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Flattering news for Ge3 owners

J

jakobkraft

Golden Member
I have a friend with a PC almost identical to mine in terms of CPU (exact), RDRAM (256MB less to my 512), even hard drive speed and capacity (WD120GB 7200). He finally got interested in putting some games on his machine so I gave him a few tried and true titles...and was a little annoyed, though not terribly suprised that, with no AA enabled and with low resolution (1024x768 and under), he ran his games (Quake III, Sacrifice, MDK2, Max Payne, The Thing) at nearly the exact same speed as me, achieving identical fps in many locations throughout a game. His 3DMarkSE benchmarks don't come close, around 7500 to my 10000, but his play was pretty much identical. His card is one of the best Ge3 Ti200 cards made I think-Gainwards 128MB Golden Sample with factory approved overclock of normal Ge3 speed (200MHz x 460MHz I think). I got my Ti4600 through a former COMPUSA employee who went a little discount happy but I have to say that if you don't care about AA or playing at high resolutions, Ge3 owners should hold on a while longer. And yes, I even took his Ge3 card home to my machine for a couple of hours and despite the lower benchmarks, couldn't visibly discern any performance difference. And I'm not blind to that sort of thing-had a Ge2MX400 awhile ago for a week that I needed dual monitor support, and I couldn't even play my games since the performance was too depressing.

"So Ge3 owners, fret not-if you don't give a damn about AA or hitting those very high (and just plain stupid if you don't have an exceedingly large monitor) resolutions, your card still holds water," he admitted, bitterly.
Cheers!
 
yup...thats why I'm waiting for the NV30 before I upgrade. UT2003 does get a little sluggish at times though.
 
I have to agree wiht you with this. Even Voodoo 3 would suffient still if you dont play newest games (Morrow Wind, Ut2003, Mafia...).
 
I would never consider buying a GF4. Absolutely no point, unless you have a really crappy card like GF SDR.
 
I would second that...I just got a MSI Ti4600 .....upgraded from the ASUS 8200 Geforce 3......my main reason for upgrading was dual display support...got 2 flat pannels here....but the honest truth is the perfomance difference isn't really that visible.........unless you really want to use 4X FSAA with 16X antistropic filtering.........or play UT 2K3......wait a while......
as for the NV30,, i don't think it would be comming out any time soon...it Nvidia probably needed to add more texture pipelines.....from 4 to 8 as well as revise the Memory achitechture.....
 
Makes glad for not paying $400 when the 4600 came out since i was so sad my card was obsolete... apparently not. 🙂
 
No not obsolete at all...I ran my friend's Ge3 through the ringer yesterday on my machine with my most familiar games; points where I knew frames would drop and were the most graphic intensive-though I wasn't eager to admit it, I didn't see any real difference. Again if not enabling AA or upping the resolutions, rejoice as the Ge3 is still a very solid card.
 
that's the NV30, hopefully for nVidia they get it out before newyears, and expect pricetags around $400 at first ...

and it wont be named geforce 5 as far as I know ...

 
too many jump up in CPU speed and GPU speed when their machines are just fine.

Sure you may get some more eyecandy with the newer GPU's, but that's only if the game is coded to show it.


CPU speeds are getting ridiculous for the software out.

 
Hmmm.. I aggree, and disagree.

I just built myself a 2.53GHz P4 system. I'm using my Ti200 which I was using in my AMD T-bird 1.2 system. I run the card at 210/485, (a rather modest OC for a Ti200 I might add. Your friend could probably crank his Gainward WAY up). You have to keep in mind that 1-2 year old games running at 1024x768, the GF3 will be FINE. In other words at that resolution with those games, you are CPU-limited, not GPU. For example on my old Athlon I would run UT2003 and get ~40FPS no matter what res I selected: 1024*768 or 640*480, didn't matter. I was bound by my CPU. With the new rig, I get ~45FPS at 10*7, but ~100 at 800*600.

In other words, try cranking up to 1280*1024 and run those same games... then you'll see the difference. I agree that the Ti200 is perfectly adequate for now. Do I want a 9700 Pro? Yes, I also want a Ferrari. My Honda gets me where I want to go plenty fast.
 
Well, like I said, so long as you are not a big fan of AA, and do not play at very high resolutions (which again, is kind of silly if you don't have a large monitor) the performance difference between these cards-given their enormous price gap-is marginal at best. Your paying hundreds of dollars more for a card that only strutts its stuff at high res. That's what I was shocked to learn-remember I own a Ti4600 and am not thrilled to have discovered this...but then again, I like that it's one in the face for the graphics card industry, who constantly have gamers chasing the most elusive of targets, the ultimate GPU. Ge3 owners, stay with what you've got, it's a solid performer, and you're not missing much....
 
Recently upgraded from a Geforce 3 to a GF4 4400... and I am pleased. The upgrade only cost me $100 ...


The Geforce 3 was slow IMO at 1600X1200 in GTA3 and UT2K3.
 
Um...a lot of games would be slow at that resolution, even a few older ones that weren't such memory hogs... Personally, I'd rather have a constant 60+ fps than astral resolutions....
 
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