Viewing Thread:
"Graphics"

With all of the modern graphics cards on the market, ranging from £40 - £350, are these cards being released to fill a gap in the market, or just to make a market? Are 3d cards really necesary, and what is the lowest mb you can get away with nowadays?

Heh, it would help, I'd go with an old Athlon - preferably a AYHJA or something, you could pick it up for around £70 clocked to 1.6ghz, very nice..

The best bet is to upgrade ur proccesor i heard :\

Aside fromt he monitor and hard drive, I can't see anything that would push the price that high...do you have msn?

Thanks for the help! The specs are:
1GHz Celeron with 128K cache
The dreaded 4Mb VRAM video card
128MB SDRAM
40GB hard drive
19" Monitor
16xDVD drive and decoder
Creative Labs SB 64v sound card

and then all the software, modem, mouse, keyboard etc.
Grand total of £730.

Is this good, or should I look elsewhere?

Thanks for the help! The specs are:
1GHz Celeron with 128K cache
The dreaded 4Mb VRAM video card
128MB SDRAM
40GB hard drive
19" Monitor
16xDVD drive and decoder
Creative Labs SB 64v sound card

and then all the software, modem, mouse, keyboard etc.
Grand total of £730.

Is this good, or should I look elsewhere?

As to the how and why of the old graphics cards... they are pretty necessary as the basic idea is to make a separate piece of hardware do the most processor-demanding bit... the graphics. This is clearly an excellent idea as it takes a huge load off the processor itself. Also 3D cards are specifically designed to render 3D images, which apparently the old processor can't do itself. Any thoughts on that Reaper? You seem to have an excellent knowledge of this nonsense. As for wot card? I have a 16mb voodoo 3 3000 which struggles but basically does the business. It's a P3 600 with 128mb ram so counter-strike (for example) scoots along at 80 fps in maximum resolution. :D I should really upgrade for new games like Max Payne, but they seem to run without too many problems, so I probably won't bother. 4 MB graphics is NOT enough. I don't care what anyone tells you it WILL NOT be enough to run any decent games. My chum has an 8MB voodoo 2 which struggles just running counter-strike at the lowest res. Don't ask me, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Try a GF2, they do the business without doing too much damage to your wallet.

Graphics cards are no longer simply reliant on memory to sell - people are taking an interest in the card architecture, the GPU, overclocking possibilities and benchmark results.

For example, my PC downstairs has a 64mb GeForce2 MX200, and this one had a 32mb GeForce2 MX400. The fact that it had half the memory is irrelevant - the advantages in terms of memory bandwidth and polygon-pushing outweigh the extra 32mb, giving it higher benchmark scores and better performance in games (despite the rest of the machine actually being lower spec).

Another example; I replaced the 32mb GF2 in this box with a 64mb GeForce3, and its benchmark scores are about 3 times those for the 64mb GeForce2. Don't just go by on-board ram..

I'd recommend a GF2 MX400 at the very least, but with the new generation of cards coming around, some of the new ones are worth a look. The basic geforce3 range is basically identical - one card will perform exactly the same as another, they all have an identical chipset and PCB layout. The only one that seems to have an advantage is the Gainward Gold Label, which seems to be better for overclocking. There's also the Ti500 range out now, which is slightly more powerful and takes advantage of 3d textures and shadow buffering.

The new ATI Radeon cards look quite impressive, £250 or so, and beating the stock GF3 3d mark scores by thousands of points...however, ATI are infamous for driver problems and compatibility issues, and there doesn't seem to have been any word about it outside of the specialist gamers hideouts, which doesn't bode particularly well.

Alternatively, the GF2 range will still handle todays games well, I'd anything from a GTS (£100 or so) upwards, preferably 32mb DDR ram. What are the rest of your system specs? Pointless throwing a hugely expensive graphics cards at something more suited to typing memos..

Turbonutter wrote:
> Er, if you want to play almost any game these days, you *need* a graphics
> card.

32mb is minimum. I recommend a GeForce 2 of some sort.

How much would that cost? Thanks!

Er, if you want to play almost any game these days, you *need* a graphics card.

32mb is minimum. I recommend a GeForce 2 of some sort.

i dunno which games are compatiple with it so don't look at me...anymore.i can't thnik of anything else 2 do with cards and graphics.