graphics card upgrade

Woden

want to upgrade my graphics card on my currently system, p3 850mhz, 512mb ram, and currently have a geforce 2mx 32mb, any opinions on this card from komplett?

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=19723&t=&l=&AvdID=1&CatID=&GrpID=&s=sr

i don't see much point in getting a much faster card it would nearly be too good for my system

cheers data

Kali

Yeah that card will most likely be cpu-limited up to at least the 1Ghz mark.. and seems like a grand price to me for it.
For those too lazy to click on the link (Geforce Ti200 Golden Sample, 128Mb @ €122)

RicardoSmith

You'd still see a massive jump stretching to a ti4200. I saw a big difference going from a GF2ti to a GF4ti as you can see below. Also if at a later stage you upgrade the cpu or motherboard, the GF4 will scale with the faster CPU. The GF3 will be worth very little shortly. You could pick up a 2nd hand GF4ti easily enough.

3D Mark 2001(SE I think) (1024x768 32bit colour)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Axia 1ghz at 1ghz (133/100) + GF2Ti450 (451/250) = 3768
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF2Ti450 (451/250) = 4432
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF2Ti450 (481/275) = 4577
Axia 1ghz at 1ghz (133/100) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 6578
Axia 1ghz at 1.3ghz (133x10) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 7452
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 7696

P4 1.6a at 1.6ghz (100fsb) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 8241
P4 1.6a at 2.0ghz (125fsb) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 9312
P4 1.6a at 2.1ghz (??fsb) + GF4Ti4200 (300/550) =10297

BabyEater

The Ti200 would be cpu-limited at 850 the Ti 4200 even more so but if you plan to upgrade the cpu and motherboard i would go for the 4200

fatmander

Dont even consider the ge-force 3 ,
Some of the gf-4 mx cards are better than the best of the gf-3's
Like the people said go for a ge-force 4 ti4200,
If you have a 19" monitor or bigger, or planning to upgrade,- go for the 128 MB version,
128 MB can be slower(in performance) to use than 64MB, unless you are running games in higher resolutions1280 x 1024

I had a 4200ti once....,and I was over the moon once.............,
I lost a bet..........................................................................., Ended up with a 16MB Matrox card(no more ut2003)-crap-
Sold it to my brother for €200(at a loss as this was in October )sob....sob...

Kali

Originally posted by fatmander
Dont even consider the ge-force 3 ,
Some of the gf-4 mx cards are better than the best of the gf-3's

Hmm care to back that up? Any benchmarks I've seen put the Geforce Ti200 comfortably ahead of the MX460, which is the top MX card.

elexes

yep im the same as kali seen the gf 3 and gf2 ultra do better then the gf4 mx series but then again i could of been doin somthn wrong could of .... unlikly but then again

leeroybrown

Heres my flavour of the month:

http://www.theoverclockingstore.co.uk/productinfo.php?basket_session=be0554abff8eae5081813c4eb5eebc62&codeid=801072

5 Stg + vat for delivery

(The card itself is dearer than the normal Ti4200 tho)

Ti 4200 Chip
It uses the 8 layer Gf4 Ti4600 Board
3.3 ns DDR RAM

Can be overclocked to:

Core ~315 / Memory ~720 (stable)

In the revews I've read the stable overclocked performance will match/beat a Gf4 Ti4600 at stock clocks.

I read a few reviews of the GF3Ti200 (It's a Ti200 chipset BTW) a while ago. I' seems like a decent card at the price and preforms well.

Doodee

Just a question, is there a massive difference between a 4x and 8x AGP, Cause i have an 8xAGP card and from what i can tell it does the same as the 4x versions, maybe I need to do some tweakage

leeroybrown

Based on my reading on the issue, AGP x8 doesn't give much of a performance gain.

I'd put it down to the manufacturers releasing it now to cache in with the bulk producers (Dell, etc). They like big numbers.

You'll notice how a lot of them produced Ti4200's at AGP 8x and didn't touch the Ti4600. If they didn't try to put it on high-cost performance models first then obviously they have reasons.

I'm sure the 8x advantage will be big when Graphic performance is increased a year or two.

whosurpaddy

does it matter what type of RAM the graphics card has? i.e
I have sd-ram in my machine, can I get a ddr-ram card?

leeroybrown

You're graphics card is pretty much independent of you machine.

ie. You can get a DDR Graphics card for an SDR machine no problem.

All you really need is a working AGP slot.

superfly

i think this is a very good price for a Ti-4200 which i will be buying after xmas
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=29268&t=&l=&AvdID=1&CatID=&GrpID=&s=sr

whosurpaddy

thanks

leeroybrown

That GF4 Ti4200 is very nicely priced.

tuxy

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
You'd still see a massive jump stretching to a ti4200. I saw a big difference going from a GF2ti to a GF4ti as you can see below. Also if at a later stage you upgrade the cpu or motherboard, the GF4 will scale with the faster CPU. The GF3 will be worth very little shortly. You could pick up a 2nd hand GF4ti easily enough.

alot of people base how good a card is on its 3d mark but i dont think they should the 3d mark 2001 was designed for cards that were make with dx8 fetures in mind when the gf2 was make dx7 fetures was what they were aiming for so when u compare a gf2 to a gf4 using 3d mark 2001 the gf4 will get about x3 times the score of a gf2
but this does not mean the gf4 is 3 time better than a gf2
of course its better but not by that big a margin

surly a better test would be frame rates in games?
i have a 1.33 ghz thunderbird with 512mb sdram when i upgraded from a gf2 gts to a gf4 ti4200 i saw a huge jump in my 3d mark score but my fps in games only went up about 10% at best
so my 1.33 tbird + sdram(mainly the sdram i think)is a major bottleneck
the main differnce now is i run all games in 32 bit colour the gf4 is much better at that
so if my cpu is a bottleneck to a gf4 ti 4200 then your cpu would be a major bottleneck
my advice would be to save your money until u can afford a new cpu,ram,motherboard upgrade
u wont see a big differnce untill u upgrade the rest of your system and by then you can probably buy a gf4 ti4200 for half the price it is now or even go for a better card

RicardoSmith

I think it would depend on what you play. I play OPF, IL2 and falcon mostly and in each of those going from a GF2ti to the GF4ti made a noticable difference to the smoothness at 1024x768 in 32bit. Friends of mine who play more fps like quake or unreal reckon they see less of a difference. For me the important thing was to have a completely smooth gaming experience at that resolution and the GF2 couldn't do that and the GF4 can. Maybe it was only a 10% difference but it was all I needed thats for sure. I also tried a radeon 9000 and 9000pro and they where a lot slower in my games than the GF4ti. I also tried a GF4ti4600 and it didn't have any noticable improvement over the ti4200.

I've since got rid of the athlon and sram board not because of speed but stability problems, and switched to a P4 rig. I kept the GF4ti4200 in the P4 though.

Woden

firstly thanx for all the replies

just wanna outline the situation there aint gonna be any time soon when i can upgrade cpu/mobo/ram as much as i like the deals on komplett, i agree that in nearly all upgrades the limit on the system is gonna be the cpu thats why i was thinking of a geforce 3 instead of an of the ti range of the geforce 4, the g/f will get me that geforce 3 for xmas if i want it, or i could add some money to it and get the geforce 4, dont know what to do now

RicardoSmith

Well I didn't try a GF3 as they were the same price as the GF4 cards when I went looking. (Few months back) The GF3 have dropped a lot since then. Your CPU/Mobo is pretty ok performance wise and I reckon you'd see a big difference with either a GF3 or 4. But I wouldn't pay too much for the GF3 thats all. If you got it cheap enough it would be a good deal. I guess the GF3 at €100 is a lot more resonable than the GF4 at €180.

Woden

there is a gf3 for 100 euro by creative but the one for 120 is better as it has the enhanced mode and 128mb of memory, but then theres a gf4 ti4200 and its only 150 however it has 64mb of memory what to do?

RicardoSmith

What on earth is the enhanced mode? No current games take advantage of 128mb of memory so ignore that. The 64mb ti4200 cards have faster memory than the 128mb ones so they are the ones to go for. For me the GF4 wins hands down. I mean you'd spend more than the difference on a night in town.

leeroybrown

I'd have to agree that the GF4 Chipset feaures are worth the extra few quid.

The 64 Mb GF4 Ti4200 is (generally) better than the 128MB model because slower RAM is normally used on the 128Mb Ti4200's to keep the price competitive.

The "Enhanced Mode" simply means that the card is designed to run perfectly at 210/480 (stock being 175/400).

BabyEater

I wouldn't bother too much with that enhanced mode one as i have a creative Ti200 and it overclocks past that with no extra cooling.

Is1ldur

Quote: Doodee Just a question, is there a massive difference between a 4x and 8x AGP, Cause i have an 8xAGP card and from what i can tell it does the same as the 4x versions, maybe I need to do some tweakage

Is your MOBO compatible with AGP x8?

leeroybrown

I wouldn't bother too much with that enhanced mode one as i have a creative Ti200

Exactly, but it's a nice selling point for them.

One of the good thing about the Gainward Golden Sample cards it that they do use high quality RAM (tested) which probably has a bit more leeway for overclocking.

RicardoSmith

Except that Gainward had a problem with some of their GF4ti4200 cards. I had to return one myself. OcUK have stopped doing them now.

Woden

firstly i liked the enhanced mode as i was worried about the cooling, this is my first p.c that i ever had here and its about 2 years old now, its had a few upgrades (graphics, ram, cd-rw, sound, speakers...) but the case and motherboard are original by fujistu so i don't really trust them for cooling or anything. i've become slightly disillusioned though talking to an acquaintance who thinks that theres not much point in upgrading the graphics cards as it the computer will just be limited by my cpu (850) and my ram (512@100mhz) fair enough i will get some performance increase but he thinks that any gf4mx or 7500 will nearly give me the same performance as any top range card as the cpu will not push the graphics card to the limit

Woden

another point to add would it be worth waiting for a couple of months with the new nvidia stuff coming out the price of there old cards will drop quite substantially, just to note my most challenging games on the system at the moment are gta 3, ut 2003 and mohaa.

nocter

I bought the gf3 ti 500 128ddr a few weeks ago and i think it really good. i had an gf2 before it and i really notice the differance.
Its ture about the price, it will drop cos of the fx cards. So i would wait a while.

If your not going to up grade your system in the next 18 months i recon u get a the gf3, its cheap and its a good card.

However if you were going to upgrade get a gf4 it will work out better in the long...
I also have gta 3 and mohaa and the graphic's are really good on them. I dont know much about graphic card but i can turn all the graphic options in mohaa up to max at 1024 x 768 x 32 and the game runs really smooth.. and thats all i'm after....



i'm runng at
2200xp
640ddr
17"monitor - upgrading to Hansol 17" LCD H711 TCO-99
Monitor, LCD, Flatscreen with a bit of luck-

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Dataisgod
i've become slightly disillusioned though talking to an acquaintance who thinks that theres not much point in upgrading the graphics cards as it the computer will just be limited by my cpu (850) and my ram (512@100mhz) fair enough i will get some performance increase but he thinks that any gf4mx or 7500 will nearly give me the same performance as any top range card as the cpu will not push the graphics card to the limit

Well if I bring you back to the results I got...

3D Mark 2001(SE I think) (1024x768 32bit colour)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Axia 1ghz at 1ghz (133/100) + GF2Ti450 (451/250) = 3768
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF2Ti450 (451/250) = 4432
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF2Ti450 (481/275) = 4577
Axia 1ghz at 1ghz (133/100) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 6578
Axia 1ghz at 1.3ghz (133x10) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 7452
Axia 1ghz at 1.4ghz (140x10) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 7696

You can see that going from 1ghz to 1.4ghz on a GF2ti (which is much better than the GF2MX you currently have) only gave an increase of 809. But moving from the GF2ti to the GF4ti on a 1ghz cpu gave 2810. Thats a fairly nice increase no?

Of course moving from 1ghz to 1.4ghz on a GF4ti gave 1381. Which indicates that the graphics card makes more of a difference than cpu speed. But that a faster cpu will be...well faster but its still won't give you the speed increase that a changing the graphics card will.

Sure perhaps a GF3 or GF4MX will probably perform the same in your current rig. But when you upgrade to your next PC do you reckon you will keep the GF3 or GF4MX? If you do you will be holding back the new system. Whereas if you get a GF4ti it will work very well in a faster system when you finally do upgrade as shown by the score below.

P4 1.6a at 1.6ghz (100fsb) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 8241
P4 1.6a at 2.0ghz (125fsb) + GF4Ti4200 (default) = 9312


If you are going to buy a card that will do for the next few months than get the GF3 or GF4mx. But if you want the card to last a little longer get the GF4ti. In the end of the day it comes down to what you can afford and what you are willing to pay. Also it might depend on the games you play too.

Kali

This thread has gone completly off-topic, but to answer some of your remaining questions:

however it has 64mb of memory what to do

64Mb or 128Mb ram? Won't result in a noticeable difference in most games, and then only at high-res w/ 32-bit textures... and as mentioned above sometimes the 128mb cards may carry a slightly slower type of memory to save money.

who thinks that theres not much point in upgrading the graphics cards as it the computer will just be limited by my cpu (850) and my ram (512@100mhz)

Yes your system will be the limiting factor, but there will be a large difference between your performance now and after you upgrade your graphics card, your fps won't double (I'd guess about a 33% increase), but you'll be able to step up a resolution or two and maintain that same 33% increase (as a result of the systems limitation).

There'll be about around a 5% difference on your system between the original GF3Ti200 you started this thread enquiring about and a GF4Ti4200.. I mean it's up to you whether this justifies the extra money.

would it be worth waiting for a couple of months with the new nvidia stuff coming out the price of there old cards will drop quite substantially

Theres no point in waiting for a new chip to come out and lower prices, prices are dropping all the time, no matter when you buy something two weeks later it will be cheaper.

Kali

just to remind ppl:

Originally posted by Dataisgod
just wanna outline the situation there aint gonna be any time soon when i can upgrade cpu/mobo/ram as much as i like the deals on komplett

And Ricardo are you deliberately trying to confuse the person by talking about cpu scaling and switching graphics cards in the same paragraphs?

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Kali
This thread has gone completly off-topic, but to answer some of your remaining questions:

Actually I disagree we have answered all these questions earlier.

64Mb or 128Mb ram? Won't result in a noticeable difference in most games, and then only at high-res w/ 32-bit textures... and as mentioned above sometimes the 128mb cards may carry a slightly slower type of memory to save money.

In reference to GF4ti4200 (only) all the 128mb cards have slower memory than the 64mb cards.

There'll be about around a 5% difference on your system between the original GF3Ti200 you started this thread enquiring about and a GF4Ti4200.. I mean it's up to you whether this justifies the extra money.

5% Can you link us to some sites that demonstrate this? My point was that the GF3 is a short term option whereas the GF4ti will still be useful when he eventually upgrades to a better machine. Whenever that is. We know it won't be soon. Does that mean you should ignore any future considerations? I seriously doubt that he won't upgrade for 18 months as someone suggested.

And Ricardo are you deliberately trying to confuse the person by talking about cpu scaling and switching graphics cards in the same paragraphs?

Sorry if it was confusing I thought that my point was demonstrated (or so I thought) by the figures as was talking about. Bascially the subjects are closely related but CPU power has less impact on the graphics speed than some have suggested. I thought the figures show this. Maybe not :eek:

Its a pity that I couldn't demonstrate the performance of my GF2ti or GF2MX in my P4 rig as you would be able to see that its held back a lot. But I couldn't as the newer P4's only take 1.5v AGP cards whereas many of the older cards are 3.3v (as my GF2ti was ) and won't work in a new P4 board. Dunno about the newer AMD machines, they are probably ok though.

Woden

again folks just wish to show my appreciation for the enthusiastic response to the thread, just to clarify up something ricardo

"In reference to GF4ti4200 (only) all the 128mb cards have slower memory than the 64mb cards"

you are saying that all gf4ti4200 cards with 128mb memory, contain slower memory than the 64mb cards yeah?

also i wouldn't upgrade this rig much more but get a new one and keep this one for some lan gaming, the mobo will only take a 1ghz cpu (in my opinion not worth the upgrade), it is full of ram, and all my pci slots are full, so i'm not really looking for a long term option with the graphics cards, i.e if i was getting a new rig i wouldn't put a gf4 in it in a years time.

also i see where you coming from ricardo in showing the effect of the change of graphics cards compared to processor in your 3d mark scores

at the end of the day it comes down to an extra 5% peformance for an extra 30% euros even though the gf4 has less memory (but as you's have pointed out it is faster and the games don't take advantage of the extra memory) i'll have a think about this cheers again

RicardoSmith

Well there a couple of special ti4200 which are built on ti4600 boards and have special memory on them but are they more than the price of a standard ti4200. But I don't think you'll come across one of those to easily so I wouldn't worry about it. So yeah as rule all the 64 mb cards are faster then the 128mb cards on the ti4200's.

Well I guess if you are resigned to the fact that you machine is at its limit and you don't want to buy a card to take with you to your next machine. I'd say get the cheapest GF3 you can get, I wouldn't worry about memory speeds or the amount of memory etc. However the GF3ti500 or even an original GF3 is a decent bit quicker than the GF3ti200 so if you can get either one cheap enough I'd go for that!


GeForce3 Ti200\175MHz\400MHz DDR

GeForce3\200 MHz\460MHz DDR

GeForce3 Ti500\240MHz\500MHz DDR


Incidentally a GF3 is faster than a GF4MX or Radeon 7500 too, in case you are wondering about that. Probably cheaper than either aswell.

Woden

thats why i liked the gainward gf3 ti200 as though its 20 euro dearer then the creative one it goes from 175mhz to 210mhz in the enhanced mode giving slightly better then performance than a gf3