Hard Drive or Video Card?

[Gunslinger08]

Having a hard time deciding what to buy first (not enough cash for both yet). I can either get a Gainward gf3 ti200 golden sample or a maxtor 7200rpg 60gig hard drive. Which would you recommend to buy first? I have a voodoo 5 right now (getting good FPS in games, but not top of the line.. you know how it is), and a WD 5400rpm 30gig drive. Thanks.

Josh

 

[sohcrates]

well, what are your priorities? do you do a lot of gaming or more 2D / MP3 / web browsing type stuff?

personally, i'd go with the hard drive. the V5 is a pretty adequate card for gaming in the meantime

plus, you'll notice a VERY nice speed increase going from 5400 to 7200 (assuming you install your OS and programs on the new drive)

 

[Gunslinger08]

That's what I was thinking.. I do a lot of gaming (CS, UT, max payne, etc), and the v5 seems good for now, but I want something better, so that I can actually use FSAA (wayyyyyyy too blurry with the voodoo). Hard drive it is.

Josh

 

[SpeedTester]

I'd go for the Gainward gf3 ti200 golden sample if I were you.
Youll notice a much faster speed diffrence with a fast video card.
I just upgraded my video card (V5)to a radeon 8500, and my 2nd pc (Ge2mx)
to a ti-200 and it makes a world of a diffrence

 

[Dark4ng3l]

well AA without the voodoo5 would be alot blurrier because of the stupid implementation(non-hardare)

 

[Gunslinger08]

I tried playing CS at 800x600 with 4x and 2x FSAA on... I couldn't even read the text in the console, or on the buy menu.

Josh

 

[Rand]

I'd go with the Hard Drive. There is no denying the GF3 is a far faster card, but if your V5 is already running every game you have fast enough the what's the point of going even faster except bragging rights?
If your games arent running fast enough and it's beginning to get choppy, then by all means the GF3 is an excellent purchase. If your games are already fast enough for you however your gaining little besides a few DX8 features that arent even being much taken advantage of in current software.
As for the V5's FSAA being blurry, I agree it is a little blurry... but it's still the best FSAA implementation yet made. Certainly far better then that of the GF3.

The HDD on the other hand, it will most definitely yield you a very noticeable performance boost in basically all your uses. Sure, it on't boost your frame rates worth a damn. but loading times and all around Windows usage will be very noticeably faster.