Help me pick a video Card

[BruinGuy]

Well as the title suggests I would like help picking a video card. In the very near future I will be upgrading my computer to probably a Gigabyte GA-7DXR with 1.2 GHz Athlon, I may wait for the Abit KG7, but that is unlikely. I currently have a G400, and while playing black and white it is suffering. I need a card that can play games well, but is also not too expensive (~<$150, maybe up to $200 for a really good card.). So I would like suggestions on what video card to buy, it obviously should be AGP, and if it doesn't work flawlessly under win2k I am not interested. Thanks in advance.

The games I play:
Counterstrike
Black and White
Baldur's Gate 2
Neverwinter Nights (when it come outs)

 

[chexi]

Look into either th Kryo II or the Radeon LE. I don't have either, but they should fit the bill. The Radeon LE can be easily upgraded with a flash program.

 

[tjbnf]

What about the GeForce2 Pro? That's a premo card. The Radion LE is the better value, and would do good for another 6 months at least. Yah, get the Radion LE or GeForce2 MX.

tj

 

[6TNINE]

for under 100 bucks, u cant beat the radeon le flashed to a radeon ddr. its sweet.

 

[BruinGuy]

Thank you for the suggestions, I didn't realize the LE version was flashable to get near DDR performance.

Another question: About the GeForce 2, is there a difference between the Pro and the MX? How much difference between the 220 version and the 400

 

[dfloyd]

Well I am not sure how the CPU scales but I am unhappy with the performance of my Ati Radeon 32DDR in Black and white at 1024 x 768. Not sure how others perform in B&amp;W up but man I get alot of swapping. Could be the fact that the card only has 32mb of ram and still using a dma 33 hard drive. Also the UT performance is less than acceptable. Had to do alot of tweaking to get it smooth and it still does not play as good as my Voodoo III did.

Right now I am in the market for a new card and I am leaning towards a Geforce II Pro 64mb card, around $150, or a Kyro II $110 rougly. The Kyro II is looking to be the better value. At least from Image quality perspective. From the benchmarks I have saw the Geforce II Pro beats the Kyro in 95% of tests at least at 16 bit. At 32 bit the performance is alot closer.

The only wins I have saw for the Kyro over the G2 Pro are in Serious Sam and when using FSAA. Seems to be one heck of a good card for FSAA.

Which is better? Well I still dont know. Just giving you my thoughts to maybe help you make your decision.

 

[BruinGuy]

dfloyd thanks, I now have another question to ask, I was looking at newegg's site and they have two video cards that are &quot;GeForce2 Pros&quot;


MSI StarForce 831, GeForce2 Pro, 64MB DDR RAM, Heat Sink, High Quality Fan and 4 pins TV Out Cable 4X/2X AGP, bundled with 1 S-Video Cable, 1 MSI DVD &amp; 3D Turbo 2000 Utilities, on board (S-Video) TV-out, Retail Box. Fedex Saver Shipping $10.00
- Product Link -See It! (N82E16814127012)
(avg rating out of 2 reviews)
$142.00
YES


Leadtek Winfast Geforce 2 Pro GTS 64MB 5.5ns DDR RAM 4X AGP Video Card with TV Out-with 64MB 5.5ns DDR memory is running at standard 200/366 Mhz (Core/memory) speed. That translated to about 20% performance increase over the original GeForce2 GTS. 6-layer board. Retail Box. 3-Year MFR's Warranty. Free Fedex Saver Shipping
Detail Specs - Product Link -See It! (N82E16814122115)
(avg rating out of 24 reviews)
$178.00
YES


My question, what is the difference between these two manufactures? Is GTS better? Is Leadtek better the MSI? Why is there a $26 price diffecrence?

 

[salman327]

The Leadtek runs off of 5.5ns of ram, while the MSI does it off of just 5. The MSI should run faster for you.

 

[Archknight]

The Kyro2 render in 32bits color internally, so the even in 16bits mode it still render at 32bits, the image quality should be better than the Geforce2 pro in 16bits mode(without enabling features like anistrophic).
For fps, the Geforce2 is a safer bet.
The MSI sound better than the Leadtek.

 

[Playmaker]

I had the same decision to make last week and made almost the same post I decided the GF2 Pro would be the best for me, a gamer w/ maybe some DVD use in the future. At $142 it's a steal. The MSI is a &quot;true&quot; pro that follows nVidia specs with RAM and speeds and all. The Leadtek has slower RAM and is clocked slower. Go with the MSI, it's a REAL steal and is the best bang for the buck available by far IMO.

 

[TheCorm]

MX200: GPU=175mhz Mem=64 bit SDR
MX400: GPU=200mhz Mem=128 bit SDR
GTS: GPU=200mhz Mem=128 bit DDR

In 640x480 or 800x600 there is not a huge different between the GTS and MX400 but go higher and the GTS is much faster

 

[BruinGuy]

Thank you every one that clears up the questions I had, I think my decision will be the MSI StarForce 831, GeForce2 Pro, 64MB DDR RAM from newegg. It seems to be the best from the reviews I have read, and inexpensive enough to fit into my budget. Thank you to all who responded, I really appreciate your help.