recommendation on the best card for under $50

[dxpaap]

yup - you were right. After looking more closely @ pricewatch I could not find a Rad8500 (non LE) for under $100. I'll contiue to do some more investigation

 

[DT4K]

The 8500 LE is a very good card.
Look at Toms VGA charts
You can see the performance of all the cards that have been mentioned and decide what the best value is for you.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: Superman9534
the K7S5A is fine, and so is the GeForce4 MX. A GeForce4 MX will run any game decently (not best, but most people in these forums dont know what "decent" means). Decent to peopl here is 1280x1024 32bit color 50+ fps. I say decent is 800x600 16 bit color 25-35fps.

My friend has this system:

Tbired 850mhz
384MB PC133
GeForce4 MX 460

he gets 25-30fps in UT 2003 on 800x600. Would get better w/ faster CPU. Hell my friend plays UT 2003 fine w/ a GeForce2 MX. People are retarded here.

Some K7S5A's are fine. Some are crap. Do a search for "ECS problems" and you could spend the next year reading all the posts of people who have had nothing but trouble with the boards.

As far as what is decent, it all depends on what you are used to. I thought Quake 3 looked decent at 800 x 600 with low details at 25 fps. When I built a new system and played it at 1280 x 1024 with details on high at 100 fps, it looked absolutely beautiful. The other thing to take into consideration is how a card will play the next games that come out, not just the current games.

You are right, a GF4 MX is fine for current games, but overall the GF3 and the Radeon 8500 are better gaming cards and will last a little longer.