Best Vid Card for under $150?

[nitsuj3580]

Subject says it all. My brother has a Voodoo 3 3000 in his PC and can't play some of the newer games like Tony Hawk 3 and GTA3 so I want to get him something that'll play these games well. Maybe not top of the line graphics but smooth gameplay at the lower resolutions and under $150.

What's the best bang for my buck. thanks!

 

[Mavrick007]

What kind of a computer does he have? Ram type and amount? Speed of cpu?

 

[Sk8ter]

Probly go for something like a Geforce 4 MX 400. Cheap but will play all the newest games.

 

[nitsuj3580]

He has a P3 450 MHz with 192 megs of pc100 sdram

 

[FrustratedUser]

GF2 GTS-V for <$50 @ Newegg
GF3 Ti200 ~$120

 

[rudder]

The geforce 2 at newegg is a good deal. But the Radeon 8500 can be found hovering around $110. Much better bang for the buck than the gf3 ti200.

 

[Rand]

The Radceon 8500LE is available for $99 at NewEgg, amazing price/performance ratio. A more well rounded card, with a better feature set and slightly better performance then the GF3 Ti200.
Offers about 80-95% of the performance of a GF4 Ti4200 for under $100.

A hell of a deal IMHO.

Then again, with only a PIII 450MHz he will be completely and totally processor limited.... it's unlikely he will benefit much from having anything better then a GF2 MX400/Radeon 7200 with his current processor.

 

[spanky]

if u need to get something right now... and assuming his other hardware is up to par, i would get a radeon8500.

 

[IQJUMPuw]

another vote for radeon 8500

 

[nitsuj3580]

can someone tell me where I can find a Radeon 8500 for ~$110 like people have been saying? Thanks!

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: nitsuj3580
can someone tell me where I can find a Radeon 8500 for ~$110 like people have been saying? Thanks!

i found mine on FS/FT $100 shipped retail boxed

 

[Athlex]

Newegg has bulk-packed 8500LE cards for $99. They also have Gainward's single-head Ti4200 card for $159. It's a little more the $150, but it also uses 3.5ns RAM which = good overclocking potential.

Edit:
You might also want to get in on this deal for <$100 Geforce3 boards.

 

[Byte]

well i ordered 2 Ti4200 64MB with the 3.5ns RAM. Very disappoiting batch to say the least. I can bearly go over 550. I was hoping for at least 600. Oh well. They come stock at 513mhz BTW.

 

[Athlex]

huh, I stand corrected.
Guess the 6 layer board and TSOP RAM aren't ideal overclockers.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: nitsuj3580
can someone tell me where I can find a Radeon 8500 for ~$110 like people have been saying? Thanks!

NewEgg

$99 Radeon 8500LE w/3.3ns DDR SDRAM.