I need to get a new video card for a game… the requirements are as follows:
8 MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) with DirectX® 8.1 support
I know nothing about video cards… but I want something that will be a little bit better than the minimum requirments, but I don’t want to spend $500 either for top of the line… I normally don’t play that many video games…
I’m also not a fan of ATI products, although I don’t specifically rule out the option of buying something of theirs…
Actually, the graphic requirements your giving are pretty low, and those cards are fairly dated. You can get a voodoo3 on amazon for $50.
One thing to ponder… do you have an AGP slot, or are you going through PCI???
If you have an AGP, I would recommend Nvidia. A geforce3 or 4 should play just about any videogame coming out now or in the near future (doom3 may change that, but thats way down the road). A word of warning, though about the Geforce 4mx - don’t get it. It really isn’t much more then a GF2, and although the price is low, it isn’t going to stand up very long to games out now or coming out in the future. These cards have been out on the market for awhile and range from about $100-400. A rough performance summary can be found here : Tom's Hardware: For The Hardcore PC Enthusiast (sorry, I’m not to good at linking this stuff). It may be a bit overkill for the requirements you gave, but at least if you want to get a newer game you should be able to play it .
I recently bought the VisionTek GF4 MX440, and I don’t know if it’s any better than a GF2 (I know there was a GF3 card I almost bought that was $40 more, it could push more triangles per second FWIW), but it’s doing great for me. I had a 64MB Hercules card, and the improvement was dramatic. (In a P3-500 w/ 256 MB RAM). GTA3, Jedi Outcast and Return to Castle Wolfenstein all run at slightly less than 60 FPS at 1024x768x32 with all the bells and whistles. Before, I had to run at 640x480x32, and only some of the options like shadows, draw distance etc.
Doom3 will probably be jerky on anything less than the current state-of-the-art, so I would get a lower-end card now, and then upgrade your entire system around this time next year. The high-end GF4’s will almost certainly be cheaper by then.
I will be looking for an AGP card… the game in question will be Warcraft 3…
the info I gave above is for a minimum system… the recommended is:
600 MHz processor
256 MB of RAM
32 MB 3D video card
DirectX® 8.1 compatible sound card
Right now I’m running a bottom of the line video card… but I’m OK on all other fronts… I want to be sure that the video card I get will be able to play warcraft with full graphics settings, whatever they might be… I’m not against paying a bit more for a really good card… I’m just not going to drop something stupid like $400… since warcraft/starcraft are pretty much the only games I play…
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