Not SEQ-related, but general EQ hardware topic :)

[fgay trader]

I'm considering upgrading my good ole GeForce2 GTS card in my EQ machine. It's served its time, but just doesn't cut it anymore. Heh, maybe I'll stick it into the SEQ box for the kicks ;) I've done some basic research on the GeForce 3/4 lines and pretty much made up my mind to go with GeForce 3 TI 500.

That card seems to be the most bang for the buck (around $150), which is approximately my budget anyways. I did look at GeForce 4 MX lineup, but those cards seem to fall behind GF3 TI-500 in performance (hence about $100 cheaper), they're just a bit above GF3 TI-200. GF4 TI's are out of my price range at the moment. Hey, for their cost of $300 - $400 I can upgrade alot more, like get a new P4 Motherboard with 1.5GHz CPU for example.

So, just wanted to get a general feeling about GF3 TI500 Vs. GF4 MX's.

[Yueh]

You pretty much nailed it. The GF4 MX's are really just an incremental improvement (faster clock speed I think) over the GF2 MX's. The TI's on the other hand are worth the upgrade. If you can't shell out for the GF4, the GF3 Ti is the next best bet. I would, however, argue that you could survive another three months on a GF2 then go for a little bit bigger upgrade when the GF4 Ti-4400 comes down in price. Tom's hardware has a great explanation of what exactly changed throughout all these chips.

[fryfrog]

ha, its already been said... but i'll say it again... the geforce 4 mx should be called the geforce 2.3 mx :) i think that is something someone said somewhere, either here or not...

anyway, they are supposed to have a geforce 4 ti 4600, 4400 and 4200 with the 4200 being something like 200 bucks. i have seen a few sites that are looking forward to the 4200, as it should offer great performance at a reasonable price. i think they also expect it to be fairly over clockable :)

i'd go with whats his face above me, hold out on buying a new vid card for 1 - 3 mo, and see what happens. that should be getting close to the end of the nvidia product cycle, so prices would be kinda low... especially with the threat of a new video card on the horizon.

for me, i tend to have to buy the bleeding edge stuff that was bleeding edge about 6 months before, cause i gotta get the GF the same thing i get, or she complains ;)

[Yueh]

What's his face! Jeez, the indignity! :)

[fgay trader]

especially with the threat of a new video card on the horizon

You're kidding... There are talks of GeForce 5 already? rofl!


hold out on buying a new vid card for 1 - 3 mo, and see what happens

Yeah, that's what keeps happening to me... I wait 1 - 3 mo on something I want to get and by the time the prices do go down, there's something bigger and better out there so I decide to wait 1 - 3 mo for its pricess to go down... I must break the circle!... Next time :) GF4 TI 4200 is my new dream.

[high_jeeves]

NVidia Releases new product every 6 months. They have already said that their next card probably wont use the Geforce naming scheme... so no GF5, i'm afraid. My guess is, we will see new cards around sept/oct timeframe.

I recently (2 weeks ago or so) upgraded from a GF2 GTS to a GF4 Ti 4600... It was quite a nice upgrade.. I can run stuff now with full Ansiotropic filtering, 4xAA, and it is still faster than it was on my GF2...

If you are looking for bang for the buck, I would also recommend the GF3Ti500, or the 4200 when it is available.

--Jeeves

[Ratt]

Speaking from personal experience here ... I purchased a Ti500 when they first came out and shortly after purchased a Radeon 8500 to see which was faster.

In my main machine, they were, for all intents and purposes teh same... nothing outstanding about one or the other. So I left the Radeon in my Athlon 1800 and moved the Ti500 over to my aging Pentium III 733, which previously had a GF2 MX400 in it.

Low and behold, the frame rates were _STILL_ piss poor on the P3 733 with the Ti500... which was routinely giving me 100+ FPS in EQ on my Athlon.

To make a long story short, your CPU is going to affect a great deal about your FPS in EQ and buying a killer graphics card and putting it on an even marginal CPU (the 733 isnt' exactly shabby yet) will be like putting a ferrari engine in a VW bug. It can be done, but what's the point?

Spend the money on a faster CPU and DDR RAM before you buy a top end graphics card.

As a side note, I just dropped a GF 4 4600 into my Athlon.. it's noticably faster than the Ti500/R8500 was ... however I'm having intermittent lockup issues with it in EQ ... is anyone else having trouble?

[SeqTester]

I glad I spent the $350 on my GF3-TI500 I got the PNY Titanium series. It rocks, just wish there was more ram on it.

Also came with some Glasses for true 3d but they still in the box.

Anyone ever try the glasses than come with some of the 3d cards?

[RSB]

Actually for most (95% or more) games the GF2 can be faster than the Early GF3's because of raw clock speed. Most games don't use the features of the GF3's.

GF4's are broken up into 2 groups.
1 set is actually suped up GF2's (higher clock speeds due to smaller die set and better memory)
the other set has duel pixel shaders etc....the extra stuff you get on a GF3...but 2 of them. But agian no PC games are really useing these aside the few that NVidia basically sponored.

Bang for the buck would probably be the Suped up GF2's line of GF4's if your just playing EQ because all EQ is using right now is the T&L engine.

The versions that are coming out with 128 meg on board are a bit of hype. Normal situation the extra ram isn't doing anything for performance. The only real use I can see would be the fact that you'd probably be able to run 2 EQWs better as their would be the onboard ram to hold all the textures etc 2 times without a problem.

My 2 cents worth

RSB

[fryfrog]

i agree with ratt, there is no point in having a fast ass bitching card on a fairly slow cpu :)

also, the ONLY thing i have against the radeon 8500 is ati. i've never been a big fan of their driver support (do they even have drivers?). in the past, they released a new driver what seemed like every other year. i hear they are improving... but i still don't think they have gotten it up to the nvidia rate.

from what i have read, the hardware of the 8500 is top notch. it should have great potential. unfortuantly, its taken them quite a while to actually take advantage of that potential in their drivers... then, they go and try to lock down their "beta" driver program even tighter so their customers can't use the drivers that tend to work the best...

anyway, i don't have much brand loyalty. my loyalty is to performance to the dollar. thats why i got a celeron 3 or 4 years ago, thats why i got an duron a year or so ago. thats also why i got geforce 2mx's, then geforce 2 ti... (btw, geforce 2 mx -> geforce 2 ti was a BIG performance increase for me).

my next will probably be a half decent amd xp cpu w/ a good motherboard and what ever video card does the best for about 200 bucks. of course, i'll stuff as much ram into it as possible... hopefully by then serial ata will be out ;)

gotta buy two of erverything though, can't have the gf's computer laggin behind mine or i don't get any!