Performance (GF2/GF2)

[CarbonatedWater]

Hello,

I'm looking for a new video card and I have a question...

Currently I'm running

1ghz Tbird
192MB PC100 Ram

Creative Geforce 2 MX 32mb DDR "PCI"
I got myself a PCI when I had a slower system with no AGP, now I've got this new system and I want to get a card...

Would I see a big increase in performance between this MX and a GF2 Ti card?

I'm looking at the "Visiontek Geforce 2 Titanium 64MB AGP Graphics Card"(249.99)

I can't afford 329.99 or whatever it is here for a GF3 ti200 so I'm looking at GF2's :\

ANyways curious if I'd see enough of a performance increase to upgrade to another GF2...


Thanks

ICQ: 34377984
C/W

 

[Rand]

You will most definitely see a huge performance boost.

Creative's GF2 MX was probably the slowest 'classic' MX made due to it's use of a DDR 64bit memory bus rather then the marginally faster 128bit SDR memory bus. Also the GF2 architecture is very dependent upon AGP's advanced features and takes an extremely large performance hit by utilizing a PCI interface instead. It would be as much as 40% slower then the same card in AGP, and would perfrom little better then a GF2 MX200 or TNT2 Ultra level card.

The jump from that to a GF2 Titanium in AGP would most definitely be very large indeed, and your T-Bird would very much appreciate the faster graphics card.

You might also consider selling your PC100 SDRAM and buying some PC133 SDRAM to replace it while prices are still reasonably cheap as DRAM prices are beginning to increase and the T-Bird is definitely going to be bottlenecked from using PC100.


The VisionTek card in particular is pretty nice and offers excellent 2D visual quality, but as it's using only 5ns DDR SDRAM it isnt that overclockable.
Given the prices you've listed I presume you live in Canada?
You might want to look around some more, as you can get other GF2 Ti based cards for cheaper then the $249.99 you've listed.

 

[gtd2000]

It really depends on what games and resolutions you play at - sure a more expensive card will run "faster" than your MX.

For me, going from an overclocked Axle GF2MX ($75, 12 months ago) with -5ns RAM (210/230) to a Leadtek GF2Pro ($140, 4 months ago) overclocked (230/460) made very little if any difference when playing Counterstrike - after all max FPS is 100 (72 if not modified) and the MX card can already achieve this

To be honest I've never upgraded a graphics card or a CPU yet and thought "WOW!". I always just think "hmm...well it is a bit faster/smoother."

It never makes me feel that the upgrade was actually a necessity

 

[elimcpheron]

i dont think you should get the gf2 cuz if your gonna get a new card, you might as well spend a little extra money and get at least the gf3ti200
it wouldnt be cost effective to upgrade