Cheap Graphics Card

pclancy · 02-09-2002 9:09am #1

I've been offered the following by a friend for 50 bills. Whatdoya think?

3DForce 2 Mx-64TV Made by Jaton

Runs on 64Mb Nvidia GeForce 2mx-400 so it should be pretty good and supports 4xAGP which my board does too.

Its allright for 50 bills? Im no real fan of brand names that ive never heard of but if its running the nvidia geforce it should be no different to something in a creative box??? I cant afford something like that anyway so this sounds pretty sweet and should be much better then my ageing 32MB TNT2 PCI.

Opinions Please!!!!!!!

Mutz · 02-09-2002 4:42pm

Price is Okay tbh.

I Bought a "Graphic Force" (:rolleyes: ) Graphics Card which is Supposedly Based on the GeForce 2 mx 64mb.

Its an Ok card But I Thought It would Be better. Bought it For £99 last September.

Go for it if you Have no Extra Cash.

bugler · 02-09-2002 8:45pm

Price isn't all that great. What will you be using the PC for? Considering that many of the geforce 4 mx range hovers around the €90/100 bracket you could do better.

Like this for example: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=21065&t=278&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=24&GrpID=1&s=pl

I managed to get a gf3 ti 200 a few weeks ago on special offer for 100 euro. If you're going to buy a new card then you may aswell go for a reasonable model. I wouldn't recommend anyone buying a gf2 mx now. You complained about your pci tnt2 so I'm guessing you do play some games. If so, then I say cough out a bit more cash, you won't regret it.

Winters · 02-09-2002 9:00pm

Go for the geforce4's at the moment there selling at good prices and you can get 100fps out of them no problem. Komplett are always doing great offers so always take a look over there.

spooky donkey · 02-09-2002 11:00pm

wellits not a bad card, but marx-computers were selling gf2 mx 200s for 35 yoyos there a while back. I just swaped 128 meg of pc100 ram for a gforce 2 mx 400. So that are the cards really worth these days, not much me thinks!

flamegrill · 02-09-2002 11:14pm

I bought a GF2 GTS 32mb DDR last year around november for 100 punts.

Yo can get a GF 4 mx 420 for 89 euro now i think, the price is fairly bad tbh.

Have a look at komplett.ie.

Dont buy it.

RicardoSmith · 02-09-2002 11:16pm

Apart from the performance the 2D image quality of the GF2MX cards is not great and the GF4 cards are all much better in this regard. Save some more money and get a GF4MX440 if you can. Skip the GF2 and GF3 cards as their IQ is not great either, apart from one or two exceptions. The GF4 range was all designed to improve the IQ over the previous Nvidia cards.

BKtje · 03-09-2002 1:37am

that card aint much better than the one you got when it comes to modern day games.

Kali · 03-09-2002 8:23am

It all depends on what your current system is at the moment.

For example.. I got myself a gf4mx-440 two weeks ago, to replace my tnt2 on a p3-600e... doubled the framerate in q3 yet mohaa only gained by 10fps (i actually purchased more memory as well to bump the machine to 384mb, turned out it was dodgy so have yet to get it back, either way that should help things there slightly).

Anyway moral of story, don't spend too much if your not going to see the result, personally I'd give him 45 euro for the gf2-mx... however iirc a gf4mx-440 went for about 75 or so on the For Sale board last week... but again its all down to your system.

Gerry · 03-09-2002 8:31am

Ricardo, the gf4mx does NOT have the image quality enchancing features of the gf4 ti, like programmable vertex shaders, etc. Thats the whole problem with it. What it does have is improved memory bandwidth utilization, so the ddr cards ( mx440 and 460 ) have good performance, but not really better "IQ".

RicardoSmith · 03-09-2002 8:39am

You mean image quality enchancing features relating to 3D games which (if they use the feature and not all do) can use this to improve the look of the games.

I mean the 2D filters on the card, which on a lot GF2 & GF3 (there were exceptions) were poor quality leading to to poor 2D quality (sightly blurry) particularly at higher resolutions. The GF4 cards are much improved in this department. Also DVD playback is also improved on the GF4 over the GF2&3 cards.

Gerry · 03-09-2002 8:52am

Hmm, I thought you might be referring to that

You are correct, the 2d image quality was always sub-par on the nvidia cards. There is a mod you can do to get a cleaner 2d picture on geforce cards, I haven't bothered with it yet because my monitor is too crap to see the difference with.

RicardoSmith · 03-09-2002 8:21pm

I think you can pull off filters with a pilers but it either works or kills the card 50:50. I wouldn't risk it knowing my luck. Also like you my monitor a 5yr old Sony has started to lose the sharpness that it had so I wouldn't see it anyway. Having said that the old Sony is still miles sharper than the few one year old Gateway monitors I see around. Those things are terrible.

On my GF2MX the 2D quality is not great, the GF2Ti I have is a bit better and the GF4ti4200 I had (before I had to return) it was slightly better again. But the ancient ATI Rage 128 Ultra I have at work on a Dell Trinitron P993 (Sony G420) gives rasor sharp 2D. I can't understand how most people aren't bothered by this. The old Matrox cards where still the best of all. I've just bought one for £30 from a forum, I'm hoping as the Matrox has more memory than the ATI card I'll be able to run at higher mhz than I do currently. 1024x768@120mhz or 1280x1024@100mhz. I really want to work at the later setting but at a high refresh.

Cheap Graphics Card

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