Which Geforce4 ?

[zm2002]

Hi,

I have the following hardware:

Pentium III 600 EB Coopermine
DIM 256Mb PC133
MotherBoard ASUS P3V4X
Riva TNT2 32Mb
Western Digital 20Gb 7200 rpm
Soud Blaster Live!
DVD ASUS 52x
Plextor Writer 24/10/40

I'm thinking of making an upgrade on my graphics card ... I'm thinking of a ... Geforce4 ... I have some questions and would like to ear some opinions about that:

[1] What is the best manufacture available? ASUS, Creative or MSI? From a point of performance/drivers/support.

[2] I'm thinking of a Geforce Ti4400 for the 128DDR, Video IN, and near-future proof. Is it a good choice?

[3] Can the video IN in this card give good capture quality? I'm thinking of connecting a VCR and latter a digital camera.

[4] Can I expect the system to work a lot better with this card on todays requisites? (thinking that still I will be using about 70% of the capacities of the card due to the rest of the system)



I would like to hear your oppinion about this choice, and some suggestions too ...


Thanks for the attention.
ZM

 

[snow patrol]

Bear in mind that your CPU speed is pretty slow by todays standards. You will be limited quite a lot by that. I'm not even sure if it's worth getting a geforce 4 with that setup to be honest.

I'll wait and see what the experts say

 

[Actaeon]

Hello.

1) Asus makes great cards, but the Ti4400 they produce, does not come with TV-In. Creative no longer makes cards for the Video Market (Though, they now do own P10 Lab's, which is coming out with some sorta of high end chipset, soon, but no GF4's coming from them). I hear MSI makes decent cards, Though there Ti4400's are noisy, and have no Ram Sinks.

As for the best Manufacturer available for the Ti4400's, I had have to go with Abit, there PCB looks incredibly cool, they are quiet, and have excellent 2d Quality. From a point of performance/drivers/support, I'd say almost all companies are the same on the part of Performance/Drivers, as each are within a fraction of a precent with one another, and you can just download drivers from Nvidia. Support on the other hand, I am unsure about. Though, you can go wrong with the Abit Ti4400. But from what I understand, they do not have TV-In.

As far as I know, the Only Ti4400 with TV-In is the MSI, though it is very loud.

2) You bet ya its gonna be future proof, you checked out Anand's Unreal Tournament comparison? Hah, I suggest you do, its a great read.

3) Not sure about that, thats up to the manufacturers. I hear almost all Nvidia cards are sub-par for Video In Quality, but like I said, its up to the manufacturers.

4) You're using more like, 50% of the Cards power. Though it would run just fine on your computer, it won't be as fast as a little slower card with a little faster cpu.

I suggest you read this article, on THG, 11 Ti4400/4600s compared.

My personal suggestion would be, If you don't mind going to ATi, I suggest you get an Radeon8500. There multimedia capabilities and features are by far better than Nvidia's, Espically on the Video-In Part. Performance wise, on your CPU, one would hardly notice the FPS difference between the cards. And it'll save you a pretty buck or two, over the Ti4400, that you can put towards perhaps, a new cpu/mobo.

If you have any more questions, just feel free to ask.

Good luck!
Actaeon

 

[zm2002]

I do believe that I won't be using all power of the card ... so why waste the money? Well, I do believe in the near future (1 year maximum) I'll just be uprading to a P4 ... and it's a piece of hardware that I'll fit perfectly in there ... and the video IN is a feature which I would use today ...

Today I play mainly Warcraft3 / Grand Prix 4 / Return To Castle Wolfenstein ... my Riva TNT2 is just about good to all but GP4 and Warcraft3 (I notice a little slow in-game), and in GP4 I only run it at 800x600 ... and I have a Sony 19" monitor ... what a waste of resolution

To work ... well to work I need no more that what I have right now ... I do not believe that, for example, Visual Studio will take advantage of a Geforce4, so there's no excuse there

... But it's a lot of money and my move must be carefull ... not to waste it too bad ...

I do need LOTS of opinions ...

As for the ATI, I never saw one of them, and I heard the quality is better ... but I'm one of those people that often chooses a more popular product in these matters ... like NVIDIA would be 100% compatible will all software (games and OS) over there, and no prob there ever ... but I can change that ... I changed before between 3dFX and NVIDIA ... can do it again ... ... if it justifies ...


Need some opinion / advice ...


Thanks for the attention