"best card"

[vrex]

What do you all consider the "best" nvidia card for gaming that has a TV out port?

Windows XP home
Pent III
512 MB Ram
Intel integrated Audio

[AsianBatman]

Nvidia fx5900-5950. But for your system..i don't think its going to keep up with the cards. You should look into upgrading that first
:cheers:

[Wiggo]

What do you all consider the "best" nvidia card for gaming that has a TV out port?

Windows XP home
Pent III
512 MB Ram
Intel integrated Audio

Firstly do ya even have an AGP slot on that mobo? :?:
Secondly I don't really think that there'd be much point in you goin' any higher than a GF4 Ti series card in that setup if ya do have an AGP slot.
But do get back to us with better hardware details like speed of CPU and motherboard make and model.

[Killerstrike]

either the Radeon 9800Xt either the FX5950Ultra are the best graphic cards in the market right now... well off course they're also the most expensive... :smokin: if u got money u can have everythin right? : party ha

[Black Rain]

I take it from the setup that its not a game machine, so anything like a 5800+ or 9700+ is a bit silly, as for the cost you could get a decent motherboard, CPU and ram (and probably a cheap video card to).

Be carefull of the new FX 5700Ultra Cards- the TV out is apprently dodgy on Albatron cards, and isn't great on any of them. But considering that you've got a P3 550, its probably not the best idea to get one of them anyhow. (Still to much money)

I would get a cheap FX (5200/ 5600XT/ 5600) if you just wanted to hook it up to a TV, or maybe even look at a cheap ATI card, as I have heard (but never seen) that they have better TV out.

You also might want to be carefull, as the modern AGP cards might have a problem in your board, depending on the chipset.

[maximus7001]

Wait a minute here, where does he say what speed his pIII is? For all we know it could be anywhere between 450 and 1400. We don't even know system specs.

[Wiggo]

Wait a minute here, where does he say what speed his pIII is? For all we know it could be anywhere between 450 and 1400. We don't even know system specs.

Or if he even has an AGP port, he could be usin' an i810 mobo with a PIII 450.

[Soppa]

Wait a minute here, where does he say what speed his pIII is? For all we know it could be anywhere between 450 and 1400. We don't even know system specs.

Even if it was a PIII 1400MHz, it wouldn't justify anything faster than a Ti4200 IMO.

Soppa

[maximus7001]

Even if it was a PIII 1400MHz, it wouldn't justify anything faster than a Ti4200 IMO.

Where do people get these ideas from? Ok I got a question for you. How about a p4 1.7 or 1.8? What card would you say is justifyable for that?

[Soppa]

Where do people get these ideas from? Ok I got a question for you. How about a p4 1.7 or 1.8? What card would you say is justifyable for that?

The simple fact (backed up by benchmarking) is that if your processor (and maybe memory) is too slow, the powerful video card is bottlenecked by the processor and thus you won't gain much performance. I, for one, cannot justify purchasing a 400$ video card if all you gain is like 5fps in games. The only real gain that comes is the ability to use more sophisticated features (for example DX9 based) of the card, and even them are probably wasted because the game won't run well enough to enjoy them. Your powerful video card will just be sitting there and waiting for instructions on what to do since the processor is lacking behind. In fact it's generally more useful to have more powerful processor than the other way around. A good setup is a balanced one. And to answer your question, my answer for a Ti4200 is just a personal estimate based on my experience with computer tweaking and by no means is it a perfect answer, just trying to help the person who asked the question by giving a somekind of estimate. For a p4 1.7 or 1.8 of course a more powerful card would be in order, I'd probably go with some DX9 based card, maybe a 9600XT or even a 9700pro. IMHO the guy should update his other hardware, ie. processor, mobo & memory first, but if he insists on buying a new video card, Ti4200 would be absolute maximum IMHO.

Now to give you some more concrete info: I used to have a Athlon 1GHz (100FSB, eff. 200) coupled with a ATI rage pro 32MB and I scored about 4000 3dmarks (sorry, using a synthetic benchmark as I can't remember any other examples), IIRC actually less than that. Then I updated my video card to Ti4200 and of course I was waiting for a significant gain only to be disappointed that I could score around 6500. What I learned was that my processor was severely lagging behind and after updating my mobo/memory and processor (NF7, 2500+, DDR400) I could easily without any tweaking score in excess of 10000points. Probably people here could give more specific and informative answers than I, but I'm sure most agree with this point: if the setup isn't balanced you're wasting your hardware! : )

Soppa

[Wordbiker]

Well stated Soppa, and welcome to TweakTown :cheers:
I agree that it's a waste to have a powerful video card without the system to back it up. It just makes you unhappy with the card...and the signifigant amount of cash you're out now...

[maximus7001]

What I am concerned about is the misconception that p4 is faster than pIII. When in fact, the p4 needs about 300-400mhz higher clockspeed just to be even with a pIII with sdram. Most people have this misconception, but in the real world, it is just not true. So saying "of course a more powerful card is in order" for a p4 1.7-1.8 and saying "Even if it was a PIII 1400MHz, it wouldn't justify anything faster than a Ti4200 IMO." are both very misleading and backwards statements. When in fact the pIII 1.4 performs better with the same gfx card than a p4 1.8. And what's wrong with a 11k 3d '01 score anyway?
When I first asked the question about the p4, I already knew what the response would be.

[Soppa]

What I am concerned about is the misconception that p4 is faster than pIII. When in fact, the p4 needs about 300-400mhz higher clockspeed just to be even with a pIII with sdram.

When I first asked the question about the p4, I already knew what the response would be.

Nice, you set up a trap for me, and at the same time conveniently forgot about what this post was all about, well good for you. I haven't toyed around much with pentiums so naturally I also had this misconception. But that still doesn't change the fact that a really powerful video card for his machine (which BTW likely is something much less powerful as the suggested P3 1400MHz), would be an overkill. I gave him sound advice, and what you succeeded in doing was to make me look stupid, which I assume was your intention in the first place. I already had forgotten why I don't frequent these forums. Thanks for the reminder again.

Soppa

[Soppa]

Well stated Soppa, and welcome to TweakTown :cheers:
I agree that it's a waste to have a powerful video card without the system to back it up. It just makes you unhappy with the card...and the signifigant amount of cash you're out now...

Thanks for making me feel welcome and :cheers: to you too. Although I fear that I won't become even a regular member anytime soon ;). Well I don't mind the newbie status.

Soppa

[maximus7001]

I in no way intended to insult you, it's just that I see people with pIII's being told that they need to upgrade to enjoy the "newest fastest gfx cards" and being told that their cpu is totally slow compared to p4's like the ones I mentioned and being tricked usually by a store into a $1000(example)downgrade (I have seen this practice lots before, heck they even try it on me) and sure a pIII 450 is pathetic compared to modern standards and would warrant such an upgrade to get any reasonable use from something like a r9700 or r9800series but that is absolute worst case scenario. Basically I would consider a pIII above 1000mhz to still be worthy for any gfx card on the market now. It only makes sense to upgrade gfx first whenever possable, if it was the last step in upgrading, that p4 3.2 would really suck with a tnt and be unbearable until the new gfx card(example).

There are many misconceptions with computers and most are caused by misleading marketing tactics and down right lies to sell some things. Look at the 4x/8x agp issue, I have sat there and listened to many salesmen lie to a customers and say it will perform twice as fast as their old 4x version of the same card claiming a 100% increase(they still get away with this). How many people ran out and bought a new mobo and 8x version of their old card to get this suposed 100% increase in gfx performance. I can think of about 5 people that did just that.:cheers: