Okay, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and install a new video card.
I currently have an HP Pavilion with an nVidia GeForce 2 MX200 card. Came standard with the machine, and pretty weak, I know.
So give me some options: What card can I get that will adequately handle games like Doom 3 and the upcoming Half Life 2? It doesn’t have to have a blazing frame-rate or anything, but I don’t want to have to replace it a year down the line, either. I’d like to keep the purchase around $100, but I’m not afraid to go a little over the line if it’ll help.
FWIW, my computer has a 1.8Mhz P4, and 512mb of RAM.
Thoughts? I’ll be more than happy to provide other specs if asked, if it’ll help. Forgive me, I’m a little lost when it comes to video technology.
That’s the one i bought a few months ago when it was about $150. It keeps up surprisingly well with an ATI 9800 with 256MB DDR. How do i know? Frame-rate test on Doom 3 between me and my friend. YMMV
The games you mentioned are scaleable to machines with those specs but remember these games, particularly Doom 3, are being designed for the fastest rigs on the market.
Around $100 you could get a Radeon 9600 XT, a pretty good bang for the buck. Benchmarks for Half-Life 2’s Source engine here. Though, when HL2 finally gets released there’s going to be a lot more DirectX 9 games coming out that utilize advanced graphics techniques so you might want to invest $200 or so in a Radeon 9800 Pro/XT just to keep the framerate at a decent level. With ATI and Nvidia releasing their new set of video cards, the prices for 9800s are dropping.
I’ve got a 9800 Pro and I’m happy with it, but I’ll need 1 gig of RAM to run stuff like Far Cry at high resolutions with anti-aliasing. It really depends on how much detail you’re willing to sacrifice. Doom 3 is quite a resource hog. Considering your processor, you should probably get a 9800 Pro/XT and add another RAM stick. All in all, it might cost around $340.
My specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.08 GHz)
512 MB DDR SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
You payed $150 for a 5700LE? You got a bad deal there. The 256megs of RAM doesn’t do any good on low end cards like this; the cards will choke well before they start using more than even half of that RAM. And even Doom 3 won’t use that much video memory unless you turn up the resolution/detail level up quite a bit. A 5700regular or 9600Pro were available for not much more than that price a few months ago.
And unless something is seriously messed up with your friends system, there is no way in hell a 5700LE could keep up with a Radeon 9800 Pro/XT; the 5700 Ultra generally runs just about even with a Radeon 9600XT, and the LE version’s core and memory clocks are much slower than the Ultra; the 5700 Ultra is clocked at 450mhz core, 900-1000mhz memory(depending on exact card) while the LE version is clocked at 250mhz core, and 400mhz memory.
Anyways, in the $100 region, I would go with a Radeon 9600 Pro for $113 on the higher end, or a regular Radeon 9600 for $80 on the lower end.
I would suggest taking a look at the Radeon 9800Pro - the price has dropped below $200, and they offer much better performance than the $100 cards mentioned here. However, I remembered that HP Pravillions like yours have crappy power supplies; my parents computer (a 1.6ghz model, 512 meg RAM, came with a 32mb TNT2) has had problems starting up due to the low end PSU ever since they upgraded it to a Geforce 5200. I would bet that you have only a 250 Watt Power Supply in your machine (open the case, and read the sticker on the PS to check), which will limit your upgrade options to probably a 9600Pro/XT card at the highest.
Good catch, i didn’t even pay attention. Mine is AOPEN GEFORCE FX5700DV-256MB DDR 8XAGP W/TV & DVI and upon checking the invoice i got it for $130. My apologies if i confused the oP
Believe me, there is nothing messed up with his system. He’s got less total memory than mine and runs an Athlon 64 3400. He gets 19.2 fps and i get 17.5 fps. If there is a way for me to get screen shots of that i’ll be happy to do it so you believe it. But i said earlier, ymmv
That is very strange - the Athlon 64’s are the best processors for Doom 3; the Athlon64 3000 model will generally benchmark faster than a 3.4 ghz Pentium 4, as least if Anand’s benchmarks are correct, and the faster Athlon 64’s are better yet.
What resolution/quality level are you running Doom 3 at? Because 19.4 frames a second is very low for Athlon64 machine with a Radeon 9800 Pro; The Tech Report gets 52.6 frames a second at High Quality, running 1024x768 resolution, using a Radeon 9700 Pro (which is slower than a 9800 Pro or XT) and a Athlon 64 3200+ with a gig of RAM; the same machine with a Geforce 5700 Ultra get 40.7 frames per second. You shouldn’t have framerates that slow with your friends machine, unless he is trying to run it at 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing turned on.
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Scrimping on other components to include the faster 9800 Pro would be a good choice for gamers, although they should be looking at even faster cards such as the nVidia 6600GT and ATI X800 Pro if they want to play Doom3 or Far Cry. The money saved with a 9600 Pro is probably a better deal for everyone else, giving more than sufficient 3D performance for most things 3D.
Those who do not do anything 3D-related should stick with the on-board GF2MX-level graphics of the nForce chipset to save a considerable amount of money. An nForce2 IGP motherboard would be necessary for that, of course, such as the MSI K7N2GM. For office work, the integrated graphics are an excellent solution at this price point.