Question About Gainward GeForce 3 Ti200

[IndieSnob]

I was thinking about picking up this card at newegg due to the good reviews at many sites. I do have a couple of questions though as to quality and how it will run on my system.

#1: I would be using this on an Asus CUSL2-C mobo w/ P3-1gig and 512 PC-133, running windows 98 SE, Windows 2k, Windows XP, and Redhat. I'm assuming should run fine on said hardware but was wondering if anyone had any input on that.

#2: How is the 2d and dvd quality on this? I know alot of the time it's pretty questionable on cards with Geforce Chipsets. I usually run my desktop at 1280x1024/32 bit color/85 hz refresh on my Hitachi CM715 19" monitor.

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[scoobydooby]

I have one of those beasts As for 2d I run on the same settings as you and to my eyes it looks great. Can't tell you about dvd quality though. Just to give you another option look at the ATI 8500. It's only $15 more and the 2d and dvd quality should be a fair amount better. Good luck.
Scoob

 

[IndieSnob]

Thanks for your opinion on this. I just read some reviews of the 8500, and other than with Unreal Tournament, it seems to be just as solid of a card and beats the Gainward on most benchmarks. Gees, now I'm lost on what to get

 

[scoobydooby]

hee hee. Keep in mind that the Gainward can overclock to speeds that will make it perform about as well as the 8500. If you don't overclock then definately get the 8500. If you do then I think that it might be worth it to pay the extra $15 since you sound like you want good image quality. Here are a couple of links for you:
HardOCP Review: this is a review of a G4 Ti 4600 but it has scores for the Gainward Geforce3 Ti 200 w/ 128 mb of ram overclocked to Ti 500 speeds. It also shows scores for the ATI 8500 LE(stands for slower model). Not sure how video card savvy you are so that might sound confusing.
here is their review of the 8500. So you could compare these scores to the ones of the Gainward in the other link.
Hope that helps.
Scoob

 

[Rand]

The Gainward GF3 Ti200 is a very nice card, and debateably the best Ti200 available... but if you can spend the few $ extra I'd really suggest going with the Radeon 8500, it's a superior card in most all respects.
It's faster then the GF3 Ti200 with a slightly better 3D feature set, along with numerous little extra's in the way of superior FSAA, DVD playback, better 2D visual quality, DVI-Out, TV-Out, HydraVision by default. etc.
Both cards can usually overclock by a decent amount too.

 

[IndieSnob]

Thank you to the both of you for all your help first of all

I think I'm going to go for the 8500. One last question though, the price difference on the Gainward from 64 meg to 128 meg is not very significant, but with the 8500 it's a whole lot more. I'm guessing I'd be safe with the 64 meg version but wanted some opinions on that. Again thanks guy!

 

[scoobydooby]

Definately not worth the extra money for the 128 mb version of either card. Let me find a linky...clicko.
Scoob