I need opinions on Budget Cards

[Air_Carter]

Hey guys im on a tight budget.... and i just a need a card to play games like Battlefield 1942, GTA: Vice City, Elder Scrolls 3:Morrowing,MS Flight Simulator 2002, the upcoming Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and maybe MS Flight Simulator 2004 ... All i need a Budget card that at least could i could play those games with some decent performance and im not looking to play them on super high resolutions... 1024 X 768 as max res. I Currently have a 32MB integrated graphic cards (i know it sucks for you graphics freaks) and well im pleased with it cause i can run some games like Jedi Knight 2, RTCW, Warcraft 3.. but its time to upgrade so i can play games like the ones i mention earlier. I was thinking about getting the ATI Radeon 9100 or a GeForce FX 5200, so which one of those should i get??... or any other suggestions. I would appreciate your help.

[Wiggo]

I'd look at the GF4 Ti4200 myself and they're cheap enough now.

[Mr. C]

Back off a bit on your software purchasing and you should be able to get you a right Jim-Dandy vid card in no time.

Quite a list there:D

[minibubba]

Hey guys im on a tight budget....

:laugh: no offence, but judging by the rest of your post you clearly do not know what a tight budget is

anyway, I agree with Wiggo that a Ti4200 would probably be your best bet if it is in your price range. I know it serves me well.

:cheers:

[Chezman29]

If you have an 8x AGP motherboard, you can look for a Ti4200 with 8x AGP. That is what I just purchased myself.
I got an MSI Ti4200 8x AGP for about $120.

Chez

[maximus7001]

Well, I don't know anything about your system specs. If you are really broke, I would recomend an ati radeon9000 pro 128mb. I have never seen a pro version without active cooling. I play all my games @ 1024x768 with everything cranked, and it performs excelent. It's full dx8.1 hardware. With a nice o/c, it's almost as fast as a r9500. Priced at about $110cdn, a huge price drop from $210cdn, five months ago when I bought mine. The abit fx5200 128mb is also $110cdn, but it just came out. The price alone for a next gen card tells all.(it's really bad and has passive cooling, at least I've never seen one with active).
With the r9000pro, H.I.S excalibur, genuine ati, or saphire would be my choices of brands. Stay away from oem or bulk. At this stage of the game, don't bother with 64mb. Stay away from non pro for this card as well.

Edit: After rechecking some prices, only the oem/bulk or 64mb ti4200's are under $200cdn. The better brands are all over $200cdn for 128mb.

[CaptHook]

I don't believe the 9000 pro is ANYWHERE near the performance of the 9500. Those suckers are fast.

I have a powercolor ATI 9000 Pro overclocked to 324core/270memory and it on the benchmarks my friends non overclocked 9500 beats my 9000 by 2-3x! Even the 9600 wastes the 9000.

My setup includes:
MSI KT3 Ultra 2 333
Barton XP 2500
512 mb HyperX kingston 3200ddr
ATI 9000 pro

my benchmarks:
3dmark2001: 8500
3dmark2003: 1438 (with FSB at 175)

My friend has an ati 9600 in a pentium 1.6 he gets 3350 on 3dmark2003 the 9500 is much faster then the 9600... and the 9600 is much faster then the 9000.

If i was you, id really push for a directX 9 video card. The cards that dont support directX 9 are going to take a big performance hit. I know what being on a budget is all about, but think about it. Get a video card now for 100-120 that will make you happy for a month. Or spend an extra 30$ and get a video card that will last AT LEAST a year. I recomend ATI 9600 pro (150$) the geforce FX's though much slower with less visual quality are atleast directX 9.

[Air_Carter]

Ok Well my System Specs are:


P4 2.4 ghz
512 DDR 2700 333mhz
and yes i have an 8x AGP Slot
And a nice 19 inch Sony CRT


and well maybe i could spend a little extra cash but im not sure how much... cause i also wanted to add some extra ram (up to 1gig).... well im now leaning towards buying a GeForce Ti 4200, as i can see that the previous cards i mentioned are a joke. But i want to remind that im not looking forward to Doom 3, Half Life 2... or any other too graphical intensive game... just games like i mentioned above and well i forgot to mention Halo. I am also considering maybe ,just maybe a 9600 PRO... but i have some other questions...

Some people say the ATI Cards have much better visual quality than NVIDIA...is this true?

And well do any of you know a good site that has really good prices for a GeForce Ti 4200 or ATI 9600 Pro??

Thanks in Advance....

[Wiggo]

Well it would be nice to know ya location first so that ya get the right links. :rolleyes2

[Air_Carter]

how about now?...

[homeworld1031tx]

The Radeon 9600 is better then the GeForce4 TI4200, and it also includes DX9 support, so if you can afford it i would go with the Radeon. But the 9600 still cant beat the TI4600, but since it has DX9 support it evens it out.

[Air_Carter]

Is the GeForce FX 5600 any good? how does it fare against the Ti4200?

also i wanted to know if its true that ATI has better visual quality than NVIDIA Cards?

[homeworld1031tx]

The GF FX 5600 is a bit better then the TI4200, but it stil cant beat the TI4600 OR the Radeon 9600 in some tests. The visual quality thing was more of a scandal with the 3DMark03 stuff that was going around. They basiclly have to smae quality, but use different ways to render the objects. Go check aces hardware for more info on it, they did a test on visualy quality between the 9800 and 5900.

[homeworld1031tx]

You can also look at this review. Like i said, overall it beats the TI4200. But where it does beat the TI4200, The frame rates are barely playable.