Which video card is better in a P3 850Mhz system?

[sep]

Geforce2 GTS 32MB AGP

or

Geforce2 MX400 64MB AGP

 

[sep]

going to buy one for my old P3 Cel533@850 and wanted to which card I'd be better off with. Anyone?

 

[Gouv]

Here's a comparisson of the GTS 64MB vs the MX 400 64MB. I'd say the GTS is still better at 32MB.


comparisson

 

[sep]

thanks...forgot about looking back at the reviews.

 

[tart666]

also, don't forget about the new massive comparo at tom's. Some 30 cards with athlon 1000 and AXP2700. A1000 gotta be pretty close to your PIII-850. Looks like GF2Ti gets about 50% better scores than 2MX400

 

[EdipisReks]

the GTS is a ton faster than the MX, no question.

 

[CraigRT]

GTS
back in the day I had 2 PIIIs with a GTS and with an MX and the GTS walked all over the MX

GTS was the first to have DDR over the MX... very nice improvement.. well worth the money I paid at the time.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well neither are ideal. You really want 64MB but at the same time the GTS is 40% faster than the MX400. Since the CPU will be a big limiting factor for most games which benefit from 64MB you might as well get the GTS. IUf you can look for a 64MB GTS, TI, Pro or Ultra OR better still consider a Radeon7500, 9000 or GF4MX which are all faster and should now come with 64MB as std, plus they are all hugely better when it comes to image quality, dual display, DVD playback and TVout too. It's a bit of give & take with the cards you mention but the GTS is marginally better for you providing the prices are the same.

 

[spanky]

gts

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: AnAndAustin
Well neither are ideal. You really want 64MB but at the same time the GTS is 40% faster than the MX400. Since the CPU will be a big limiting factor for most games which benefit from 64MB you might as well get the GTS. IUf you can look for a 64MB GTS, TI, Pro or Ultra OR better still consider a Radeon7500, 9000 or GF4MX which are all faster and should now come with 64MB as std, plus they are all hugely better when it comes to image quality, dual display, DVD playback and TVout too. It's a bit of give & take with the cards you mention but the GTS is marginally better for you providing the prices are the same.

There's always someone who has to answer a "yes or no" question with a paragraph.

 

[Booster]

It depends on what your goals are. Of course, the GTS will be faster, but it also has a noisy fan that will tend to become more and more noisy as the time passes, while the MX400 has only a heatsink. Considering how I can't bear the high-pitched noise of the fan and playing games very little I'd go for the MX.

 

[bgeh]

i'd go for the geforce 2 GTS
actually, the noise is caused by the bearings of the fan drying up
all you need to do is to put a drop of oil at the back of the fan

 

[AnAndAustin]

merlocka, actually it was an 'A or B' question not 'YES or NO' and I thinkn the detail I went into was relevant. There's too many people who simply stick there heads into a link and say 'get A' or 'don't get that' rather than supplying any reasoning. There's nothing wrong with simply saying 'A' (or B) but it tends to be much more useful to give reasons and cater for other people's reqs or prefs. (there I go again) ...

 

[MithShrike]

Yup, definitely the GTS... or a Radeon 7500, if you can get one cheap.

 

[sep]

This was definitely an interesting post. I needed to get hardware TNL card for my server that?s currently running a 3dfx V3 3000 w/Tennmax cooling and looked at these cards as low priced/in my price range. After finding a post that will allow me to run Powerstrip to emulate hardware TNL I?m going to try this before replacing the card with one of the above choices.

I read a lot of article/reviews about these cards and didn?t realize the history of them. The GTS is a far better card due to its larger memory bandwidth. I?d definitely get a GTS over the MX.

I haven?t had an ATI card since the very first All-In-Wonders came out with 4-8MB of onboard memory. I would consider one if the price was right.

Thanks all.

FYI...
Just wanted the card for my small LAN Party Server. It runs all the games fine except America's Army, because it requires a card with Hardware TNL.

 

[AnAndAustin]

I'd urge you to strongly consider a GF4MX or Rad7500, Rad8500 or Rad9000. Going from a 3dfx card to GF2 is going to hit you hard in terms of image quality, a Voodoo3 is way slower than a GF2MX, in fact the Voodoo5 wasn't much quicker than a GF2MX either. A Rad7500 or 9000 are both slightly faster than a GF2 but have hugely better image quality, TVout, DVD playback and dual display too, something a GF4MX largely addresses as well as boosting speed (GF4MX440 is faster than a GF2GTS while MX420 is slightly slower). The Rad9000PRO and Rad8500 (inc LE) are significantly faster and support DX8 hw which is becoming very important in gaming. I'd say take a look around, neither a GF2GTS 32MB nor a GF2MX 64MB are very ideal, they'll be a lot faster BUT there are other trade-offs esp comparing to modern entry level cards.

 

[sep]

Thanks AnAndAustin. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[SickBeast]

GTS or GF4MX.