for pentium 233mmx system. which is fastest? Banshee, TNT or Rage 128?

[MustangSVT]

it has 48mb ram and using win98SE. the cards need to be PCI. and anyone know where i can get it for cheap? thanx

 

[BFG10K]

It doesn't really make a difference which card you get because you are entirely CPU limited. The most powerful card in that list is the Rage 128 but it has appalling 16 bit image quality in 3D games.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

entirely cpu limited? not with those cards. anything above 640x480 in old gen games (Q2, HL) will likely be held back by the cards. you underestimate the power of the p233mmx.

i recommend a V3 2000 pci. still dirt cheap. and it WILL give you more performance the the above cards. though you will be cpu limited with this card at lower resolutions with last gen games.

 

[oldfart]

Hi Mustang. If you dont find anything, I can sell you a Diamond Stealth II S220 cheap. Its a Rendition Verite 2100 (remember them)?? Not a bad card. Actually has a minigl for Quake and Quake2, Half Life. DirectX is also good.

 

[BFG10K]

not with those cards

The Rage 128 is more powerful than a Voodoo 2 and almost as powerful as a V3.

anything above 640x480 in old gen games (Q2, HL) will likely be held back by the cards.

Not with a P 233 MMX.

you underestimate the power of the p233mmx.

That CPU will barely saturate a Voodoo 1.

i recommend a V3 2000 pci.

A total waste of time. A CPU upgrade is the primary upgrade path in this case.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

go to 3dmark result database,
you'll find that only geforce/tnt cards are fast even on slow cpu system,
all other cards are very cpu dependent.

 

[cavingjan]

I would opt for the banshee. Nice stable card that will do what teh processor can feed it. Most of the games you will likely play on the thing will be glide anyways.

 

[sandorski]

I'll second the Banshee. The only other card to come close would be the TNT, but that requires more cpu power.

 

[TargetDrone]

I would also vote for the Banshee, but unless I'm completely off the mark here, doesn't the Banshee only come in AGP format? Besides, unless you know somebody that would sell you one for about $35 or less it would really be worth it to go ahead and get something like a Voodoo3 2000 PCI. It'll be way more card than that system could use, but at least it would be fairly useful if you ever wanted to put it in another machine. Some additional system RAM wouldn't hurt either. I've got a spare system that has a 233 overclocked to 266, a Voodoo2, and 64MB of RAM and it actually does pretty well at games like Half-Life, NFS, and FIFA.

 

[Majr]

The Banshee does come in PCI format, I've got one in my KT7-RAID / Duron 700 @ 1050, and it does very well.

 

[MustangSVT]

well the sysyem im trying to upgrade has Diamond Stealth 2000 pro. I've just ran CounterStrike in software mode with lowest setting on everything with smallest window yet it was still unplayable, (i can move around but it was too choppy to kill anyone), i wanted to see if im getting the right speed for this so i've downloaded 3d marks 2k but rats it needs 64mb ram (i got on 48mb). shouldnt Counterstrike run ok with software mode? or even that would run slow with crappy video card? (i thought software mode would almost depend soley on cpu power.)

 

[Soccerman]

I'd have to say the Voodoo Banshee.. why?

I had it on a Pentium 133 when it came out. it allowed me to play games very well at the time.

in fact, as I recall, it did the best with the CPU power that it had.. in other words, it did better on CPU's with low power, then the TNT, and I think Voodoo 2 did. don't ask why, but alot of benches all over the place showed the same thing (the reviewers failed to point this out on nearly every occasion).

the Voodoo 3 continued that history as well. when the CPU was the problem, the voodoo 3 in most cases, beat other manufacturers cards.

for this reason, I bought that Voodoo Banshee.

however, If you want to be able to play games at a higher resolution, (compared to the resolution where the Voodoo Banshee is playable) I recommend the Voodoo 3, and it'll scale well if/when it gets more CPU power. ie, at 640X480, it's speed keeps getting faster until about 600mhz.. pretty good for an old card no?

and if that weren't enough, you don't have to worry about no drivers being released, becuase the Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 4/5 series are so similar in design, Voodoo 3 still has fair amount of updates! (we're on version 1.07.00 which is pretty good).