GF2 Lineup

[ahwei]

It's been a while since I last bought a video card(an orig. GF2 MX). Now I need to upgrade my girlfriend's machine so she can play games. The budget is max $50, so naturally I'm looking at all these diff GF2 flavors. What's the difference btw all these? I'm thinking about getting a GTS or go with a Radeon... My girlfriend's machine is a 900Mhz celeron with no plans of upgrade besides the video.

 

[gtd2000]

Goto Newegg and look for a Nvidia GTS-V card for around $50

Great value

 

[ahwei]

That's the exact card I'm thinking about getting prior to posting... just want to find out what other GF2 options are there.

 

[gtd2000]

Well I have a GF2 Pro that overclocks to Ultra speeds and to be honest I certainly don't see a correlation in performance for the cost difference.

The GTS-V seems to play all my games just as well as the GF2 Pro. If you can get a Pro or suchlike for say $20 bucks extra it might be worth it - but in your $50 range it is very hard to beat the GTS-V as an all round budget performance card

I've been with Nvidia since the Riva 128 days and never had anything but a good experience with them - however, some people seem to have issues with certain Ati driver sets.

The other issue is - which games does your GF want to play?

Some games work better/faster on certain cards.

 

[rogue1979]

The Geforce GTS-V is a good choice, but I saw a VisionTek Geforce2 Ti for $59 on pricewatch, a big boost in clock speeds. The Radeon 32MB DDR is also available for $42. If you live in the Denver area, a local computer store is selling the Kyro II 32MB version for $40. I would gauge the performance of the Kyro II just above a GTS or Radeon 32MB DDR , but not as fast as the Geforce 2 Ti or Geforce Ultra.

 

[Ultanium]

FWIW Take a look at the thread "Cheap Geforce?" in this forum. My $34.00 total cost including shipping GTS-V from ubid.com is AWESOME! Turned out to be a Rev. C board with 5.5ns Infineon chips so I cannot belive I waited this long to upgrade from a Voodoo3... I am totally happy and doing the coolbits hack as I write this...

Ult

 

[ahwei]

have to check that thread out then. My GF typically plays Sims type games, chinese version of Monopoly, and such like. While they are not FPS, those games do run better on a decent video card. It's about time to upgrade her ATI Rage3D 8MB card anyway.

 

[MithShrike]

Whatever you do do not get her a Kyro II. The Kyro does not have a T&L engine but uses tile based rendering. It's OK for Sims I figure, but still don't get the Kyro. You might also want to try the 64mb Radeon 7000 DDR 32mb w/TV out for $42 at PriceWatch.

 

[Kindjal]

I picked up an OEM VisionTek GeForce2 Ti 200 about a month ago from Sybercom.com for $50. I was upgrading from a TNT2 64 and wanted to stay pretty cheap given my limited time for playing FPS. I have been very satisfied with the purchase. Maybe I'll get a GeForce4 Ti 4600 as a X-mas present to myself at the end of the year but I think my mobo needs a change first.

 

[Fung]

I agree with gtd 2000

Asus

 

[ahwei]

thank you guys for your input. I've followed Ultanium's lead and got a Visiontek GF2 GTS-V from ubid.com. The price including shipping is $35.
Ultanium: how long did it take for you to get the card?

 

[Ultanium]

ahwei,
I won the bid on friday night about 10pm, and it arrived early wednesday morning via UPS ground. They packaged very well I might add, with card, drivers cd, and an instruction pamphlet. The invoice states there is a 1 year warranty from Visiontek, but the pamphlet says lifetime. There was no registration card and Visiontek's website registration link is not operational just yet at visiontek.com. The link to the 5632 is also hidden at http://visiontek.com/5632.shtml. When yours arrives, let us know what revision your card is and what memory chips it has.

Ult