Which video card(s) for these needs?

[Bling Bling]

Ok, i'll be building systems for other people now. Some of these are college students and others are home/office people.

Which v.c. would be the best for these situations:

General Users--internet, email, word processing, maybe a game or two (nothing hardcore like UT or Quake

College people (gamers)[/B--you know the deal 😉

For the "general users" i was thinking along the lines of a cheap/decent card like the V3 2K or something equivalent. (Maybe even onboard video for them....wait, is that a bad idea? :Q)

For the "gamers" i was thinking along the lines of a GeForce MX or maybe an o/c'd V3 2K or V3 3K.

So, what do you guys think?

 

[dave1980]

for office use, save some dough and get a voodoo 3 2k card and get a software overclocker to push it to 170mhz (assuming you strap a 486 cpu fan onto the heatsink). The 2D is good for the card as long as you dont try to push it to maximum resolution on a 21 inch monitor. Also, there is still some 3D horsepower there for any games they would want to tackle - or the occasional winamp 3d plugin.

for those gaming college students, just get a plain-vanilla GeForce. No game out there for the next 6 or 7 months is even going to be pushing up to the limits of what the GeForce hardware is capable now.

 

[AndyHui]

For general use, I would think a TNT2 m64 would be fine. Fast, relatively reliable, and you can play games on it as long as you don't use a very high resolution. 2D is clean and clear, and drivers are mature. General users won't be too interested in updating drivers, and nVidia drivers are pretty good, so it's a "set and forget".

Onboard video, such as the i810/i815 chipset's i752 processor, is very poor, for both 2D and 3D. In 2D, it's speed is less than half that of the old TNT1, and don't even talk about 3D.

For gamers, I think the GeForce 2 MX would be a good choice. Lots of power there and price should come down quickly once it is out.

 

[LXi]

V3 2000 or Matrox G400 16MB for a sub $100 video card, GeForce2 MX if you can spend up to $120.

 

[AngelOfDeath]

I would go for at least TNT2 M64 for the ordinary user and a TNT2 Ultra for the gamers. Both cards are relatively cheap today. And at thw same time they wont run out of precious v-ram in case they use big appz. and the gamers don't have to pay the big bucks and still have descent performance 🙂

AoD 😛

 

[BenSkywalker]

For general users I would reccomend one of the ATi Rage128 Pro boards. General users are far more likely to be interested in viewing video clips, and out of the consumer boards ATi is king of video. Solid 2D image quality and passable 3D for a general user round out a good card for the average user, not to mention they can be had for well under $100 with some looking.

V3 or TNT2 based boards are fine if gaming is your thing, but ATi boards aren't the top OEM choice for nothing(even if they do sck for what we use them for). Avoid integrated solutions, if one tenth of your customers decide to upgrade, they will be thankful that you did🙂

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Genral User - Any card will do. ATI Rage Pro/128. Cheap and not especially powerful.

College User - gForce256, gForce2 GTS/MX or Voodoo5 5500 or ATI Radeon

Integrated "is suck"