Best Videocard for PIII 850MHz???

[Bink]

Hi,

What videocard will give me the best performance for games on a PIII 850? Will I see any benefit on a Radeon 8500 over a 7500?? How about a GF4 4600 over a GF3 Ti 200??

I am concerned that the card I choose will be CPU bound. I plan to run mainly flight simulators and FPS (e.g. IL2 Sturmovik & CFS2, MOH:AA & GTA3)

Thanks,

Bink

 

[paladiin]

You are correct in that many games are limited by the CPU. This article here on Anandtech is great at showing how video cards and CPU's scale together in terms of performance with today's games:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1608

For example, in Jedi Knight 2 (a heavily modified QIII Engine Game, an excellent representation of today's gaming needs) the 7500 and the 8500 perform nearly identical at the speed you're at. And a GeForce 4 4200 (and most likely the 4400 and the 4600) performs only a few frames per second faster than the 7500 and 8500. Interestingly, even the difference between at GeForce2 MX400 and a GeForce4 4200 is very small (under 10 frames a second). This is nowhere near the case when the CPU is much faster (the 4200 nearly doubles the performance of the MX400 when the CPU is at 1700Mhz). The problem is that with a faster CPU, the MX400 stays exactly the same.

Here's what it comes down to for today's games:

If you have a 833Mhz CPU, spending $300+ on a video card will give you pretty much the same performance as spending $40 on a video card (GeForce 4 4600 vs. MX400). At your speed, your CPU is the bottleneck regardless.

Let's look quickly at tomorrow's games (ie Unreal 2) using the Unreal Performance Test 2002. With that benchmark, at 833Mhz there is about a 25% difference between the 7500 and the 8500 Radeon, but this translates to only about 5fps difference. The difference between a game running at 15 fps and 20fps is noticeable, but still horribly slow either way, and likely unplayable (30fps is the minimum for somewhat smooth gameplay). While this benchmark is still new and not finished (scores will likely improve as it gets closer to completion due to optimization), it serves to show that in tomorrow's games, faster cards will be better. It is interesting to note that most of the cards on that test (with the exception of the 4200, and the GeForce 3 cards to a lesser extent) perform exactly the same whether you run them on a 800Mhz or a 1733Mhz CPU.

So basically you've got a tough decision. Getting a cheaper card for today's games will give you the same performance compared with an expensive card and your CPU. Buying a faster and more expensive card will give you better performance in tomorrow's games.

What makes the decision really tough is, when do you plan on upgrading your CPU? If you plan on sticking with your 833Mhz CPU for a while, just get the cheaper card. If you plan on eventually getting a faster CPU, get the more expensive card now, and when you upgrade your CPU you'll notice better performance.

 

[TheCorm]

I would say that if you plan to upgrade and keep the graphics card then it's worth spending a bit extra and getting something like a Ti4200 or the GF3 Ti200 if you wanna go for a cheaper option. If you plan to keep your setup for a while and then get a brand spanking new card when you upgrade then a GF4 MX440 should give make a nice partner to your PIII.

Just like what paladin said really.

Corm

 

[FalseChristian]

I'd recommend a GeForce2 GTS/Pro/Ultra. These cards are quite inexpensive right now and are a perfect match for your CPU.

 

[Bink]

Thanks Paladiin, that's a great reference! I like how the graphs show the effects of scaling.

The graphs clearly show the limitations of the GF2 MX - which leads me to wonder why so many PCs are still bundled with these types of cards - I just popped over to the Dell site to make sure I wasn't getting confused, and sure enough, looked at recommended Dimension 4500 PCs - even the middle (of 3) models recommended comes with a P4 2400 and..... a GF2 MX.... for $1,239. Even the nForce integrated graphics which are being heavily pushed by Compaq have a similar level of performance - paired with XP2000+ CPUs. This must surely have an impact on future game development - even PCs being bought now with fast CPUs will have limited graphics performance.

Comments??

 

[paladiin]

There's pretty much only 1 reason computers come with GeForce2MX cards today...price. You can get a GeForce2 MX400 32MB card for a mere $40. These big companies obviously get them for less than that. For most home users, they aren't hardcore gamers, and don't even know what a GeForce2 MX card is. Basically if it can play the one or two games they buy for it (a GeForce2 MX card will play The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Deer Hunter 873 or whatever that's at) they're happy. In fact, most current FPS games even run fine on a GeForce 2 MX (I know, that's the card I have). Of course, serious gamers know that the GF2MX is gonna be a big pile of steaming crap when it tries to run the next batch of games. Mainstream users usually just want a computer they can surf and do e-mail with, use Office, print, maybe scan pictures, and play mainstream games once in a while. These same people are looking for the best deal they can get on their computers. If comparing a Dell and a Gateway with exactly the same specs, but the Dell had a GeForce 4 4400 and the Gateway had a GeForce 2MX, with the Gateway costing $250 less, guess which one would sell more?

If this wasn't the case, you'd never see manufacturers using integrated video or low end video cards in their machines. The fact is that most users don't care about this. The ones that do either know before buying their system, or they learn the hard way when they go to buy a game and their video card can't handle it.