What video card should I get?

[Druss]

Hi

I've got K6-2 with a FIC VA-503+ motherboard and 64mb (72 pin memory)
What sort of video card should i get?
Preferably a fast 2D/3d card

I was thinking of Asus Geforce card or Asus TNT2 card

any ideas?

 

[Taz4158]

Whatever you get you'll be CPU limited. Take a look at a Radeon LE and maybe a CPU\MB upgrade.

 

[Yoshi]

If you are thinking of upgrading you motherboard/CPU in the next six months I would say get something solid like a GeForce or Radeon. I have both cards and like them for different reasons.

If you plan on keeping your current setup for a while I would look for a good deal on a V3 or TNT2. Stay away from the old Savage4 and Savage2000 products.

 

[RobsTV]

The Radeon shines at 32bit and ultra high resolutions, but at 16bit and/or low resolutions, it is a turtle compared to other cards. Since you have a K6, 16bit and lower resolutions are what you will use "most" of the time. But, the 32bit option is a must have for the times when a game requires it.

A GeForce2 MX will give you a 20% to 50% speed increase over a Radeon with a K6.

I went through the exact same upgrade for my bother (503+), and asked similiar questions here. I really wanted to stick in the cheap Radeon, but luckily a quick visit to the K6 forum showed how terrible an idea that was. Hopefully you'll read this in time as well.
$84 Radeon shipped for use in a K6-2 system? ASAP

 

[oldfart]

Here is another idea. I would do something as cheap as I could for now. I helped out a friends kid this week with a K6-2 500 with SIS integrated video . We put in a used 12 meg Voodoo 2 card that I got for $30. It did the trick pretty well. I've seen these cards for $25. When you upgrade your system down the road, you can get a new video card that will scale with it. By then, you will be able to get a better card than is offered now for less $$. You don't say what K6 you have. If its a lower end one, you wont be playing any 32 bit games anyway. They will be unplayable on that system. I've only heard of one game so far that requires 32 bit. That MS Links game that Rob's mentioned. IMHO this is a mistake on MS's part. They will be shutting out a large part of consumers who don't want to upgrade their system to play one game.

 

[airfoil]

The GE Force MX is the card you need. Go with the Hercules card.

 

[12Guage]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but, are there not problems with Geforce cards and super 7 motherboards. I remember reading somewhere that the the AGP slot has trouble delivering enough power to many Nvidea cards.

 

[BenSkywalker]

A Voodoo3 will probably be the best for your system. SS7 boards have notoriously poor AGP slots and I wouldn't reccomend any of the latest boards, ATi, nVidia or 3dfx for them. I'm sure there has to be some good deals floating around on a used V3 2K for pretty cheap.

Why not TNT2? While they are not nearly as power hungry as the GF 1 series of boards, you still run into issues every now and then and also, the Glide factor with lower CPU overhead and better K6 level 3DNow! support(Athlon has extended 3DNow!).

The V3 is pretty outdated now and despite what some members of this board will tell you, there is an extremely noticeable difference when you move to a newer board however with your current system dropping even $100 on a vid card seems rather excessive.

For the price of an Asus GeForce(if it's a GF2 anyway) you can pick up a real good SocketA mobo and Duron and get far greater overall performance gains.

BTW- What are you running now and what games/apps do you use?

 

[oldfart]

Ben has some good advise. Without knowing your specs (K6-2 ???MHz, current video card??) its hard to say. It depends on the games you play also. If your are a Quake/Quake2 kind of guy, the 3DNow! mini ports help quite a bit. For Unreal/UT, Glide is a real plus on a low end system. A V3 PCI or a Voodoo 2 would be a good bet.

As a matter of fact, one of the kids PC's is a K6-3+ 450 with a Voodoo 3 PCI. The K6-3+ is a pretty cool chip. It's .18u with 256k onboard full speed cache and the extended 3DNow functions. This is on an ancient old ASUS T2P4 HX chipset mobo. The thing runs pretty darn good. It can play UT at 640 x 480 smoothly and Q2 flies.

 

[TravisBickle]

well yeah, if you get a V3 2000 pci you will have a chance of using it as a secondary card in another system or offloading onto somebody else who wants a secondary card in the future.

 

[Hawk]

Yeah, a guy that bought a Radeon from me said that his MX wouldn't boot in his motherboard, but would in others...so you might want to avoid newer cards that suck up a lot of power from the AGP slot.

 

[Druss]

Sorry, I have K6-2 300 cpu and currently I have diamond stealth 3d 3000 pro.

Well I don't like playing Quake, etc. I just want a new video card, so that I can play the latest Monkey Island game

I might consider going going for TNT-2, but now I'm thinking of getting a matrox millenium card

 

[RobsTV]

BenSkywalker
The systems I had been building for resale were all based on the FIC VA503+ and VA503A motherboards, along with 3dfx Voodoo3 cards, so I am very familiar with this combo. If you recall, the original FIC SS7 motherboards when equiped with a V3 (or higher) AGP card, actually burnt up the motherboards voltage regulator. This was corrected with later motherboards. This was also in the FAQ's at 3dfx and at FIC. Note that this was the "ONLY" AGP card to do this. Other AGP cards worked fine. Besides FIC, Asus, and Gigabyte also had warnings about using the V3 AGP cards in some of there boards. What this shows is that the V3 AGP cards power draw was more than any other cards power draw, plain and simple. Now the new GF2 MX cards use even much less power than any of the old AGP cards, so AGP power is no longer an issue with the MX. Of course a V3 PCI would solve the AGP issue as well.

 

[tigger80]

i agree get a voodoo3 2000 or TNT2 Ultra