Flattering news for Ge3 owners

[jakobkraft]

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!

 

[kurt454]

Cool. I've got the 64 meg Gainward GF3 Golden Sample. I usually play at 1024x768 no AA. I was thinking of upgrading my mobo and proc, followed by Ti 4600 or Rad 9500Pro, but I may hold out for awhile longer yet.

 

[rogue1979]

I have a Gainward Golden Sample Geforce3 Ti450 running 250/520. At 1280 x 1024 x 32 and 2XFSAA I still average 85fps in Unreal Tournament. If I turn FSAA off I get 175fps. This is with an XP1600+@1800MHz. Running 30.82 with NVmax 3.00.0072 in Win98SE. I have tried many driver/tweaker combinations and this one is far faster than the rest. I bought this card refurbished at newegg for $69, was just gonna play with it and then get a Geforce4 Ti4200. I have no need for a faster video card now, and after the low pass filter capacitor mod the 2D is equal to my Radeon 8500LE.

 

[Rio Rebel]

I *do* want to play with the eye candy enabled. But I can't see trading a GF3 (running at ti500 speed) and adding $100 or so to buy a GF4. And there's no way I'm shelling out for a Radeon 9700.

I'm interested to see what happens with the Radeon 9500, and maybe I'll make a move for that (or a GF4 4600 is the prices plummet.) I'd love to see Battlefield 1942 at 1200 resolution with eye candy enabled.

But till then, I'll just have to suffer.