New Vid card for my Dad. He's not a hard core gamer. Recommendations?

[shiner]

He's not much of a gamer but does play things like Medal of Honor, Empire Earth, Age of Empires(probably Age of Mythology now that it's out), and the occasional flight Sim like MS Combat Flight Simulator or something similar, sometimes even a NASCAR game or two. Anyway...his current video card is an old TNT2 with 32MB RAM and it is starting to act flakey. He wants me to get him a new card and spend $150 or less. I'm looking at either the Radeon 8500LE or one of the Radeon 9000 Pro cards. I've been out of the loop lately and haven't followed the video card technology of late. So which way should I go for his card? I'm leaning towards the LE from the few articles I have read but since I'm not up on everything I would appreciate some input. Should I consider any of the GeForce cards at all? Since he mostly works with his PC doing things like Genealogy, word processing, etc.... I think a Radeon card would be better since from what I remember in the past the NVIDIA cards didn't have 2D as good as the ATI chipsets.

Any help would be great!!

Thanks in advance

 

[bearxor]

Normally, I'd recommend the 9000 Pro, BUT, I would go with the cheapest one you can find. Since he's not a hardcore gamer, he'll probably be fine playing anything in 800x600, adn would get great frame rate with either a 8500, 8500LE, 9000 pro or ti4200.

Come down to it, I would be torn between a 9000 Pro 128 or a ti4200 64MB. They're both around the same price, range, but the ti4200 edges out in some tests.

Then it would just come down to which is cheaper... But for your dads situation, and 8500LE is definitely a viable choice, and available cheap too. I saw CompUSA was selling 128MB 8500LE's for 100 bucks a couple of weeks ago, a whole 50 bucks cheaper than a 9000 Pro 128, and faster for now.

 

[Lore]

I think the GeForce2 cards and earlier GeForce3 cards would also be viable choices for your father, especially the prices on them these days. Keep your eyes peeled on sites like NewEgg's refurb page where they off a lot of their customer returns at pretty decent prices. Don't forget to look in the FS/FT forum too!

<shameless plug> I have a GeForce2 GTS 32mb card I'm selling for $39 shipped in case you're interested</shameless plug>

 

[shiner]

One more thing.....I want to get him something that will last him a while. As you can tell by his current card he doesn't upgrade all that often. That's one of the reasons I'm looking at the 8500 LE with 128MB RAM.

 

[Deeko]

The GF2's were the notorious nvidia cards for poor 2D quality. The Radeon 8500 LE is a great card for the price, great 2D quality as well. You also might want to consider the Ti4200. Not too bad as far as 2D goes, a pretty good deal faster than the 8500LE.

Or, just get the 9700pro and not worry about it

 

[overclocksomemore]

Or, just get the 9700pro and not worry about it

hey i waz gonna say that.. .. and that's what i bought..
I tried the R8500 a while back and fell in love with the image quality in 2D/desktop apps..

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: Deeko
The GF2's were the notorious nvidia cards for poor 2D quality. The Radeon 8500 LE is a great card for the price, great 2D quality as well. You also might want to consider the Ti4200. Not too bad as far as 2D goes, a pretty good deal faster than the 8500LE.

Or, just get the 9700pro and not worry about it

Well if he were willing to spend the $ I would get him a 9700. He really frustrates the hell out of me with how little he wants to spend upgrading his PC. I could understand it if $ were tight or something but he doesn't need to worry about that. He's just one of those people that doesn't see the point in spending a lot of $ on what he considers mostly a toy.

As for the Ti4200....I thought that was a fairly poor performing card and wasn't a fully Direct X 8 part? Like I said earlier, I haven't kept up on the latest and greatest in video cards, I'm still running an Elsa GeForce 2 Ultra in my main box.

Maybe I should get the 9700 and give him my Ultra.......

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: shinerburke

Well if he were willing to spend the $ I would get him a 9700. He really frustrates the hell out of me with how little he wants to spend upgrading his PC. I could understand it if $ were tight or something but he doesn't need to worry about that. He's just one of those people that doesn't see the point in spending a lot of $ on what he considers mostly a toy.

As for the Ti4200....I thought that was a fairly poor performing card and wasn't a fully Direct X 8 part? Like I said earlier, I haven't kept up on the latest and greatest in video cards, I'm still running an Elsa GeForce 2 Ultra in my main box.

The Ti4200 is just fine in games; works great for me. The GF4 Ti line is fully DX8 compliant. It's DirectX 9 that it doesn't fully support (asumming it even has any of the special stuff in DX9, not sure about that part). The Geforce4 MX line might have been what you are thinking of - they have lower performance than the Ti series, and they lack the nFiniteFX II Engine (right off of nVidia's website). That means no pixel shaders for the MX line; can't remember all the other stuff that the MX's don't include. NVidia's page is no help; all the actual technical terms are masked by marketing plugs.

He doesn't like to spend money on toys? Geez, my PC eats up a good bit of money. It's also my most-used toy, too.

"Maybe I should get the 9700 and give him my Ultra"
Sounds good.

 

[Harvey]

If you need to save every last penny, you could even get an OEM 32 MB TNT 2 board, instead of a GF2 or GF3. Pricewatch shows them as low as $25. This is definitely the card I would give my Mom and sisters for just plain excellent display without major gaming requirements, and it's reasonable for lightweight gaming.

 

[bearxor]

considering his old card IS a 32MB TNT, that probably wouldnt work

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: shinerburke

Originally posted by: Deeko
The GF2's were the notorious nvidia cards for poor 2D quality. The Radeon 8500 LE is a great card for the price, great 2D quality as well. You also might want to consider the Ti4200. Not too bad as far as 2D goes, a pretty good deal faster than the 8500LE.

Or, just get the 9700pro and not worry about it

Well if he were willing to spend the $ I would get him a 9700. He really frustrates the hell out of me with how little he wants to spend upgrading his PC. I could understand it if $ were tight or something but he doesn't need to worry about that. He's just one of those people that doesn't see the point in spending a lot of $ on what he considers mostly a toy.

As for the Ti4200....I thought that was a fairly poor performing card and wasn't a fully Direct X 8 part? Like I said earlier, I haven't kept up on the latest and greatest in video cards, I'm still running an Elsa GeForce 2 Ultra in my main box.

Maybe I should get the 9700 and give him my Ultra.......

I believe you are thinking of the GF4 MX line. The Ti line is the top of nvidia's current products, fully Dx8 compliant, good performance, 4200 is a great overclocker too. The Ti4200 will def. be faster than the GF2u, that's actually about the speed of the GF4 MX line.

 

[DT4K]

They are right. The GF 4 MX line is what sucks. They are basically a much faster version of the GF2 architecture.

The Ti 4200 is probably the best bang for the buck right now.

Or look at the GF 3 Ti 200. Mine plays games like Medal of Honor and BF1942 very smooth at 1024 x 768 w/ medium details.
But for long term usability, spending a little more for a GF4 Ti 4200 is probably worth it.

Or wait and see what the prices and performance look like on the 3 new Radeon cards: 9500, 9500Pro, 9700(non-Pro version).
They should all be available in the next couple of weeks. And they are all lower cost versions of the top of the line 9700 PRO. The 9700 and 9500Pro will both be above the $150 you mentioned, but the 9500 may not be.

Look at Tom's VGA Charts for a comprehensive comparison of lots of cards up to the GF4 line. This will give you a good idea of the performance level of the cards so you can compare that with the current prices.

 

[DT4K]

I forgot to ask what kind of system he has. If it's an old slow system, it doesn't make sense to get a super fast video card. The CPU would then become the limiting factor.

 

[Mockmaw]

I guess the important question that no one's asked yet (or maybe I totally missed the answer?)

How fast is his system? If he's got an old celeron or PII or something.. a $150 vid card isn't going to do much good.

 

[DT4K]

lol, maybe