What is the worst Video card on the market?

[StraightPipe]

I've got an old PIII-450 box and the vid card just died. I had a Voodoo3000 16MB card in there, but five years later it bit the dust.

This machine is my downloading hog (ie: all it does is DL all day and night) Occasionally I'll open a divx to check quality, but I dont even have speakers hooked up.

I need to get a new card quick, and have been looking at the cheapos on newegg. It's 1X AGP. doesnt need to do much, I wont ever play a single game on it.

What should I get? I see cards here for $15-30 and that sounds great, but how do I pick?

 

[3chordcharlie]

tnt2 - 16meg or 32meg m64cards can still be found for $10-20, but they are agp4x, does anyone recall if they are 1x compatible?

 

[Cerb]

S3 Savage-something, $15 at Newegg and Mwave.

 

[3chordcharlie]

I do know for certain that the tnt2 still has excellent driver support in every OS (including linux), so I'd suggest it will be trouble-free compared to most other possible cards.

 

[Shagger]

TNT2 or MX440 should do the trick cheaply enough

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Shagger
TNT2 or MX440 should do the trick cheaply enough

Actually, a 32MB TNT2 and the GF4 MX200 are about the same price, roughly $30.

 

[Eug]

Definitely try to get a cheap ATI Rage 128 or something.

I've come across far too many TNT2, S3, and MX440 cards with terrible 2D image quality.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I just got the rage mobility card on Newegg for my dual Athlon. It's working great. $18 IIRC.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
I do know for certain that the tnt2 still has excellent driver support in every OS (including linux), so I'd suggest it will be trouble-free compared to most other possible cards.

nVidia has a horrible track record for drivers on Linux.

 

[myocardia]

I've never seen an nVidia card that had bad 2d quality (in the last 7 or 8 years, anyway!).

 

[BurnItDwn]

This probably doesn't apply to you, however, TNT 2 cards have very poor 2D at 1600x1200 (blurry, artifacting, colors don't look right) ... at lowwer resolutions its OK though.

S3 has (in the past) had terrible drivers for 3d (Viper II for example) however, for general 2D, it would probably be acceptable.

You may also be able to find a good deal on a Kyro or Kyro II, these cards have good 2D..

Any Matrox or ATI or 3dFX card (at least any from the last 6 or 7 years) will have acceptible 2D quality at whatever resolutions the cards can run at.

Old Nvidia cards ... (Pre Geforce) Will be fine up to about 1280x1024

If I were you I would get the cheapest card I could find that does the resolutions you want at the refresh rates you want with decent 2d quality.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: myocardia
I've never seen an nVidia card that had bad 2d quality (in the last 7 or 8 years, anyway!).

Then you've been lucky, or you haven't seen very many.

Or you just bought Canopus/Elsa, IIRC those had good IQ.
My Creative GeForce256 DDR on the other hand...

 

[Runner20]

NVDIA Gefore 5800 --- sounds like a vacuum cleaner

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
This probably doesn't apply to you, however, TNT 2 cards have very poor 2D at 1600x1200 (blurry, artifacting, colors don't look right) ... at lowwer resolutions its OK though.

S3 has (in the past) had terrible drivers for 3d (Viper II for example) however, for general 2D, it would probably be acceptable.

You may also be able to find a good deal on a Kyro or Kyro II, these cards have good 2D..

Any Matrox or ATI or 3dFX card (at least any from the last 6 or 7 years) will have acceptible 2D quality at whatever resolutions the cards can run at.

Old Nvidia cards ... (Pre Geforce) Will be fine up to about 1280x1024

If I were you I would get the cheapest card I could find that does the resolutions you want at the refresh rates you want with decent 2d quality.

I had a 4MB PCI Permedia2 (Creative Labs brand) that had pretty decent image quality, probably due to using the same external TI RAMDAC that my 4MB PCI Matrox Millenium cards did. Nice sharp text, even up to 1600x1200, and snappy 2D, due to the 100Mhz SDRAM on that card at the time. Can't say the 3D on a Permedia2 is anything useful though.

I might also suggest a cheap AGP 1x/2x ATI RagePro card, those had generally decent 2D quality (but integrated RAMDAC, so not as good as the Permedia2 and Matrox Mill. cards), some 3D accel capability (ran almost the speed of a V2, after overclocking the RagePro heavily). The only downside is, no modern driver support, almost like the same situation that the V3 has today. The ATI can do 3D accel in a window though, which makes it more compatible with Windows' DirectX driver architecture. If you get one with a TV-out, watching DVDs is actually quite good, even on such an old ATI card. (But you will need a 450Mhz or faster CPU to decode them properly.)

The only really old-but-still-currently supported card, would be a TNT or TNT2 (maybe M64 version) AGP card, I was running a PCI TNT1 up until very recently, even with NV's most recent 56.72 W2K/XP drivers. You do need to force-install the drivers as if you had a TNT2 Pro card though. Your 2D image quality, as mentioned, may vary widely between vendors though. You could consider doing the "IQ hack", removing some filter caps from the analog video-output stage. There are some web pages with the details on that.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: myocardia
I've never seen an nVidia card that had bad 2d quality (in the last 7 or 8 years, anyway!).

Then you've been lucky, or you haven't seen very many.

Whoa, serious deja vu. I think we had this discussion back in 2001.

 

[Budman]

Ati 9200SE . yuck.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: myocardia
I've never seen an nVidia card that had bad 2d quality (in the last 7 or 8 years, anyway!).

Then you've been lucky, or you haven't seen very many.

Whoa, serious deja vu. I think we had this discussion back in 2001.

I had a GF FX 5900XT wich had significantly worse 2D (blurry text) compaired to my old GF4 4200ti

 

[Tostada]

Don't you have any computer shops within 100 miles? You should be able to go pick up an old Matrox Millennium PCI card for $5 which will be compatible with absolutely anything. Or you should be able to get an old Rage 128 AGP card for about $5, too.

Most geeks have probably thrown away multiple Trident or S3 Trio cards, so at the very least you should be able to find one of them.

Personally, I've got a 2MB Millennium PCI, a 4MB Millennium PCI, a 32MB Savage 3 Pro PCI, an 8MB Rage 128 AGP and a Number Nine GXE64 Pro PCI gathering dust. If you really just want something for 2D that doesn't have to go over 1152x864 16-bit, you should be able to get a 2MB card sent to you for about the cost of shipping from someone on here.

Or go to eBay and type "rage agp" and you'll see 179 people selling cards for about $5. If you dig around, you'll be able to get something delivered for about $8.

 

[StraightPipe]

8 bucks sounds great, I'll get a looking.

BTW does it matter how much RAM is onboard in a 2-D enviroment?

I have a 21" monitor on that box, so I will be running kinda high RES (1280x1024)

honestly image quality doesnt concern me that much either (as long as it isnt blurry) i really just need to be able to read the screens, and not be bugy.

 

[araczynski]

get whatever's the cheapest and is compatible with your mobo, on this type of a setup nothing else matters besides price. but if you're running 1280 then yeah, get a card with at elast 8 meg on it, probably a TNT or better.

 

[3chordcharlie]

I've never had any problems with my tnt2 card in any flavour of linux - i'd agree if you can find somehting rage128 based, it might have a little better 2d quality. From a pc/junk shop you should be able to get something crappy and used for under $10, but for 1280x1024 I'd suggest something a wee bit better, and I see a lot more tnt2 cards around than rage 128, so it may be a lot easier to find.

 

[Ryoga]

Yes, RAM is important. Basically, the on-board RAM must be able to hold at least one complete screen. If you want 24-bit color depth, then 1280x1024x24 = 32 Mbits --> 8 MB. Different chips will have different refresh rates, too. More powerful chips will ba able to push more than 60 Hz.

Quite honestly, I'd try to pick up a GeForce2 MX 400. Those things are fricken' workhorses.

 

[3chordcharlie]

for the few extra dollars, if you want to spend them, I'll second that. My mx400 is fantastic, and runs in a system that only reboots for power failures without ever causing a problem.

 

[CraigRT]

perhaps just go down to a local store and ask them if they have a junk bin from upgrades and things like that... most places will have an old POS videocard lying around they will be dying to unload on you

 

[StraightPipe]

thanks for all the advice guys (and gals)

seems like the winner is tnt2 or MX440, lets see what kinda deal i can get now

guess i'm off to see the wizard