Upgrading graphics card

[tomijon]

I am thinking of buying a new graphics card, the card in question being,
Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Pro/600-8X TV/DVI - Graphics card - GF4 MX 440 - AGP 8x - 64 MB DDR SDRAM.(£47) could pay max £75.
My current card, less than a year old is a,Hercules 3d prophet 4000xt pci 32 mb. Some games I try to run are very choppy, ie "Hitman , IGI2. I only have a 500mhz cpu with 256 mb sdram. The mobo not allowing for any cpu upgrade, leaves me struggling for any other improvements I can find. I always run games with nothing else in the background and accelerators on low. My os is win98. The board has a AGP slot.
Thank`s, Tom.

[saphalline]

Hmmm... never did like those GF4 MX's. Horrible little cards with nothing much to offer, even with the low price! NVidia has once again spelled certain doom for the GF4 MX line with their budget version of the GeForceFX - the 5200.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's just a crippled version of the 5800 Ultra. Well you're right! Half the number of pipelines, and the pipelines themselves have even been scaled down, but NV34 still has a lot to offer. For one thing, Newegg (my fav US online vendor) has the GF4 MX 440 for around $60 USD. The GF FX 5200 is only $70! :eek: Considering the jump in performance and features, this is incredible!

I doubt your system would ever use the GF FX 5200 to its full advantage normally, but that's the beauty of it. You'll be able to play all your games at 800 x 600 with things like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, and then you'll be in gaming heaven! ;)

[welshboy]

I hadnt realised the 5200's were that cheap!!

Trust me, the 5200 will DESTROY the GF4 MX440. Besides, if you do get the chance to upgrade your PC further you will already have a high quality graphics card to carry forward.

I found out the benefits of this recently when I upgraded to an Athlon XP2500+. I put my 128Mb Radeon 9000Pro and it is performing better than ever!!

If you are looking for a uk stockist of GeForce Fx cards have a look here

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.asp?AvdID=1&CatID=24&GrpID=1&t=&l=&orderBy=KundePris&likePattern=5200

It should give you a list of all their 5200's.

Your best bet might be this one from Gainward

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=34065&t=&l=&AvdID=1&CatID=24&GrpID=1&s=sr

unfortunately with the delivery charge it will be roughly £76 but it will be worth it. If you do order from Komplett, order it during the day because it will be despatched same day and delivery will be within 48hrs, I know cos I have bought from them before...

Hope this helps :)

[saphalline]

Yep, I agree with welshboy's pick. That's an excellent deal for a GF FX 5200 with 128MB DDR RAM and a DVI connector (from the other prices - I don't know the pound vs USD well enough ;) ). For the price, the extras can't be beat. Like welshboy said, when you upgrade, you can take this new video card with you, and it will really be cruising then! Plus, with the extra RAM (128MB vs the 64MB versions) and DVI connector, you're sure to have a capable system for quite some time (about two years :p ).

[tomijon]

I found a Geforce FX5200 at dabs.com for £64 inclusive.. BTW, what is openGL?
Thank`s, Tom.
ps. just realised you guys are talking about 128mb, in which case I will
be taking Welshboy`s advice and going to Komplett.

[welshboy]

OpenGL is an alternative 3D graphics 'mode' to Microsofts Direct3D.
If I remember rightly it was developed around the time of the voodoo gfx cards and is still used by older games. My personal favorite, Counterstrike, runs a lot better in OpenGL than Direct3D because it is based on Half-Life which has been around for at least 4 years now!!

[saphalline]

OpenGL is used by new games, too. 2.0 version should be out soon. I think Sun Microsystems is the owner of OpenGL, and it was originally designed for use in CGI systems. It was retro-fitted for computer games years ago, and I believe it's included with DirectX.

Direct3D has been around at least as far back as DirectX version 1.0, so for computer games it pre-dates OpenGL, but OpenGL was used by Sun graphical workstations long before. D3D is about half-and-half with OpenGL as far as being used by today's games, and like welshboy said, many games have an in-game option to choose one or the other. In terms of power & efficiency, they're about the same, so Counterstrike is obviously optimized for OpenGL (probably made on OpenGL first, then D3D support was put in afterwards).

3DFX was the maker of the Glide API, and Glide-based games always ran better on Voodoo cards than anything else (on a clock-for-clock basis). Used to be that specific video cards worked better for one API than another, so if you played Glide games, you got a Voodoo. If you played OpenGL or D3D games, you had to do the research (pre-dates my graphics card knowledge I'm afraid).

Lots of video card makers were around 5-10 years ago, unlike today where there's two main players (ATI & NVidia), two secondary players (S3 & Matrox), and one CAD-only player (3DLabs). Basically, if you want a video card today for gaming, you either got ATI or NVidia. Simple. :D

[tomijon]

Thank`s Guy`s.

[josemavicente]

was the 64mb version of the fx any good?

[tomijon]

I didn`t try the 64mb, I`m going for the 128.