Topic says it all, researching for a system I'll set up in maybe a month's time or so. I'd like to spend less, but after having this pos hercules (went out of business) 8meg card I'd like something that can really cook. So far I'm looking at an athlon 1.2ghz, 384meg ram, 45gig hdd. Should be sweet. 🙂
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What's the best $200 can get you for an Athlon?
- Thread starter Capn
- Start date
BenSkywalker
Diamond Member
$200 for a vid card to pair with a 1.2GHZ Athlon...
The fastest you can get right now in that price range is a GF2, and that comes in at about $150 give or take depending on which board you go with. Any particular features you would like- ie video out, DVI etc?
The most feature rich card you can get for that right now is the Radeon 32MB DDR. The Radeon 32MB DDR is nearly as fast as the GF2, has very solid 2D even on trinitron tubed monitors(which is a weak point for the GF2) and the best consumer level video acceleration you can get(DVD, MPEG1, pretty much all the PC video formats but not quite all).
The thing is, that is all right now, not in two months🙂
Two months from now we will be looking at the NV20 as the king of the hill which should have a price impact on all the lower offerings. It is possible that the GF2 Pro could drop into the $200 price range in that period of time. The GF2 Pro is considerably faster then either of two I mentioned above, although it won't look it next to the NV20(which is likely to be in the $350-$450 range, possibly going as high as $500).
Also, what types of games do you like to play and what else do you do with your system? If you don't do anything 3D, forget everything I have said and buy a G400, you won't regret it. If you only occasionaly game, then the Radeon 32MB DDR will likely be your best bet even in a couple of months, as it has solid 3D performance and overall higher levels of 2D quality, and the speed difference won't be that big of a deal to a casual gamer(you may have to run 1024x768 32bit@ 60FPS instead of 100FPS).
The fastest you can get right now in that price range is a GF2, and that comes in at about $150 give or take depending on which board you go with. Any particular features you would like- ie video out, DVI etc?
The most feature rich card you can get for that right now is the Radeon 32MB DDR. The Radeon 32MB DDR is nearly as fast as the GF2, has very solid 2D even on trinitron tubed monitors(which is a weak point for the GF2) and the best consumer level video acceleration you can get(DVD, MPEG1, pretty much all the PC video formats but not quite all).
The thing is, that is all right now, not in two months🙂
Two months from now we will be looking at the NV20 as the king of the hill which should have a price impact on all the lower offerings. It is possible that the GF2 Pro could drop into the $200 price range in that period of time. The GF2 Pro is considerably faster then either of two I mentioned above, although it won't look it next to the NV20(which is likely to be in the $350-$450 range, possibly going as high as $500).
Also, what types of games do you like to play and what else do you do with your system? If you don't do anything 3D, forget everything I have said and buy a G400, you won't regret it. If you only occasionaly game, then the Radeon 32MB DDR will likely be your best bet even in a couple of months, as it has solid 3D performance and overall higher levels of 2D quality, and the speed difference won't be that big of a deal to a casual gamer(you may have to run 1024x768 32bit@ 60FPS instead of 100FPS).
Well I'm more of a casual gamer more than anything. Actually right now I don't play any games that I want to (all don't like win2k). I'm going to dual boot 2k with ME probably whenever I install the new system. However I'd like to get real solid performance on any current game, heh just a small request huh? Thing is last time I set up my system 2 years ago, 400mhz k6-2 8meg Savage based card I really never got really good performance even when I just got it. However getting back to the point, most of my operation involves browsing the web, office, PRO/Engineer so it must have good OpenGL support which i don't tihnk is that much to be worried about. I'm stopping myself from buying this sooner rather than later 🙂. Must wait till end of February for self control.
BenSkywalker
Diamond Member
"PRO/Engineer"
GeForce based board, doesn't matter which one particularly, will destroy anything else in the consumer realm. Forget I said anything that wasn't made by nVidia😉
Seriously, go with a GeForce2, either GTS or Pro if it is in your price range when you are ready to build. What features are you looking for(have to narrow down which board/s would be best for you🙂)?
Are you handy with a soldering iron? If you are, you can mod a plain vanilla GF2 into a Quadro2 workstation board quite simply and enable all of the workstation class features the GF2 has but has been disabled to give the Quadro a selling point. If not, don't worry too much about it. The mod gives you a bit here and there(and bragging rights), but nothing like the huge rift between the GeForce based boards and anything else in the consumer market when using pro 3D applications.
BTW- I moved from a K62-400MHZ with a TNT1 8MB OEM board to an Athlon 550 with a GeForce1 and was absolutely blown away by the difference in speed.... I can't imagine making the jump up to a 1.2GHZ with GF2 and all the trimmings:Q😕😀
GeForce based board, doesn't matter which one particularly, will destroy anything else in the consumer realm. Forget I said anything that wasn't made by nVidia😉
Seriously, go with a GeForce2, either GTS or Pro if it is in your price range when you are ready to build. What features are you looking for(have to narrow down which board/s would be best for you🙂)?
Are you handy with a soldering iron? If you are, you can mod a plain vanilla GF2 into a Quadro2 workstation board quite simply and enable all of the workstation class features the GF2 has but has been disabled to give the Quadro a selling point. If not, don't worry too much about it. The mod gives you a bit here and there(and bragging rights), but nothing like the huge rift between the GeForce based boards and anything else in the consumer market when using pro 3D applications.
BTW- I moved from a K62-400MHZ with a TNT1 8MB OEM board to an Athlon 550 with a GeForce1 and was absolutely blown away by the difference in speed.... I can't imagine making the jump up to a 1.2GHZ with GF2 and all the trimmings:Q😕😀
BenSkywalker
Diamond Member
Oh yeah, just a suggestion for you to try out and get an appreciation for just how moch better your new build will be.
Pick up the game called Giants before you build your new system. After you have it built, install it on both your old PC and your new build. Play it for a half hour or so on your old machine(if you can stand it😉) and then fire it up on your new rig.
If you are happy with Giants running on your machine, nothing else out now, or for the forseeable future, is going to slow down your system too much.(Not to mention the game has by far the most impressive real time graphics I've ever seen on a PC)
Pick up the game called Giants before you build your new system. After you have it built, install it on both your old PC and your new build. Play it for a half hour or so on your old machine(if you can stand it😉) and then fire it up on your new rig.
If you are happy with Giants running on your machine, nothing else out now, or for the forseeable future, is going to slow down your system too much.(Not to mention the game has by far the most impressive real time graphics I've ever seen on a PC)
UNCjigga
Lifer
Kylef, I think what Skywalker meant was that these FD Trinitron monitors are soo boodamus (beautiful+gorgeous+pimpin) that the RAMDAC on a plain-vanilla reference GeForce2 GTS doesn't do it justice. It won't really look bad, but an ATI Radeon or Matrox G400 might give a crisper image at high resolutions and refresh rates. On my new Sony 17" (also an FD), pushing the resolution to 1600x1200 gives an image noticably more washed-out/dull than at 1024x768 (small black text on a white background is a good test for this.) I'm using a GeForce2 MX-based board...which I think uses the same internal RAMDAC as the GTS (maybe Pro or Ultra Geforce2s have better RAMDACs?)
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