GF2 GTS vs. GF4xxx

[SkyDiver]

Hi Everybody,
I bought a GF2 GTS about two years ago and it seems to be doing fine for me so far.

I have not kept up with the 6-month product cycles since then. What does "Ti" stand for? And how much better is a GF4 vs. GF2? How will a GF2 handle the new games like Unreal2 and Doom3?

Except for significant improvement in gaming performance, I don't see a need to upgrade. What do you think?

 

[Goi]

The Ti designation was nvidia's way to refresh the product without doing any actual hardware modifications to the product...its just a different name. It started with the GF2 Ti and GF3 Ti. The Ti versions were clocked slightly higher than normal versions.

There's a huge departure from the GF2 to the GF3...the GF3 marked a significant hardware upgrade to the GF2 with the addition of pixel/vertex shaders and DX8 compatibility. Performance increase was quite significant too, on almost all games. GF4 increased the performance even more.

If you upgrade from your GF2 GTS to a GF4 Ti, you will see a significant improvement in 3D gaming performance, and you'll need it to play Doom3. Your GF2 GTS should still handle UT2003 fine though, if a bit sluggish.

Just make sure you don't get the GF4MX, as its barely better than your GF2 GTS...

 

[Moishe]

I think you said it yourself when you said "Except for a significant improvement in gaming performance...".
A significant improvement (in gaming) is exactly what you'll see between what you have and what the new cards can do.
"Ti" stands for titanium I think, and it's just an faster (higher clocked) version of the stock card, I believe.
I think a GF2 will run the newer games, but not at decent speeds/resolutions. Other than gaming performance, the new cards really offer you nothing worth spending the money on.

I recommend reading Anandtech's GPU shootout.
You will see that a GF4 is usually at least twice as fast as the GF2 running UT2003 which is a good new benchmark for future gaming.

This article shows how the video cards scale with CPUs. Looks like the GF2Ultra is the bottleneck with Athlons from 1333mhz and up whereas the GF4 take all that the current Athlons can dish out and still wants more.

If you are a gamer and have a good system (looks like you do), you gain the ability to run the old stuff at max detail while using stuff like Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering and you gain the ability to run the new games at decent speeds.

I for one cannot realistically upgrade just my vid card because my system is old and slow, so I'll be building a new system when i get a new vid card. My voodoo 5 lasted this long since I mainly play TacOps and UT, but it won't even run America's Army, which isn't exactly a new game benchmark.

 

[SkyDiver]

Goi,
Thanks. That was a great explanation! Hard to believe that the new games will be so sluggish on a card that I paid $250 for.

Thanks to good competition from ATI, by the time I'm ready to buy, the GF4 ought to be quite reasonable!

 

[Moishe]

I know how you feel... thats why I always shoot for a good card that will last me two or more years. Realistically, $250 isn't bad for two years... but it's horrid for 6 months (IMO). Unless the NV30 based cards are a 25% improvement of the R9700, I'll probably get an R9700 after christmas when they're cheaper.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I recently upgraded from a Visiontek GF2 GTS to an Abit GF4 ti4200. The difference is very very impressive. Games that needed to be played at low resolutions with low quality settings can now be pretty much maxed out ... or at leasy played at like 1024x768 With AA. Its worth the $150 or so bucks if you like gaming.

 

[SkyDiver]

Thanks for all the feedback. You don't see much comparison data all the way back to the GF2 GTS in reviews of new hardware. It is great to hear from all you knowledgeable users.

 

[Goi]

Yup, the GF2 GTS is really quite an ancient card by today's standards...and most graphics card reviews don't pit the newer cards against this card. If you want a general idea of its performance relative to today's cards, think of it as a slightly slower version of a GeForce4 MX440...in many cases this is true.