Maxtrox G400... good or bad?

[siroutbak]

amoung my systems, i have a k6-2 500MHz pc with 64mb ram and a G400. i manly use it for a second pc for people to come over and play lan games (if they dont have a better machine to bring). it has worked perfectly fine in the past for such games like civ2 (best game in existance) age of empires 2, gta2 and even tony hawk pro skater 2. but after recently acquiring UT (which plays great on my tbird 900) we wanted to try it out, and the only playable res was lower than 640x480 (i think something like 320x240, but not sure) now my question is... what component should i upgrade? will i see a big performance out of more ram? 128mb dimms are cheap as hell right now or would i get more kick out of a new vid card. would i need to drop $200+ on a GF2 GTS? i dont need 1024x768 high textures or anything. just something that looks good. 800x600 med textures? maybe even 640x480? any input is greatly appreciated.
-tom

 

[Rigoletto]

First of all I hope you have the latest drivers. I believe that Matrox had bad OpenGL drivers that really didn't cut it for a long time. Not that the card is that fast anyway. Nowadays it has a rep for image quality among professionals, but no interest from gamers.
I WOULD recommend at least 64Mb more RAM, yes. It's so cheap you can't go wrong. I wouldn't care to build anybody a computer with less than 128Mb these days.
The GeforceMX looks to be tailored to your requirements in the current market. The available models differ quite a bit in features, but the card can be had for $100. Basically it's a close shadow of the GTS until you go over 1024x768.

 

[siroutbak]

i suppose i'll try throwing in a 128mb stick and see what that does. maybe we'll try a vid card if that doesnt work. but, yes of course, i have both the latest via drivers and matrox drivers. on the other hand, dropping $200 on a k6-2 500? well, gaming is fun

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

The Matrox card had bad OpenGL during the G200 days. Since then, it's drivers and performance have become just as good as Nvidia's TNT2s and Detonator 3's.

Get the latest 6.10 drivers. They will give a noticable improvement if you haven't updated the drivers in a while. And current via 4in1 drivers will help a bit.

Your cpu ram are holding you back. I can get quite playble framerates at 1027x768, with some options turned off. I can get consistently silky smooth framerates at 800x600 with 32bit high-world/medium-skin textures, with all other options on (sound and stuff).

Edit: I realize that substantialy upgading you cpu might not be possible with your K6. If you can find a faster cheap K6, get it. But you would more appreciate a 128mb stick of ram, as you seen the prices have dropped.