What Video Card Should I buy?

[bbqweed]

Okay..i'm building a comp for someone...

dilemna is this: he will not be playing games. But I do wanna give him speed and picture quality. If it can play games, it would be nice bonus too (but i could care less about games). I'm more into rich vibrant colors, and high quality picture, on a fast card.
My past experience tells me that matrox has the best colors (brightest and vibrant). But now, I don't know about the newer cards....

So LMK what you think?

Oh, it's gonna be 1.4ghz tbird (stock) w/ ddr ram ....

What should I get....?

 

[spanky]

radeon 8500dv

opps. i didn't read too carefully. if u will not be playing games, how about a a radeon le? or the ve as neo mentioned.

 

[NeoMadHatter]

ATI Radeon VE. it's cheap. it's good. ati always has very good 2d and 3d is bonus. plus you can overclock the sucker if you want to play games.

 

[bbqweed]

oh yeah...i have a $100.00 budget (max) ... the lower the better though...

and I will NEVER overclock the card....

 

[glenn1]

Matrox G200 or G400 would be great choices. Also good would be a Voodoo 3 (2000 or 3000).

 

[LiQiCE]

I have built a few systems for people, and I highly recommend getting an ATI solution because of its excellent DVD playback abilities. I recently built a 1.4Ghz system and I put an ATI All in Wonder 128 in it, which worked out really well for my friend (The ATI All in Wonder 128 is around $100 for the OEM version from newegg.com too!)... It will play games, but not extremely well ... ATI Radeon solutions are very cheap right now because of the release of the 7500 and 8500, so you might want to consider those ... I wouldn't recommend the GeForce 2 line of cards right now just because the 2D on the GeForce 2 is noticeably worse than the ATI cards (I own a GeForce 2 Ultra and a GTS and they dont look nearly as crisp as the ATI solutions I've put into computers I've built)