best vid card for slow comp

[EdipisReks]

my girlfriend has a celeron 400 intel 810 machine, which was fine for her until she started being somewhat interested in gaming (my years of gently nudges has finally started to pay off). i want to get her a better vid card than the integrated crap, but the lack of AGP is irritating. i am going to build her a whole new machine sometime early next year so i don't want to spend more than $50 on a pci vid card. which do you think would be faster at this pricepoint: the voodoo3 3000 pci or a geforce mx200 pci? i know that the mx200 sucks, but on this machine i don't think it would be such a big bottleneck. i know that no one reads any posts that are more than 3 words and an emoticon, but i would appreciate some feedback.

thanks,
--jacob

 

[MilkPowderR]

I would say GF2 MX200. It's a little faster than the V3 3000 both at default speeds. You can overclock the MX200's memory quite higher whereas the V3 3000 you're stuck with increasing the core and memory at the same speed. I believe this is right. Someone correct me if im wrong. I own both V3 2000 PCI and GF2 GTS 32mb.

 

[HappyGamer2]

i wouldn't totally run out the voodoo4 or a radeon sdr pci if you an find one cheap.
the voodoo3 has no 32 bit, I am sure you know that, and no real xp drivers so it is a dead end in the long run, same kinda goes for the voodoo4. it depends on the games she playing, what about 2d quality? the mx 200 may have the worst quality 2d wise.
there is also the old dog tnt2 64 pci which maybe ok on a slow cpu they are a dime a dozen too

 

[lebe0024]

BUY THE MX. I'm not an nvidia zealot, but you will need some T&L engine. (read anands artical on video card upgrades for slow comps a while back, or is it sharkey's?) I can personally vouch for the mx200. It plays counterstrike at a solid 100FPS on a 750MHZ Athlon. It's better then a TNT2 Ultra. The one I had was a leadtek, and it was great.

 

[HappyGamer2]

ya, but how well does T and L work over the pci bus, this I am unsure of. I thought I heard the geforce mx pci cards don't work that great with t and l on, I could be wrong????????? but the mx or radeon will have more features than the voodoo cards thou except for glide.

 

[EdipisReks]

she plays some sim games (including black and white), RTS's and unreal tournament. yeah, UT works best in Glide, but i don't know if a voodoo3 would run black and white. i used toi own a v3, so i know all about its hardware limitations. one thing though is that this computer is only going to run win2k. she won't have XP until i build her a new box, so winXP compatibility isn't that big of a deal. i think the voodoo4 and the radeon PCI are more money than i want to spend for a card that will be there for 4 months.

thanks!
--jacob

 

[oldfart]

If she plays Glide based games (UT) the V3 is a decent choice. It will run pretty well on a slow PC. You can get them used on the FS/T forum for very little. As far as 32 bit goes, you will probably be using 16 bit anyway on a slow system. I never played B&W so I'm not sure on that one.