What geforce is right for me? (edited post)

[coopa]

--EDITED--- i didnt want to start another post with my newbie question


I want to get a new vid card for my comp. i was looking at geforce2 mx chip but i dont know much.

I would need it for gaming (not q3) and maybe for some 3d modeling. i want to spend around the $110 range or so.

Here are my sys. specs for my gatway, (never been upgraded)

P3 500 (not OC)
i run at 800x600 32bit. for most stuff. win 98.

what should i get??? leadtek, hercules, creative visiontek elsa?
is there a board w/ gts chip that is cheaper? I think i want ddr but i am not sure. rendering images would want sdr or ddr? i really dont know. thanks for your replies.

please disregard the next 3 posts

 

[duragezic]

Nvidia makes the MX chip and then sells it to manufacturers such as Creative, Leadtek, Guillemot, and ELSA to make the boards. The performance of those cards are very similar unless the manufacturer chose to change the core/mem clock but I don't believe any did that to their MX cards.


Hope that clears it up. If not just holler.

 

[Actaeon]

Gullimont Actually gives you a OCed Geforce 2 MX, I'm not sure what its rated at, but they do.

 

[coopa]

Thanks i get it makes sense now.
new question see above^

 

[duragezic]

Well you could consider the ATI Radeon. It's an excellent card with Geforce-like speed and also has great 2d quality. The Radeon SDR is a little bit slower then the MX except in higher resolutions/32-bit color where it is almost as fast as a Geforce DDR. The worst thing with it is the drivers but they will get better and you're not running Win2000 anyway. On a related note, I just snagged a ATI Radeon 64 over a Geforce2 GTS 64.

Now for $134 (cheapest price I find), you can get a Radeon 32 DDR. You can check out's Anand's review of the Radeon SDR, which includes benchmarks of that, the Radeon DDR, etc... Here.

If you decide against the Radeon and want to get the MX, then I would probably get the Creative or Leadtek one. The Hercules one is nice but the ramsinks add cost and don't even do much.

The cheapest Geforce 2 GTS 32mb is $160 so that is quite aways out of your range.

Well maybe with those benchmarks you can decide what card you want. Personally, I think the Radeon 32 DDR would be the best. It's about $20 more than a MX but much faster.

 

[coopa]

up above you said it was slower but your last remark said it was worth extra $20 becasue it was faster??

 

[Zeppy]

Eagle makes a good case for the Radeon. However, only if you are running at higher resolutions. If you tend to stick around 800x600 or 640x480 then an MX would do fine.

I am curious about the ramsinks you mention regarding the Hercules card. What are they and what are they "supposed" to do?

 

[duragezic]

coopa: I mentioned the Radeon SDR was slower but the Radeon DDR was a little bit more but faster.

zeppy: They are little heatsinks that are suppose to draw the heat off the ram chips, just as a heatsink does for a processor. Except the ram chips don't produce much heat and the ramsinks don't help much (if at all) even during memory overclocking.

 

[Zeppy]

Gotcha! Thanks!

One last thing to add and I'll crawl back into my hole...

I just read a review that stated that the Hercules uses slightly faster memory, thereby providing better performance on most tests.

Again, though, it only matters if you decide on the MX.

...now what did I do with that hole...

 

[coopa]

lol missed that you said sdr in the first post. my bad.

since i will be doing some 3d work it would be best to get the card that could render the images fastest (the radeon card) but also the mx ddr is cheaper...

annyone else think that i should get the radeon instead of Geforce2 mx ddr?

 

[Actaeon]

Hercules doesn't put ramsinks on there boards, thats only for the GF2 Ultra


Hercules makes the best version, it has faster ram, 5.5 ns which is faster than the 6 ns ones from the other manufactors. And it comes in a little blue tint

Forget about creative labs, there 64-bit DDR is still slower than the 128-bit SDR.

Go with Hercules.

 

[Zeppy]

Yeah, all the reviews I've been able to find that compares the MX card shows Hercules way out in fron in every test. Against other chipsets it does great and sometimes even better than the big ones in 640x480 and 32 bit. However, if you get into higher resolutions the MX starts choking.

So, in summary, go with the Hercules MX if you want an MX. Otherwise if you run at higher resolutions most of the time, you need to look elsewhere.

 

[duragezic]

Ah I didn't know Hercules didn't put the ramsinks on MX's. They are on the GTS, GTS Pro, and GTS Ultra though.

The Hercules cards do have slightly faster memory and they did increase the clock over Nvidia's default. But if I want that speed of a Hercules I would just get a different MX (except the VisionTek since it has 7ns ram) and overclock that. 5.5ns isn't worth it in my opinion. 6ns overclocks fine.

edit: Argh I thought Creative made a 128-bit SDR. If I was to get a MX I would get a SDR. Like someone said, the 64-bit DDR performs slightly slower even though at first it sounds like hey DDR is double the rate and 64-bit is half so it should even out. There is something technical though that makes the DDR a tad slower.

I would still get the Radeon though.

 

[Actaeon]

Well, check out this thread I created a Week or 2 ago, Its comparing Geforce 2 SDR and DDR.

Thread