OK, I know flat out the Gainward Geforce Pro 450 is faster than a Radeon 32MB DDR. The Geforce Pro is going to my 16 year old boy who hangs out at lan parties, it runs a very strong 240/467 and will be a good match for his Celeron 1.0a at 1430MHz. The replacement was ordered from Thompsons Computer Warehouse, it was $45 shipped for what was supposed to be a Radeon LE. It came with a fan on the gpu and I couldn't flash it to a 32MB DDR bios, it said it was already updated. Lo and behold, it was a true 32MB DDR, not a LE. It was clocked at 164.6MHz stock, I quickly changed it to 180/180. It does well in a Duron 750@1008MHz, all my 10 yr old daughter's and 6 yr old boy's games are playing smoothly at 1024 x 768 x 32 at 2X FSAA. The Gainward was about that fast at 1024 x 768 x 32 at 4X FSAA, but there was one or two games that had to be lowered to 16-bit. Addressing the image quality, they are more or less equal. Desktop 2d appears to be a dead heat, and 3d games and apps are sometimes better for the Radeon, sometimes for the Geforce Pro, overall about equal. The Gainward has had the low pass filter capacitors removed. I am not a big believer in benchmarks, I just play the games and make my observations. If I am playing a game that only averages 30-40 fps but plays smoothly without a single glitch or slow down, then that is good enough for me. I did run default 3dMark 2001 out of curiousity, the Gainward hammered out 4100 and the Radeon hit 3350, pretty good for a Duron at 1000MHz. I am impressed that a $45 video card can still play current games and deliver an enjoyable gaming experience.
Edit. I forgot to mention setting up the Radeon was a pain. Had to try three different drivers until I found one that was compatible with all my games. Also I had trouble getting all games sized correctly, had to try 3 different refresh rates and reload several games multiple times. Running Win98 with the 7189 drivers at 100Hz on a Dell Trinitron 17", works great but it was alot of work!
Edit. I forgot to mention setting up the Radeon was a pain. Had to try three different drivers until I found one that was compatible with all my games. Also I had trouble getting all games sized correctly, had to try 3 different refresh rates and reload several games multiple times. Running Win98 with the 7189 drivers at 100Hz on a Dell Trinitron 17", works great but it was alot of work!
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