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What budget video card should I buy?

W

winterlude

Senior member
After the P3 price cuts in April, I'm planning to upgrade the CPU and video for one of my systems; but I don't know what budget videocard I should buy? Will the Geforce 4 MX give me the best bang for my buck? How about the Radeon 7000? Is there something coming down the pipe in the next couple of months in the budget arena (i.e. Geforce 4 Ti4200?). I don't want to spend over $100 unless I'm getting great value.

Originally, I wanted the AIW Radeon 7500 for the VIVO features for analog video capture, but that's a bit out of my price range right now.

Any advice?

 
well first things are, what are you going to use it for?

Gaming... or just business, desktop use...

this would suit you nice..the Geforce 4 MX... its going for 109$ on newegg...

or you could go the ATI way..

Radeon VE...32 meg..

55$.. nice 2d and will work well for u... check them out here..

Here...
 
NOOOOOOOOO!.....not the Geforce4 MX. The Geforce4 MX DOES NOT have the programmable shader technology that the Geforce4 Ti series or even the Geforce3's have. What kind of video card and cpu do you have now? The Radeon 7500 is a nice card and can be found for under $100. Stay away from the Radeon 7000 and 7200 if you're going to be gaming; they're crippled in one way or another. The Geforce3 Ti200 is nice too, but it might be overkill if you don't have a sufficiently fast cpu.

Of course if you don't really card that much about games, then go with one of the cheaper Radeons or even a Matrox card. They both have great 2D.
 
i know that, but if he does not plan on alot of gaming, the MX wouldn't be a bad choice, neither would the Radeon VE...
 
If you wanna cheap out and get a nice all around card...ATI 7500..I had one and it ran all my games nice, played flawless DVD, and had great 2d.

Now if you wanna spend just a little more $ pick up a Geforce3 Ti200...you can get one new for 140 shipped...or used for less from the FS/FT forum...solid card all around...plus you won't have to upgrade for a long time....

my .02 good luck,

jc
 


<< I think he would be better off getting a geforce 2 gts for 50 dollars than a geforce 4 mx. >>

yea, the GTS-V card from newegg.com .. under 50 bucks, and its quite a decent card.

Josh
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

My current system has a 333 celeron FSB (oc from 66 to 85mhz so CPU speed is 425mhz), 224 SDRAM 133mhz (but running at 85mhz), and an ATI Rage Pro 4meg card.
I'm mostly be using it for video editting, and doing some encoding. The only game I'll likely play is Warcraft III.

Ultimately, I'd like a Clawhammer system, but I doubt I'll have the cash to buy a new system in a year. An upgrade to a PIII will be good enough (price supposed to drop dramatically in April), and I won't have to buy new ram (DDR). Supposedly, for video editting, the quantity of ram is more important than the speed.

Not much sense in getting a cutting edge video card either since they are way too expensive (would rather spend that kind of money, if I had it, on a thoroughbred (athlon XP)/motherboard/RAM upgrade), and the bandwidth of my 133mhz SDRAM would bottleneck the newer cards too.

I'm leaning towards the AIW Radeon 7500, which I wanted originally since it has VIVO, but I'll have to save for it till summer (that's when Warcraft 3 comes out anyway, so that's when I'll "need" a better video card.), and hopefully, it'll be a bit cheaper.

Thanks
 
I would have to agree with everyone else. GF2 would be a better choice than the GF4MX. The 3D Marks 2001 for the GF4MX are down there with my current GF256 DDR. Getting a whopping 5500 marks. That's pathetic considering that it is suppose to be a better card. The benchmarks I looked at are right from Anandtech also!

GF2 Definately the way to go for budget. Or wait a little bit for the GF4TI's to become more mainstream and the GF3 probably will drop low enough to be budget....Just my thoughts. 🙂
 
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