What is the faster card, the 7000 radeon or the gf2 mx400?

[Mavrick007]

I am looking to get a "cheap" card for my old k62 system. It has a TNT2 Ultra on it now, but I was wondering what
the fastest video solution would be out of these selections?

How much faster would a GF2 GTS be than these cards?

 

[dguy6789]

the gf2mx400 is probably faster then a 7000 in most cases, the gts would also be faster then eithyer of them, how many mhz is that k6-2? i used to have a 533mhz K6-2 with a gf2 mx400, it would play 3dgames real well for its time. Quake 3 was a breeze. the fastest pci video card is probably a 9000 pci or a 9100 pci, but they are more expensive, and the cpu probably wont get to much out of those cards. I recomend a gf2 mx 400 for 500-550 mhz cpus.

 

[nemesismk2]

The gf2 mx400 is faster than a r7000.

 

[Mavrick007]

It's faster even if the gf2 mx400 is sdr 32meg?

The k62 is a 350mhz but I just got a cheap 500mhz k62 which I plan on overclocking to 550 or 600mhz I hope.

The mobo has had an AGP problem since I got it way back when, it was an Asus p5a, and the agp 2x would never run right cause of a voltage problem on the agp slot.

I am working on a much newer system now, but I was thinking about renewing the life of the old machine by putting a faster cpu and vid card.

 

[dguy6789]

a 32mb geforce 2mx400 would beat a 64mb ddr radeon 7000

 

[AnAndAustin]

The GF2mx400 in itself is much faster than the Radeon 7000 aka Radeon VE. The GF2mx400 is slightly faster than the GF2mx and a good deal faster than the GF2mx200. The GF2mx400 is still 50% slower than a GF2gts/TI, GF4mx440se or Radeon 7500 though so it's far from a speed demon. 32mb is unlikely to hurt you in the types of games that system is likely to play and having an AGP card largely negates that anyway. In PCI it woudl make sense to get at least 64mb esp considering how cheap 64mb cards are right now. Here's some links of Rad7000/VE reviews ...

TomsHW RadVE review (inc Matrox G450 & GF2MX)

AnAndTech RadVE review (inc GF2MX, RadSDR, V4, Matrox G450)

X-Bit RadVE review (inc GF2MX & Matrox G450) - go 75% down the page

 

[Mavrick007]

Thanx guys. I don't want to drop alot of cash on a card that I don't really use much anyway and I was seeing on newegg they have an Asus Gf2 mx400 with 32meg SDR for like $24.
I was thinking it would not be a bad price at all. I looked for some PCI vid cards and the cheapest was quite pricey but the best was probably the fx5200 PCI with 128megs of ram at ~$106.

I think the best bet would just to go with the gf2 mx400 with 32megs AGP. It is cheap and quiet since it has passive cooling.

I wonder what types of games I could possibly play with this system:
Asus P5A with k62 500mhz
256megs PC133/100 ram
Gf2 mx400 with 32megs SDR

Hehe It's funny I know but I used to use that machine for everything for such a long time and it served me well.
I played just about everything up to Diablo 2 and UT at the time with my TNT2 Ultra and 350mhz cpu, and I overclocked the TNT2 pretty well for its time too

 

[Mavrick007]

dbl post.. grrr would not refresh

 

[AnAndAustin]

I had a lot of problems with these forums not refreshing or failing on long posts. Trying diff proxy servers helped me, if it happens a lot give it a try.

Anyway I had a system very much like that one (K6-III 450, 256MB SDR, GF4mx400-64mb) and it played all the games at the time very well. Check out the reviews of the GF2mx cards and basicly any games they use for benchmarking should play well. I can't recall what games were too taxing for that PC as I soon upgraded to a Duron 700 and SktA KT133 which even with SDR and GF2mx400 gave a superb boost.

For $24 that GF2mx400 even with 32mb is a good deal and will yeild a BIG boost over a TNT2. If you can find a 64mb card or better still a GF2gts/TI, GF4mx420, GF4mx440 or Radeon7500 for little extra cash they are all much faster but only really worth it if you plan to upgrade the mobo and CPU in the life of your card but even then a GF2mx400 will still yield a good perf boost.

 

[BFG10K]

I wonder what types of games I could possibly play with this system:

Not much I'm afraid. That K6 is well below the minimum specs required for most games made in the last two years.

I had a lot of problems with these forums not refreshing

Interestingly so have I and I thought it was something to do with my setup, but perhaps it's a forum issue after all.

 

[Mavrick007]

I have been using my 1900+/GF4 Ti4400 combo for quite awhile now, say shortly after the GF4Ti's came out
and I just upgraded to a barton 2500+ so it's not like I need to worry much about the old k62 box, but I thought it
might make a great little fileserver, or an emulator machine with some light 3d gaming on the side.

Because of this, I think the Gf2 mx400 should be more than sufficient for the price but I wish the other cards mentioned were cheaper right now.
I don't think it's worth putting more than $30-35 into a card on this machine unless it gave a world of change and would let the machine play something really recent.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yeah even the fastest K6-2 is too slow to take advantage of much more than a GF2mx400 anyway. You are esp limited by the memory bandwidth, AMD did very well with Skt7, the K6-III managed to double the memory bandwidth but even a slow Duron in SktA offers around 4 times the memory bandwidth of K6-2 in Skt7 and that's using the same SDR! IMHO grab yourself that GF2mx400, anything earlier than Unreal should play pretty well on it, just hope that AGP slot and mobo archy can handle the relatively hungry GF2.

 

[cobra77]

The Radeon 7000 (aka radeon VE) is so bad that when I went to upgrade my
16mb Voodoo 3 PCI card with a 64mb Radeon 7000 AGP a couple of years ago
It actually benchmarked lower on 3dMark 2000 (I was quite pissed).
Got A radeon 8500 and the benchmark went from 1200 to over 6000
on a Duron 900 (I was pleased).

The Geforce mx400 should be fine, especially considering that as AnAndAustin
said the CPU will restrict the performence of anything better.