32 MB Video Cards (PCI)

[jjoel]

Which one would you get?

NVIDIA TNT2 m64
Geforce Mx-200
ATI Radian (7000) <--I think

[joea64]

I'd vote for either the Radeon 7000/7200 (the AGP version of from which I just upgraded to a Radeon 9000 w/128 MB) or the nVidia TNT2 M64, which I used in its AGP version for nearly a year.

-Joe-

[kenja]

My priority is sharp text at 768 x 1024, and my "made by ATI" PCI Radeon 7000 32MB DDR card is noticeably better than my Compaq OEM (Vision Tek, I think) PCI Nvidia TNT2 M64s (I have two 8MB and a 16MB), and better than a Gigabyte AGP TNT2 M64. Also slightly smoother during games and DVDs. ("Powered by ATI" cards are made by third parties.)

The nice thing about the TNT2 M64s: they "play nice" with other vendor's video cards in a dual-monitor setup.

For slightly better gaming than the Radeon 7000 (sometimes called "VE"), I've got a PCI GeForce2 MX400 64MB SDR, but I haven't tried it out yet.

A comparison for gaming. (http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-02.html) (M64 would be at the bottom; the previous version of the chart had the regular TNT2 down there, and the M64 cuts the memory bus width in half.)

For text, nothing beats Matrox that I've seen. I've got a pair of G450s and a G400, but they seem to have severe driver conflicts with my ATI. The Matrox are available in PCI, but they're not cheap, and are lousy gamers.