Card recommendation needed!

[New2allthis]

I've got an old HP 8140 that a friend put a AX59PRO motherboard in and an AMDK6 500mhz processor, 256mb ram, Windows 2000 pro and a Rage Pro Turbo PCI video card. My son is trying to play Jedi Knight 2 and it's way too slooooowww. A shop told us the video card was the culprit and recommended a geforce2 MX400 64mb PCI card (I have no AGP slot). Does this make sense? It's about $70 and not too expensive but would $100 get me a lot more potential? My son may bring yet another game home and uncover more hardware problems ...

advice and recommendations appreciated! thanks!

 

[Balex99]

I would think that MX card would be just fine for your system(but nothing bigger). Your cpu will still be limiting you on overall gameplay.

My son may bring yet another game home and uncover more hardware problems ...

Definitely something to think about. If you decide later that you want a cpu/mb combo it will more than likely have an agp slot, then you wont be able to take advantage of it due to your pci card.

Upgrading for the sake of one game can be expensive and troubling(I've done it before). Evaluate your whole system, and if a lot of hardware is limited (hard drive, sound card, Mb, cpu, case) and your son is looking into playing a lot of games like JK2 and future ones, then a new box maybe a lot cheaper and less headaches.

 

[rippk]

I would go with a geforce2 Ti card. MX cards are crap. The visontek GF2 ti 200 is selling for 99$ with a 30$ mail-in rebate at Best Buy. so 69$ well-spent. GF2ti200 gives about same performance as GF4MX420, but for 60$ less.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: rippk
I would go with a geforce2 Ti card. MX cards are crap. The visontek GF2 ti 200 is selling for 99$ with a 30$ mail-in rebate at Best Buy. so 69$ well-spent. GF2ti200 gives about same performance as GF4MX420, but for 60$ less.

Excuse me, but I think he said he needs a PCI card..

Really, New2allthis, I think you need a full system upgrade, as that video card will help some, but it won't give you any stellar performance. Anyway, if you do decide to stick with a PCI video card, either that GF4MX card would work, or a Radeon 7500 64MB PCI card would also give good results.

 

[cdub]

Keep in mind that Jedi Knight 2 is VERY CPU intensive... even most high-end cards are limited by CPU performance on this game (see this Anandtech link for a brief support of this statement). It sounds like you are in need of a CPU/Mobo/mem upgrade, question is, is it worth it for an FPS game? It was for me...

edit: which obviously is exactly what Balex said... it's been a long couple of days.

 

[New2allthis]

Thanks! I think I'll go with this card just to test my son's interest in gaming on our PC. He's got PS2 as well but I'm guessing he hasn't found a friend who has the technology to burn a PS2 game on a CD for him! If he ends up wanting more game play on the PC than what this can deliver ... it'll need to be a new box (motherboard/CPU et al) and for that I'll likely come back to this forum for some recommendations.

Happy Father's Day

 

[Mikki]

Originally posted by: rippk
I would go with a geforce2 Ti card. MX cards are crap. The visontek GF2 ti 200 is selling for 99$ with a 30$ mail-in rebate at Best Buy. so 69$ well-spent. GF2ti200 gives about same performance as GF4MX420, but for 60$ less.

Up until very recently, I was using a GeForce 2 MX card and it was absolutely brilliant. In fact, the only reason I upgraded was a friend found a great deal on a faster card and asked me if I wanted one. It ran every game I play thus far.....