Need help in selecting a video card

[UKnowWhat]

I need to update my kid's system for a new graphic card in price range from $80+ to $50+ and have not follow the trend for quite a while. I have a Woodoo3 which is adequate for Warcraft 3 and thinking to buy either a Radeon 7500, 8500 or GEF4 MX. The system is a P3 650Mhz with 512MB and I rather keep it that way than upgrading MB & CPUs until I have to. Is there any pros/cons between these cards that I need to be aware of?

Regards

 

[kurt454]

The obvious answer is the 8500, though it will be a little more than $80. The P3 650 will bottleneck the 8500 a good bit. Retail 7500 might be the better choice. Not much reason to buy an MX400 IMHO. You can get a Geforce2 Ti within your budget, and it would be much faster than the MX.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

You can get a 64MB Radeon 8500 LE for about $85 with free shipping from Newegg.com, sounds like what you need, I wouldn't go with the GF4MX The Radeon clobbers it in both perfomance and quality of 3d graphics. Another cheap ugrade would be to get a 1.3GHz Celeron, Retail for $70 This would keep your from having to buy a mobo for a little while. It would play about anything out there right now decently as long as the eye-candy and resolution was kept reletivly low(800x600).

 

[UKnowWhat]

thanks for your response. If I am up the ante a bit to 90+ (meaning 90 to 99), which one would you consider GEF3 Ti or Radeon 8500. I do not mind white box, OEM card because I can handle technical issues without any problem.

Regards

 

[kurt454]

Originally posted by: UKnowWhat
thanks for your response. If I am up the ante a bit to 90+ (meaning 90 to 99), which one would you consider GEF3 Ti or Radeon 8500. I do not mind white box, OEM card because I can handle technical issues without any problem.

Regards

I own a GF3 Ti and I love it. Radeon 8500 will be faster though. Your cpu, memory will bottleneck either one frankly. If you are upgrading proc. and motherboard down the road, I would get the 8500 with 128megs of mem.

 

[AnAndAustin]

It depends upon your priorities and what the PC is likely to be used for. The CPU will certainly be thge limiting factor and there won't be much benefit going above $60 for GF4MX420, GF2TI or Rad7500 unless a CPU upgrade is likely in the near future. GF4MX420 is generally better than GF2TI, although it's a tad slower it has MUCH better image quality, DVD playback, dual display and TVout. The GF4MX440 cards tenbd to cost little more and easily out-perform GF2TI. Rad7500 is about even with a GF4MX420 but the Rad9000 is a MUCH better card, esp the PRO versions with 128MB. Rad8500LE is generally faster than Rad9000PRO, but as said the CPU will choke any modern gfx card. GF3 are only really worth it if cheaper than Rad8500/9000 or if you really want AA.

I'd suggest a GF4MX420, Rad7500 or Rad9000, see what the price diffs are like.

 

[UKnowWhat]

Thanks kurt, lobado and Anand for your reponses. Seems to me 8500 is the one to choose within my budget and the threat of upgrading both MB & CPU is getting real (my MB BIOS can't get higher than 650 because it is 2 yrs old). It seems to me this upgrading cycle within 2, 3yrs never end even though the system is still perfect to do Spice analysis but just can't play game fast enough to please the kids.

 

[UKnowWhat]

Yes AnAndAustin, I have looked at those card's price in Pricewatch and they are not much different. But as I said before, I am out of touch with video cards for awhile and things have changed considerably so now I am back to video_card_101 course again.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well so long as your running a decent PSU, ATX for factor, PCI cards, PS2 mouse and PS2 keyboard then a SktA upgrade is VERY cost effective and will give you a huge boost. There are still SktA mobos which allow SDR if not both SDR and DDR RAM which means you could reuse your existing PC100 (Duron and Athlon 200FSB) or PC133 (all Durons and Athlons). A Duron 1.3ghz is VERY cheap and very powerful, but even AthlonXP1800+ to XP2000+ don't cost a whole lot although they do kick off a lot more heat (good case esp important) and also req a better PSU. Check out pricewatch, Duron 1.3ghz with HSF $43, AthlonXP1800+ with HSF $76 and SktA mobo $50. If not ATX form factor then you can get a new case with a decent 300W+ PSU for about $50, advisable if you may want to persue the AthlonXP route. Most mobos come with o/b sound and new PCI cards are cheap to buy if needed as are mice and keyboards. DDR enhances over-all perf by about 10% but just for the record 256MB PC2100 is $45. Anyway, sorry to babble on but I just wanted to point out that it needn't be as expensive as you think to significantly upgrade the system.