Video Upgrade advice - Voodoo Banshee to what???

[DarkTX]

Hi folks, ok Ive got another question for you, My secondary machine is a K62-500 but this one does have an AGP slot. Right now it has a Diamond Monster 3d 16 MB in it and Id like to upgrade the video if I don't have to put much money into it. What would be a good upgrade. (Note : Ive noticed that there are some AGP boards that just won't work in this machine - my old Geforce 256 kept dying in it) Does anyone have any suggestions???

Thanks

 

[Quixfire]

DarkTX, I've been there and done that.

Depending on your monitor size, I would recommend the TNT2 M64, 17" monitor and no more than 10x7x16bit when gaming, or the ATI Radeon 32MB DDR, 17"+ Monitor and up to 12x10x32bit gaming.

Both are excellent cards, but your system will bottleneck any video card larger than this. The exception would be a Geforce2 MX 200 or 400 card, for the same price.

 

[DarkTX]

ok then, whats the difference between getting an M64 and a geforce 2 MX..... if my MB wouldnt work with a Geforce 256 wouldnt that mean my geforce2mx 200 wouldnt work either???

 

[acidvoodoo]

what board is it? i heard that sort of thing happens with the FIC va503+

 

[bluemax]

NononononNONONO! Do NOT get a TNT2 M64 card!!!! :| Shame on the suggestion even being posted!

If you're really tight for dollars (like I am) your best options are a Geforce2 GTS-V (from NewEgg) or Radeon LE. Both are under $50US and will provide a HUGE leap upward in performance!
If you have a lot of 3dfx "Glide" games you can consider a used Voodoo3, 4, or 5 as well, although I stick to my two suggestions foremost.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

bluemax



<< If you're really tight for dollars (like I am) your best options are a Geforce2 GTS-V (from NewEgg) or Radeon LE. Both are under $50US and will provide a HUGE leap upward in performance! >>



Well anything you upgrade to will offer a huge leap in preformance compared to the banshee card you are currently running.

However that said, you will find that the cpu you have k6/2-500 will not be able to keep up with anything faster than a geforce MX400 or equivalent. The geforce2 GTS-V will not show any improvement on this i believe.

The geforce 356 used to draw quaite a lot of power from the agp slot and hence that is why it may not have run properly.. i belive the geforce 2 (mx, mx220/400 etc) draw less power.

The TNT2 M64 is based on the TNT2 chipset but had less memory bandwidth and upon release was considered the budget video card of the tnt2 family.

Similarly the geforece MX (and MX200, MX400) are the value versions of the geforce 2 family.

I would recommed either a tnt2 M64, or geforce MX200/400 (or a lower end ATI radeon card) depending on your budget and gaming requirements. Hope this helps.

 

[DarkTX]

I belive that the motherboard is a HOT 591P, I also have the VA 503 but I think that's what's running my domain controller- no more games for that guy

 

[bluemax]

Actually, the Radeon series of cards have proven to have the most advantage when it comes to slow processors. Faster than an MX by a fair margin even on a Celeron 466.

That said, there's two reasons to consider my suggestions of a GTS-V or Radeon LE.

1) price. The difference between an MX-400 and a GTS-v/RadeonLE is minimal if nonexistant. $40-50 is cheap. Period.
When you upgrade down the road, you'll already have a decent video card to match the faster processor.

2) visual quality upgrades for "free". When the CPU is the bottleneck instead of the video card, you can bump up things that would normally slow things down, such as AntiAliasing and trilinear filtering. When I ran a Celeron450A I could turn on the Voodoo5's 4x FSAA and saw no difference in performance. Nothing quite like getting freebies.

I'd say point #1 is the greater of the two, point #2 is just to push you over the edge.

 

[bluemax]

And BTW, The *entire* Geforce2 series draw less power because of the die shrink - not just the GF2MX cards.
The TNT2 M64 performs no better than the original TNT. You'd be better off with a plain vanilla TNT2 than the junker M64.
Unless it's well under $25, don't even bother getting a TNT2 of ANY kind.

 

[Skibby9]

lotsa good info here, but there's something you may want to consider: will you ever want to put a sweet video card in another pc? Or upgrade your 500Mhz machine and want to use the old parts? Perhaps you'd consider the radeon 8500-- it can be found for retail(!) at ~$160 or less (check Hot Deals). May sound like a bunch o' dough, but then again, you won't be complaining about missing directx 8.1 features, and have a very close to top of the line card that will probably run the latest games just fine for at least a year.

My point is, I think that spending a few bucks more to have nearly the best (plus can use in a newer machine) is better than buying something you know you'll not be *100%* happy with?

I suppose that the other cards mentioned are fine.... but you'll probably not use a ~$50 card in another machine later down the road like you would with the 8500... (or at least feel the same about it)

But then again, $160 can get you a nice new cpu, too. I guess it is a lot of $.
Good luck with your decision.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

<< 1) price. The difference between an MX-400 and a GTS-v/RadeonLE is minimal if nonexistant. $40-50 is cheap. Period. >>




$40-50 might be a lot for him, he didn't give a price range. The fact he still has such an old systems sugests he may not want to spend a lot or can not afford to.

True he would keep a better video card longer but if he upgrades the rest of his system in 6 months or a years time, then he would be able to get am much better video card for a lot less then. Video cards de-value sooo much.

In a situation like the above i would recoemmend he purchase a video card that is a budget card with out spending too much money on it, esp. when i do not know how much he wants to or can spend and how long till his next upgrade.

 

[BFG10K]

Because you're so processor limited I would not recommend anything faster than a Radeon LE or a GF2 GTS for you. OTOH you should buy something faster if you're planning a system (processor and motherboard) upgrade in the near future, in which case your performance will scale nicely with the faster processor.

 

[DarkTX]

Well actually this machine is my second gaming machine. My first one ( 1ghz Athlon with geforce3ti200) is more than enough for what Im doing, but I often play lan games with my wife. I want to get the money (and permission) to but a new computer altogether for her, but until I do that, I just want to spend about 60 bucks to put in a nicer card for her. We're not planning on playing RTCW or anything like that until later, I just wanna put a little oomph into that machine if reasonable price since I'll likely use it for something else after I build her the new one.

Thanks for all of your help guys, this is definately making my decision easier.....

On another note I posted another thread for my sister's machine, again here Im looking for a sub $60 card for her to play some older games but it must be a PCI card... any ideas?

 

[bluemax]

Radeon PCI. One of the more efficient PCI cards besides the Voodoo5 PCI which is a bit rare. (I'd looove one!)
I highly recommend Radeon for lower processors because they tend to perform better than Geforces which require better processors to get big numbers.