose a PCI GF2 MX400 which will barely outperform a TNT2/V3.
The GF2 and Radeon are not at all suited to PCI.

I'm sure others will agree that if you need PCI gaming card, 3dfx is far and away the best choice even considering the lack of official driver updates.

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

Uh.. last time i checked, the Voodoo5 got its ass kicked by a Geforce 1 DDR - with performance around Geforce2MX.

Stick with the Voodoo5..

 

[hollowman]

v5

 

[trikster2]

A lot of the i810 mATX systems came with really wimpy power supplies.

I think mine is something like 150W

I know the V5 has some hefty power requirements.

Anyone using one with a wussy power suply?

 

[HappyGamer2]

stick with the V5 as long as it still gets the job done. and when it doesn't anymore get a geforce2mx 400 the v5 pretty much takes the current pci bus to it's limits speed wise, so don't expect any card to be much faster unless there is driver a related problem with the V5

 

[BFG10K]

Uh.. last time i checked, the Voodoo5 got its ass kicked by a Geforce 1 DDR - with performance around Geforce2MX.

You'd do well to check again. The Voodoo5 can beat the GF DDR and absolutely canes the GF2 MX.

 

[Freewolf]

The voodoo 5500 is still the best pci card out and works just fine with xp

 

[HappyGamer2]

yep the v5 is faster( well more load power at higher res actually) than a gf1 ddr and a geforce2 mx400. the v5 is only slower than these two in a few games, usually newer t and l games. and how well does t and l work over the pci bus??????? there are a few newer games that the v5 drivers are lacking too but overall the v5 has more load power. my v5 has more load power than my 32mb ddr radeon has in SOME games. Serious Sam 1 is one of them for example.

 

[Jethro666]

The V5 is his best option. No shiny GF3/R8500 for the integrated MB unfortunates....
:-(