PCI video card recommendation..

[shockX]

ok, i want to upgrade my old OEM machine so i can play 3d games on it without using software mode (when i do, it sucks crap). it only has a PCI slot, so i'm looking for a good non-expensive video card to get for it...

anything is fine as long as it doesnt cost me too much ($120 tops) and gets at least 32fps at 800x600 in quake or something.... any recommendations?

 

[MustangSVT]

what cpu does it have?

 

[BFG10K]

It sounds like The Vodooo 3 PCI will suit your needs perfectly. It's the best card I've ever used and I've never had any problems with it.

 

[shockX]

yeah, i was considering a Voodoo3, sounds the best out of all the available pci cards, wish nvidia would make some pci cards though...

the machine has a K6-2 300mhz, not too good for software rendering... i tried it out and got framerates around 11-12, at 640x480 res, so thats why i want to slap a 3d card in that computer.

any other suggestions? or is the voodoo3 probably the best choice..

and if the voodoo3, should i get the 2000 or 3000 version?

 

[BFG10K]

any other suggestions? or is the voodoo3 probably the best choice..

IMO all of the Voodoos are great cards, but with your slow CPU it's not really worth buying a V4/V5.

and if the voodoo3, should i get the 2000 or 3000 version?

I'd say a 2000. The 3000 tends to get a little hot, plus your CPU isn't really fast enough to take advantage of it. I'm using a V3 2000 PCI in my system and it works primo.

 

[Rendus]

Another vote for the Voodoo3 2000 PCI for that box. I have a K6-2 300 my brother is currently using, and I had a V3 2k in it. Overclocking it to 3000 speeds got me nowhere. Should be fine, and quite cheap

 

[shockX]

thanks for the replies..... i'll go with the V3-2000....
i found a Geforce2MX that was PCI version, but if my CPU cant even handle a V3-3000, then it definitely cant handle a Geforce2MX.

 

[Actaeon]

Heh, I'm running a Celeron 300a @ 450, and I have a GF2MX. CPU bottlenecks it a little bit.

 

[poop]

The good thing about the V3 2000 is that it is also nicely overclockable. The only diff between a 2k and 3k is the core speed. Anyone I have talked to who oc'd their V3 2k said they got it to at least V3 3k speed.

I got my 2k up to 175 MHz, perfectly stable. The 3k runs at 175 out of the box. If your case doesn't have nice airflow, you may need a fan, though. Hell, you might need a fan if you do not OC, those suckers run HOT!

With a V3 in your system, you should get very playable (~30) frame rates in the 640x48 - 800x600 range.

 

[Sunner]

There is one difference, the 2K has a 300 MHz RAMDAC while the 3K's DAC is 350 MHz, but that doesnt really matter unless you wanna go for really high resolutions.
Also, the 3K runs at 166 MHz out of the box.

 

[Biggs]

Another vote for the Voodoo 3.

 

[stingygrrl]

I have a Vooodoo 3 3000 and am very happy with it, but since no one else has mentioed it in this thread, Voodoo is now Nvidia and there will be no support I think for the Voodoo products, incl warranty I think, in the future. You may want to investigate that aspect.

Aside from that, I think office depot (and maybe best buy too?) is clearancing the Voodoo 4 4500 AGP for ~ $90. Sorry, I didn't pay a lot of attention bc I wasn't going to upgrade from my V3 3000. Search the Hot Deals subboard for 'voodoo'. There's about 6 threads.

 

[PolaroidPaul]

I also need a PCI card.

I tried an I/O Magic 32 MB TNT2 M64 card from CompUSA but I could not get a good card. The first one powered up fine but kept reporting an error. The paper under one of the SDRAM leads (as in pins not connected) could have had something to do with it. The next card off the shelp wouldn't even show any recognizeable video at start up. Card #3 was worse!

I would try the Voodoo card but I cannot seem to locate one!

Pricewatch lists them but the sites they send you to seem to actually have only AGP cards. I just want to squeeze a bit more life out of the old K6-266 so it can better display games for my 12 year old while I have to use my newer P3-700 machine for work.

Any suggestions on sources for PCI cards?

 

[UNCjigga]

What about the Voodoo4 4500 PCI? I don't know much about this card, though I would expect it to offer some sort of speed advantage over the V3 3000 at higher resolutions--in addition to offering support for 32bit color (which you might never use on an older CPU, but its nice to know its there.) Besides, with retailers rushing to get rid of these boards you might get lucky and snag one for about the same price as a Voodoo3 3000 PCI. The only big issue I can think of would be driver maturity--the V3 might have the advantage of offering better drivers and that's important considering new driver development for the Voodoo4/5 may be dead. Check what others have to say about this...especially any Voodoo4 PCI owners out there...

Edit: Oh yea, I think the Voodoo4 comes with more RAM too (32mb vs 16mb)

 

[BFG10K]

It's not really worth getting a Voodoo 4. Any speed gain it provides over a V3 is largely removed when you switch to large (ie bigger than 256 x 256) 32 bit textures and 32 bit colour. The Voodoo 4 is really too underpowered to provide its own features at a playable level.

 

[IITravel]

When I e-mailed ATI last month, I was told by them that the A-I-W Radeon 32MB PCI card would be out at the end of January, well the end is near and no word yet, but I saw on a site that the expected date is Feb. 01, 2001 so we'll see. You may want to look at that.

 

[DarkMajiq]

IITravel: With a slow system like this, there is no use in getting a Radeon, it's just a lot of wasted money. I say go with a Voodoo3 2000, it's cheap, and it will give you a lot better performance without wasting a lot of money on frames that will be bottlenecked by the CPU.