To G3 owners that have upgraded to a G4

[filmore crashcart]

Do you feel the upgrade was worth it?

I'm asking because last year at this time, I paid premium price for a Visiontek G3 to replace a G2 32 meg GTS in anticipation for the newer games - Doom3. Now, Doom3 has not made it out yet and the G4's are already nearing the end of their cycle with more powerful stuff in the works. To me, the cost of a Ti4400 at around $235 shipped from NewEgg is a tempting move but - I'm less concern with higher frame rates as I am with visual quality..... If you had a G3 and moved to a G4, did you find the 2d and 3d improved noticeably? Were you really able to turn on all the eye candy at higher resolutions in games like The Undying?
I'm basically asking - Did the upgrade give you the satisfaction of moving to something that is better, not just faster?
Sorry if this has been hashed around but I want opinions of G3 owners to a G4. If you found an ATI 8500 to be a big improvement, please let me know.

 

[richleader]

Were you really able to turn on all the eye candy at higher resolutions in games like The Undying?

Undying is Unreal engine, and a lousy use of it at that. It will always be sluggardly.

 

[308nato]

I went from a gf3 ti-200 to a ti-4600. Was it worth it?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I just went from a GF3Ti200 to a GF4Ti4400 yesterday and was initially a little diappointed. Sure it scored better in benchmarks, but the mininmum frame peaks were about the same for both cards in everything I ran. But then I tried JK2 at 1152x864 w/ 2XFSAA and it was super smooth and faster than the GF3 at 800X600 w/2XFSAA. Serious Sam also runs much better with quality visual settings on my GF4, about the same speed as normal ran on the GF3. This made me feel better about the upgrade. I've still got more testing to do before I'm completely sold on whether the upgrade was worth it for me though. The $100 difference between the two is a lot of scratch to me.

 

[hans007]

i went from a g4 mx440 to a radeon 8500LE which i will soon flash to retail.


all i can notice, is i dont get ghosting on vertical lines on 2d anymore, i cant really tell the difference running jk2 at 1152 x 864 with smoothvision vs, 1152x864 on the gf4 mx440 with 2xfsaa.

 

[filmore crashcart]

<FONT color=#000000 size=1> Undying is Unreal engine, and a lousy use of it at that. It will always be sluggardly. <IMG src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border=0>


I agree about it being sluggardly, but I do like the game because of it's storyline and the graphics can be spectacular at points..... but it does run shakey.

I guess fron what I'm reading so far, a move from a g3 classic to a g4 4400 would feel about like my recent upgrade from a 1.4 t-bird to a xp2000.... Yeah, I notice the difference but not that much. It's never going to be like the first time I got a voodoo 1 card and ran Quake with the 3dfx patch installed - that was one upgrade that made my jaw drop like never before.
I suspect I'll talk myself into the upgrade - like I always do.

</FONT>

 

[Jayczar]

I was considering the same thing and also realized that GF 3's
are not going for squat anymore so I would not be able to
sell it for much to make up any of the difference. I will just
wait it out for awhile since "I really don't need to upgrade".

 

[UnTech]

I'll never forget the time I first got my Voodoo 1. The visuals were like cybercrack.

 

[richleader]

Indeed, first game I booted up was wing commander prophecy and then quake 2. It was too good to believe. I'm glad I dropped $200 on that instead of that STB Velocity--I don't think it had opengl drivers for about a year and a half or something. Only smart purchase I ever made.

 

[BFG10K]

I upgraded to a Ti4600 from a Ti500 and while I expected a 30%-50% perfromance gain I was pleasantly surprised that in some cases I was getting double the framerates over my Ti500 (mainly in 1600 x 1200 x 32).

3d improved noticeably? Were you really able to turn on all the eye candy at higher resolutions in games like The Undying?

Yes an yes. In addition to being able to run at higher levels of eye candy I noticed that the DXT1 and Direct3D texel alignment problems that the GF3 had were completely fixed and in addition, all of the 3D rendering looked crisper and more vibrant. nVidia changed things in the core to increase the rendering quality as well increasing the speed of the rendering.

As for Undying, that's a bit of a trickey game to pinpoint where the bottleneck exactly is but after extensive testing I think I've nailed it as primarily CPU bound. A faster videocard will help your average framerates but your minimum framerates will be helped the most from getting a faster CPU. The engine is more CPU limited than video card limited.

I'm basically asking - Did the upgrade give you the satisfaction of moving to something that is better, not just faster?

Yes and as I said before, I got more of an upgrade than I expected so if you've got the money, go for it. The only thing to watch out is to make sure that you have a fast CPU or else your performance gain might not be as high as you expect. I have a 2.2 GHz Northwood so this wasn't an issue for me.

 

[PoosodDirt]

You'll appreciate the upgrade more if you play games at high resolutions (1280 up) and/or use AA. 4XS AA is simply amazing. I use 4XS while playing GTA3 and it's gorgeous.

 

[filmore crashcart]

Having moved up to a xp2000 (which is not a 2.2 Northwood but is still moe than a T-bird 1.4) and having become addicted to AA, from the replies, I'll go for a Ti4400...... that should be a nice boost from the g3.
Thanks for the responses.