video card upgrade questions

[samoo]

I currently have an Diamond TNT2 Viper II card, running on a abit bh6 o/c celeron 633 to 950, 19" monitor. Everything runs great but with all the prices dropping, i'm thinking of upgrading my card. I mostly use it to play games like Unreal Tournament and Madden 2001 at the moment. My questions are what resolution are games playable at with these newer cards and wouldn't the text be extremely small in some of these games!? also is the visual quality that much better than what i'm seeing now? Madden looks great at the moment.

 

[Rigoletto]

you poor guy, they've been ignoring you!
Well, you're well prepared with your big monitor, you can play in whatever resolution any game can offer you. And it's the game that decides it.
The benchmarks seem to suggest that nowadays 1280x1024 or something is very playable speed wise, though I don't see the point, I'm not that greedy. Look at some reviews on anandtech or tomshardware. The TNT2 is quite good but modern cards like the cheapish Geforce2MX go 2-3 times faster, which allows the higher resolutions.
Personally I like 800x600 FSAA because most games were 800x600 anyway, you just get a smoother image.

 

[samoo]

yeah thanks for the response, i guess the newer cards are great if you play alot of deathmatch, maybe i don't need to upgrade quite yet then after all

 

[Noriaki]

I'd probably get a V5-5500 right now they are so ridiculously cheap and will run anything you at at decent resolution, and the V5 is a good board for UT, not so hot for Quake3 (comparatively) but rocks for UT.

And the V5 has nice sharp 2D so if you use your windows desktop at high res you don't have to worry in that deparment.