GTA3 Video card?

[blade2]

Just bought myself GTA3 - i know its been out for ages but i havent had money to buy it and my computer wasnt fast enough to run it. Anyway system specs:

Athlon XP 1900
Gigabyte 7VRXP Rev 2.0
512mb 2100 ram
8.1 gig HD (will be upgrading that soon)
Windows XP Pro

oh and the pinnacle component of my system: Nvidia Riva Tnt 2 Pro 32mb

now when I ran GTA3, the graphics were horribly choppy at the lowest screen res: 680x480 16bit. Now ive tried installing the latest drivers for the card and a slight improvement but still quite crap

Im not much of a gamer - if i do get a game ill play it to death and its not necessarily a new game-i probably wont buy another game after GTA3 for another year or 2, now obviously I need to spend as little money as possible-so im not going to buy whatever whiz-bang popping the Video-Card scene. I think Dx9 compability might be useful - and I reckon 128Mb is a minimum. Id really prefer not to buy from an internet site: my local dealer has a couple of decent video cards at good prices - i dont need AGP 8x cause my mobo wont support it.

Oh i live in the Uk btw to make things fun. Id really like not to spend >£100 on a card really, i know the Ti4200 128mb is a really good performer but id prefer to spend less than £70.

I know nothing about video cards nowadays - plz give advice. FX5200 better than MX440, but is the Radeon 9000 series better than the 5200 - please advise with reference with the video cards available thru my local componentss dealer plz!
And I dont wanna spend £100, im a student and poor!

 

[Lonyo]

Damn, I would have suggested a 9600Pro for £120 from Ebuyer

However. Here is a Ti4200 128MB card for £73, which is what you want, and pretty much with your budget. Even though it's 8x, that doesn't matter, as it will run in a 4x slot.

 

[mbackof]

I recently upgraded from a Powercolor Geforce2 32MB to a Asus Ti4200 128MB and GTA3 runs great on the Ti4200. I have an Athlon 900 with 384MB RAM. However if you can spring for the Radeon 9600 I would recommend it. I just bought one for my other computer and it looks incredible.

 

[modedepe]

I used to play gta3 on a tnt2--ran horribley. I upgraded to a ti4200 and the improvment was of course huge. The ti4200 would be great if you can get it, and the 9600 pro would be even better. Only thing with the 4200 is you can't crank up the aa and af, but otherwise it's a good performer.

 

[Richdog]

Hello mate i'm in the UK too and i'd recommend a Ti4200 as well. Anything more than that would be overkill with your rig and seeing as you're a relatively light gamer. A Ti4200 will see you right. :beer:

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

A 4200 128MB will be just fine, but if you want to be able to play future games, you'll be happier with a 9500 Pro even though it'll cost a little more.

 

[blade2]

Hmm ok maybe ill reconsider buying from the net: I mean how often does a videocard ah heck up?

Ok now im thinking head towards the Radeon 9*00 camp - ok so what options do i have?

My local place has a 9500 Pro for £135 - whats the difference between 9500 Pro and the 9600 Pro

Does it need to be a 9600 Pro or is non-pro jus crap?

Aria.co.uk has some 9600 Pro's (generics i think); 128mb, 256mb (out of stock) for around

Or I could get that £72 Asus ti4200 and also got myself a new HD (im runnin on a nearly full 8 gig because my 40 gig HD was un-repairable due to physical damage)

Help me! im bad at decisions!

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: blade2
Hmm ok maybe ill reconsider buying from the net: I mean how often does a videocard ah heck up?

Ok now im thinking head towards the Radeon 9*00 camp - ok so what options do i have?

My local place has a 9500 Pro for £135 - whats the difference between 9500 Pro and the 9600 Pro

Does it need to be a 9600 Pro or is non-pro jus crap?

Aria.co.uk has some 9600 Pro's (generics i think); 128mb, 256mb (out of stock) for around

Or I could get that £72 Asus ti4200 and also got myself a new HD (im runnin on a nearly full 8 gig because my 40 gig HD was un-repairable due to physical damage)

Help me! im bad at decisions!

First, don't go for the 256MB one, in a 9600 card it won't really matter.

I would definetley go for a pro, either a 9500 Pro or a 9600 Pro, whichever is cheaper as long as its 128MB. The better of the two is the 9600 Pro when you use AA and AF, but really, I would get whichever is cheaper.

 

[Johnbear007]

Well the 9500 pro is a little older and a little faster in raw speed tests. However the 9600 pro is a newer card. At 135 thats a pretty good card. If you would prefer to buy local I would just pick up the 9500 pro from your local shop for 135. pretty nice card for the price and should have you playing most games fine for the next couple years

 

[peter7921]

I also like to buy my products locally especially from a store i trust. If i have to pay a little more for the peace of mind o be it. So if you want to buy from your local store go ahead, the 9500 pro is a great card and if you look at these benchmarks at tomshardware it performs slightly faster than the 9600 pro in most of those benchmarks. Plus if your up to it you can mod that baby to a 9700 pretty easily with a firmware update.

Herers the link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/index.html

BTW: If you enjoy GTA3 than you will love GTA: Vice City, i liked it even more than GTA3, they took everything that was great in GTA3 and made it so much better. Plus i love setting for Vice City more, and the fact that you get motorcycles.

 

[daclayman]

I gotta give a vote for cost/performance to the Ti4200. I have a 64mb Ti4200 and I can crank up the settings for GTA:VC with no problems. You'll take less of a hit later when you want to sell the Ti4200 me thinks. Since you've bought a game that has been out for awhile, you obviously don't run to the store for new games when they come out. The Ti4200 is a very capable card that should treat you well for a year or more, except for HL2/Doom3. On a side note, a person I built a computer for is coming down this weekend to upgrade his video card; he wants the best and he has the money but I talked him down to a Radeon 9600 Pro 128mb. He won't be overclocking/modding and I wanted solid DX9 performance for him for the future. His current video card: GeForce2 GTS 32mb. I don't like where nVidia went with the 5xxx series but they did do the 4xxx series right.

 

[beserkfury15]

basically, anything equal or above an 8500 on the ati side, and anything above equal or above a gf4mx440 on nvidia side can play that game.

 

[BoberFett]

I built a machine for my friend with an Athlon 1700+ w/ Radeon 8500 and it runs GTA3 smooth as silk with all settings on max. I don't know about Vice City, but I can't imagine that's much different than GTA3.

 

[chilled]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
I built a machine for my friend with an Athlon 1700+ w/ Radeon 8500 and it runs GTA3 smooth as silk with all settings on max. I don't know about Vice City, but I can't imagine that's much different than GTA3.

Oh, but it is - check out the minimum specs. My GF2 GTS would play GTA3 just fine at 1024x768 with the max settings, but with VC I have to notch it down to 800x600 as there is slight lag with even min settings.

 

[blade2]

update: the local store said he is getting 9600 Pro's in tomorrow and they should be around £110 - perfect! If he has them in tomorrow, ill just buy it straightaway.

 

[blade2]

My local computer place has 9600 Pro's in - 128mb and 256mb. I know current games wont utilise 256mb, but 2 or 3 years down the line, will it be worthwhile to have 256mb? I havent had a chance to take a look at the boards-will tomorrow but I suspect the 256mb will be slightly slower memory and possibly non-Ati built-would that make the 128 the only wise option
or does slower memory and non-Ati built not matter in the long term?

Thanks for all the help guys

 

[ginfest]

but 2 or 3 years down the line, will it be worthwhile to have 256mb?

2 or 3 yrs down the line I'm sure 256MB will be the standard but by that time the current crop of cards will be outdated.


Mike G

 

[Kaiser__Sose]

if you are only playing one game or older games for the next year or so get a vid card and a new HDD..
get an 8500/9100 or a ti4200 whichever you can find... if you can get a Geforce 3 on the forums for $50 ~L20 then that's even better.. it will play the game fine.

 

[blade2]

update:

got the 256mb 9600 Pro - turns out that it was non-pro so i went back - got myself a new HD and a 128mb 9200 non pro-thought that it cost £53-but it costs £75 apparently. He's outta 9500's-he wont be gettin any in, and he wont be gettin ti4200.

So this is what i figures-if the 9200 is £53 then i guess i might keep it, but im pretty sure it will be £75, if so ill get the best deal I can via the net - either that £73 4200 or the 9600 Pro that Lonyo put up impresses me a lot-comments much appreciated?

 

[Sarge1]

A 4200 would probably get you by just fine for now. But, if you're willing to spend a few more $ to get a 9600 Pro, you will definately be impressed. My nephew just replaced his burnt out 4400 (which when overclocked could get pretty close to my stock 9700 Pro in benchmarks) with a 9600 PRO and he was blown away! The image quality is just so much better. It's a pretty sweet card.

 

[blade2]

Ok prior to advice given, and I really wanted to follow what you guys said about ti4200 or a 9600 Pro, I got a Sapphire 9200 128mb just because of the money factor - only £53 seemed really good.

Anyway, fresh install of Win XP onto a new HD, and im having random jerkiness problems. The gameplay just starts to jerk around when im driving random cars, happens noticeably when its raining but it also happens when its not.
So is the jerkiness due to the video card? Im running the game at 800*600 at 16bit, with trails off (whatever trails is, dont know, but it helps to keep the game smoother with it off apparently).

system specs

Athlon 1900xp
Gigabyte 7VRXP rev 2
512mb 2100 generic ram
40gig Maxtor HD
Sapphire 9200 128mb - driver version is the most recent ATi catalyst - I have driver on the Sapphire CD but if i recall, I had the same problem-ive put all the direct3d settings at performance: AF and Smoothvision at 2x, texture preference and mipmap detail level at performance, wait fo vertical sync+ truform always off. Running at 4x AGP and fast writes wont stay enabled (seems a general problem with Ati cards). Dont know if this is relevant but might aswell mention it, ive got Windows running at 1024*768 at 32 bit.

I tried OC the core a little with Radclocker but when i exit the game, the OC display shows the 250mhz not the oc figure? seperate question really!

I dont know much at all about ati vid cards so could someone advise please? Is it a setting, or is the card just crap? I have plenty of room free (256mb free when running GTA3)

 

[MDE]

Turn AA and AF off and you should be fine. Poke around the ATI control panel to find them.