Upgrade G200...

[Facin]

I am looking to upgrade my old Matrox G200 to something a little newer to play some of the newer games. Most games still play adequately for single player with minimized graphics, but multiplayer is definitely lagging and some games are just not playable (the new realMyst demo tries to run, but all of the textures are missing...not good). I love my G200 because of how crisp the 2D display is and I spend a lot of time in front of my 19" monitor programming and doing photo work, so I don't want to compromise this aspect of the video card. I am not quite ready to plop down $200+ for one of the new cards, but I am looking at the under $100 range for a decent card that will satisfy my occasional desire to play games (when I find time).

I am of course considering the G400 Max my best option, but I am also interested in how the ATI 128 Pro chip stacks up and also what the 3D performance of these two chips versus the TNT2.

I am not looking for blazing speed (I have been playing Rune at 1024x768 at 16bit on my G200 and that has seemed fine for the most part), but I would like the best for my money. I admit to being big on image quality, so if there is anything about the chips or accompanying drivers that I should know, please tell me. If there are any sites with performance numbers let me know. Also what kind of difference will I see between the latest greatest and what I am looking at. Thanks a ton.

My current system is:

Athlon 650
Abit KA7
Aureal SQ2500
IBM 75GXP
128 MB Crucial
Matrox G200 Millenium

 

[Electric Amish]

If you don't want to wait for the G800 from Matrox and aren't willing to spend the $300 it's going to cost, my suggestion is the G400.

You're familiar with Matrox, so you know quality. 😉

The G400 is better than any card you listed. Visual quality is exquisite. The drivers are solid (for general applications...there are some CAD and 3D studio issues, I've heard).

I have one and I have found nothing that I can't do on it. Plays HL, Q3, UT, and Rogue Spear perfectly, in high resolutions and quality rendering modes.

The best part is that you can get a basic 32mb G400 for about $100. There's not a lot of reason to get a MAX. It's a little faster, but if you have to have the speed, you can overclock the basic G400 to MAX speeds, usually.

Like I said, though, I've played many games with my basic G400 and haven't had a problem.

Just my 2 cents.

amish