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Graphics Software

Cheaper Video Cards Compared 126

Posted by Hemos from the getting-something-better dept.
An unnamed correspondent writes "For those of you that can't afford to spend $600 on a video card (like everyone!) there's a really thorough comparison of different the best 10 value (meaning $150) 3D graphics cards, using chips from Matrox, NVIDIA, 3dfx and ATI. The authors show off benchmarks on an AMD Duron 700 for 3D and then look at DVD as well as 2D."
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Cheaper Video Cards Compared More

Cheaper Video Cards Compared

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  • I'm wondering what the need for such reviews are. These are all older vid cards (with the exception of the GF MX and Voodoo 4x00) running on older processors. When these cards came out and were the best, the processor they're running it on was also the best. So, they're just rereviewing something months later and slapping the "Value card review" label on it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Radeon a "value" card? (Score:4)

    by Temporal ( 96070 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @01:07PM (#664176) Journal

    On PriceWatch [pricewatch.com], the GeForce 2 is selling for $169, just $10 more than the ATI Radeon DDR, and $30 more than the Radeon SDR. I don't think the Radeon DDR fits in the "value" range, and the SDR is arguable.

    Last I checked, the GeForce 2 is the second fastest card on the market, right behind the GeForce 2 Ultra (which is still insanely expensive).

    Oh, and the Voodoo 5 goes for $234. Go figure.

    ------

  • This article needs more pages. hell, there were some pages that contained multiple paragraphs. I am positive I missed out on some important banner ads on this site by the efficient consolidation of actual information.

    Since I couldn't stick around, did they say if any of these work with Linux, or *BSD ?

  • I don't know if this counts as "value", but I've got a Voodoo 3 3000 (picked it up for about $150, I think they're less expensive now) and it works flawlessly with XFree 3.3.6 and Q3A.

    I've heard the drivers aren't the best, but I haven't had to deal with it - when I switched distros, the new one picked up the card and threw the drivers in for me so I didn't have to set anything up.

  • These cards might play games, but they sure would suck doing any kind of decent 3D graphics with 3D Studio or Maya. Just a warning for dumb people, I guess.

  • You pansy! I have... NO VIDEO CARD in my Linux box (Score:4)

    by SlushDot ( 182874 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @02:00PM (#664180)
    It's my main server sitting on the cable modem and firewall to my internal LAN, why does it need a video card at all? That just wastes a slot that can have another ethernet card in it.

    I've only got 5 slots in my machine. One has a sound card, the other 4 slots have network cards. eth0=static IP #1, eth1=static IP#2, eth2=DHCP addr, eth3=Internal LAN.

    If I need a colsole for administration, I can ssh or remote X display one. I can even use a serial port in an emergency.

    Sure, I installed a video card to set up the box. After Linux was running, the card was gone.

    Video cards are for the weak!

  • This Page [sharkyextreme.com] sez the winner is the ATI Radeon DDR 32MB card. Although it didn't score _that_ much higher than the others. Just a couple of points.

    3dfx, Leadtek, and the MSI card have the best price. The Radeon DDR is the highest in performance.

    The lamest cards for performance: The 3dfx and the Matrox G450.

    There are 28 pages in total, FYI.

  • Well, anything under $100 bucks right now can't play the latest games at decent framerates...so for gamers, $150 bucks is extremely cheap (Geforce2 ULTRA is like $500, Voodoo6 is $600 or was last time I checked).

  • www.pricewatch.com (I'm too lazy to do a link, shoot me).

    It was said above, and the price for a GeForce2 was given.

    Pricewatch shows prices for a GeForce with 32 MB for ~$100. That's value. Oh, and it's made by Elsa, who have a 6 year manufacturer's warranty on the entire card, and they include diagnostic software with the drives so you can measure card temp and overclock it easily (and hopefully safely).

    Off topic, on pricewatch and AMD Athlon 750 is the same price as a PIII 500.

    Moller

  • High End Boards Overrated (Score:4)

    by MousePotato ( 124958 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @05:34PM (#664184) Homepage Journal
    I have worked in places where the 'average' system would have Elsa's and Oxy's in them for CAD and Rendering/Animation work on real nice 21" monitors. The high end market is way overrated IMHO. Before you flame me hear me out: Consider this the average user in a production environment sets the resolution at what? (drumroll:1024x768x24b) Why is this? I am not sure. Maybe they never figured out that you can change the size of the fonts as they are drawn to the screen, whatever. I am not trying to be funny but when I walk by workstations and see machines set like that I go nuts. Just seems like mad money wasted. Personally I prefer to view at 1600x1400 or better if the monitor can handle it, possibly giving up a little color depth for the higher res. Most of the boards in the 'low end' can handle 1024x's just fine and cost a fraction of that GMX with 96megs on it that your boss lays out 2 grand for. An Oxy (just an example though I really, really like 'em) is capable of much higher res and greater color depth but it won't speed up your render times considering there is not much talkback between your card and the cpu. Screen refresh is indeed faster. Antialiasing finer. A kick ass CAD jockey or modeler will benefit from the combination of a good monitor and card but does it really justify the expense? Take that extra few hundred dollars and throw it into memory. You will benefit much more performance wise. Heck, for the price difference you could build additional boxen for your render farm. Take an office with 30 workstations, put in a good 'low-end' board in say 28 of them and you can build a nice sized farm just with the money saved.

  • ... I've been doing some "shortcuts" when reading it by going to the URL and changing the page number manually until I reached the last page I really needed.

    Unfortunately, it does not work with any hardware site, notably Ace Hardware that has good (IMHO) reviews, but you can't fast forward to the conclusion page neither through site navigation nor using the technique described above.

  • nVidia isn't so bad (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't forget that nVidia has what is probably the best OpenGL support of any consumer card on the market. There are two major reasons OpenGL remains a viable option today:

    nVidia, and John Carmack.

    Without them, I guarantee you that Linux would be suffering greatly in the 3D department. DirectX would be the only protocol capable of accessing the newest hardware features, and OpenGL would stagnate. At least with nVidia around, they are actively working to get more of these features supported by OpenGL. You should be thankful for that.
  • Dear Slashdot Editors,

    Sharkyextremes hardware reviews are very poor please pimp anands, as they actually understand the tech a bit.

    This is the 2nd absolutely useless SE article that has made it onto slashdot in the last week.

    Cheers
  • If by x*x you mean x^2, there is NOTHING innovative about that. I assume you're talking about vectors, so that leaves x[dot]x and x[cross]x.

    The test I just took was multivariable calculus, half of it on vectors. The cross product of any vector with itself is 0. As far as I know, the generation of a zero is about as fast as it will get already. If you're talking about dot product, there's nothing innovative about x^2+y^2+z^2. The PS2 has a specialized chip that can do 3 dimensional dot products in a single clock cycle. That's a chip design feature, not a mathematical algorithm.

    I also have a hard time believing that a CEO would nix a technological leap. Maybe wait until there are other improvements and wait until the next architectural overhaul, but not ditch it. Parabolic polygon? Double-buffering anti-flicker method? Revolutionize the industry? First, I don't see connections. Second, it sounds like you're just tossing around buzz, not to mention the bragging/hinting. You don't sound like someone who has the professionism to rise to the status of lead developer at a major video card company.

    Is it worse if you're trolling, or worse if you're serious?
  • yes, but does it have video ram, or does it use precious system memory?
  • "you would think they would at least be attempting to develop drivers that they do have control of."

    Are you serious? C'mon! The latest Detonator drivers kick some butt. The team at Nvidia has their collective shit wired. They produce a tight set of drivers for the best consumer level video cards on the market. Other companies have toyed with their own releases and they pale in comparison. (Creative Labs comes to mind, I own a 3D Annihilator, and the switch to the Reference drivers gave me a 15% performance increase) There is nothing wrong with Closed Source Projects, and until the worlds economy adjusts to the dynamic created in an Open Source environment, They will be the "Norm".
  • Actually, the Voodoo3 3000 has TV-Out and DVD decoding. The only thing it is missing is the TV tuner (which comes with the 3500). And, at the computer shows that come near my house, the 3000 is available for well under $100. I haven't seen any 3500s recently, so I can't comment on their price. What disappoints me is that I can't get TV in on any 3dfx card faster than the 3500.
  • You need to invest in a good multi-port Ethernet card. I've seen some nice 4-port PCI ones.

    Cost of 4 10/100 PCI NICs: $40.

    Cost of one 4 head 10/100 NIC: More than I care to think about.

  • I was one of those people. I still have my ATI Rage 128 and I'm still sitting waiting for the promised 3d drivers that were due out 1st quarter of 2000. It's going to be 2001 and I will never see them. I bought the card based on that info so I will never buy ATI again. You can sit around and wait for the drivers and if they do come out the (which they won't) you would of wasted your time. Move on get a voodoo or geforce.

    Back in the day slashdot would of never posted about cards that didn't support X. Now; they do.
  • Did you make sure to remove all signs of Mesa from /usr/lib, /usr/X11R6/lib, /usr/X11R6/lib/modules, etc.? That's what usually causes trouble with the drivers. This is Mesa's/XFree's fault, not NVidia's.

    ------
  • "How do 3dfx work as far as multiple-heads and so on go?"

    I haven't tried a multiple monitor setup personally, but a friend of mine has one under W2K using a Riva128 AGP plus a V3-2000 PCI, with no problems.
  • More than enough for you, yes. However, I can't even play Q3 on my machine anymore (gets 25-30 FPS) after having played on the machine I had at work (got 70-80 FPS) for the summer. It's just too frustrating, because it just runs too slowly.

  • Um, and you're saying all those soccer mums need their Explorers and Suburbans? You just countered your own argument. If you don't play 3D games, you don't need a 3d card. The review was pointed towards people who need as good a 3D card they can get...for a small amount of money.

    You're happy with your Celeron 500 with a TNT2 right now, but a year from now, when you're only getting 20 FPS on the top (polygon count) games, you won't be...but there will be other "low-end" cards by then. You're not the review's target audience right now. In a year, you will be (except it'll be a different review, with different cards).

  • For anyone trying to homing rocket someone in Unreal tournament, no one wants those skipping frames--you wanna have the joy of smooth swift death. I'll gladly pay 150 for a video card than give it to a therapist to "discuss" my violent tendencies.
  • Er...so the fact that their Linux drivers work extremely well (producing numbers close to Windows scores), and the 3dfx drivers for Linux produce performance as though you were running on a card from 3 years ago doesn't matter, because they're not open source? I admire your logic.

    I would've considered this a decent post if you hadn't gone troll at the end with that idiotic third point.

  • You are paying the price to have the latest and greatest when you buy a card at $600. Give it 6 months and save $400 or more. If they can afford to make these cards at $150 dollars now (and most are still in production) then that means they could afford to make them at $150 then.

    People don't want to hear this though and that is what the video card manufactures are betting on. Same thing sony is betting on with the PS2, matter of fact it is what the guys auctioning PS2 consoles on ebay for $1K are betting.

    I am not saying don't buy it, but think about it this way. if you earn $8 an hour you would have to work for 75 hours to get that card. But if you wait 6 months then you can have it for 25 hours worth of work. So when you see that hot item on the shelf ask yourself this , is that "neat" item worth the 50 extra hours you will have to slave at your crappy job (by definition of the word work all jobs are crappy, otherwise they would be called fun) to have it RIGHT now. If not don't get it, but if see your life comming to an end without it, then get it.
  • While 8 cards were reviewed, Sharky only reviewed 5 different cards. The four GeForce2 MXs seem to differ only slightly from reference boards. At least he didn't have the NVIDIA cards in all of the top spots like he did with his high-end 3d card roundup a few weeks ago.

  • So ... what about affordable Linux gaming? (Score:4)

    by miniver ( 1839 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @01:14PM (#664202) Homepage

    I'm only interested in Linux gaming, and I'm not a super-fast speed-freak gamer, and I don't have an infinite budget. These cards look nice, but which ones have Linux drivers, and what versions of XFree86 do they support?

    I was pretty happy with my Matrox Millenium G200 card until I tried to load Q3 Arena ... figuring out which drivers to load where and how to configure them was more effort than I could afford. I would like to replace it, but I want something that works with XFree86 3.3.6 and Q3A. Recommendations?


    Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,

  • As long as all the moderators are aware of who "Bob Abooey" is and what he does, and no-body pays any attention to him (no-one mods him up or down), we'll all be fine.
  • I'll only point out, as a point of interest, that the cards tested in this review are, in fact, the absolute latest. Not the greatest, but the most recent releases.

    I myself would be very interested in seeing a test of true value cards, including older cards, done on a cost benefit basis.

    Anything over $100 bucks is hardly a value card, except with reference to the very cutting edge.
  • Do NOT use 2 the same cards, it gives driver conflicts. Please use a good first card and something like a virge card as second card.
  • $150 for "cheap" video cards...

    I can hear the console gamers laughing.

    --------
  • Which Geforce 2?

    Geforce 2 MX is the "value" card which I would say is the best bang for the buck. Performance slightly higher than the old Geforce 256 DDR with prices around $130. I'm quite happy with this card.

    Geforce 2 GTS is a higher end card with 2 graphic pipelines instead of one. The problem with the latest nVidia chipsets is that they were always bottlenecked by the RAM speed. The Geforce 2 Ultra is the same as the GTS, but it corrects this with its higher speed RAM, but you pay a big premium for this.

    (Which also means if you want more graphic performance out of your existing Geforce card, overclock ONLY your RAM to see the best performance boost. You can even buy heatsinks that add more cooling to the graphic chipsets to push it even farther. Just plain crazy.)
  • I know the parent is funny, but lets keep things in perspective. In the realm of 3D graphics cards (the kind mostly used for games), most cards that you'd want to invest in are still about $250 and up. I say invest, because I do not like buying a new card more than every 18 months. Yet, with the onslaught of new and improved hardware at a breakneck pace, cards are getting cheaper before they are antiquated. (Thank God! My bank account may yet survive!) Now, I only payed $125 for my OEM Voodoo3 3000 when it first was released. Our clan bought a box of 20 cards, so we got a price break. But, at that time, new off-the-shelf V3's were $175. This was top-o-the-line then. (They were for about a month when first released.) And before that I paid (ouch... hurts to think about it) $300 for my V2 12MB card when it was brand new.

    So I think $150 is cheap for a card that is on par with today's technology. I think $300 for top of the line is adequate too. You get what you pay for. That $500 for the GeForce2 Ultra is getting what you pay for. Granted, I think I will wait till January so I get it for less.

    Cheers.
  • Don't forget that there are some other factors to consider.
    Since overall system performance increases (because of faster hard drives and wider buses), these tests allow better evaluation of the card itself. Also, stability and driver maturity are rarely an issue for an older card.

    One thing that still sucks is that some of these cards are still mostly Windows-only; alternative OS-es don't have drivers for all of them.
  • NVIDIA dont want to support open source drivers, so i honestly dont see why any open source supporter would use any of there cards.

    In my eyes NVIDIA just isnt an option, but the Radeon looks cheap and fast, and ATI supports the principle of open source software.

    Even though ATI arent developing open source drivers themselves, they look to be assisting open source efforts.

    Better than NVIDIA binary only driver that contains legal threats to Prosecute anyone who tries to reverse engineer an open source NVIDIA driver.

    NVIDIA ranks in the same class as microsoft in my book.

  • "NVIDIA dont want to support open source drivers, so i honestly dont see why any open source supporter would use any of there cards."

    The answer to this is simple... even an Open Source Zealot on a tight budget likes to play Quake.

  • you have a sound card?? All i need a printer for my sound...

    ---
    I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
    They're still in, aren't they?
  • It also depends on the motherboard you have. I have a supermicro dual slot 1, and it has a setting in the bios to run with no video card, it also has options for no keyboard and/or mouse. SO THERE.

  • Well, this is not an advertisement for Ubid.com. Well, I have been buying stuff from these guys for quite a long time now. I bought a Visiontek GeForce around an year back for only 119.00 and a couple of months back bought an Visiontek NVidia Geforce GTS 32 DDR for a measly 159.00. I am sure there are not a place on the Internet where you could find something cheap as that. Its not Ebay, so you dont have to worry about some jerk posting something he doesnt have. At Ubid, you buy directly from suppliers. So your butt is pretty much covered. These cards were new, and recently I found 3dFX 5500 64MB DDR cards going for a cheap 269.00.

    Well all I am saying is not to go and buy something from there, but when you dont have that much moolah to buy the high end cards, you dont have to settle for a TNT2 or a GeForce for 150 or more from some site like EBay or any of those B2C sites. You just need to know where to look. And in my experience this site has it all. Check it out guys.. And ahem.. it runs on ASP/IIS, so dont flame them for that. All it matters is whether they are able to deliver. Well in my experience, they have done more than that.

    my two cents..
  • Yes.

    Which is why I never bother to go to any Snarky link. It's not worth spending 10 minutes paging thru the Snarky site to get 2 minutes worth of information.

    I guess I admire the saint-like patience of the people who do read it though, so I can read the condensed version on /.

  • I like the GeForce2, but even sub 100 is too rich for my blood. That's almost food for a whole month :). I'm perfectly happy with my ATI Rage PRO.

  • Well, there are people who only play 'value' games to go with their value video cards. Some games arn't even frame rate dependent. C&C II for instance, or. . . chess, go, etc.

    Games are not equal to first person shooters.

    I play N3 a lot, and my V3 maxes it out, and at least until next year this is the newest, hottest racing sim.

    So, I would love to see a test that tells me what my best bang for the buck for playing N3 and Age of Empires II is.

    Value cards for value games. If you want max frame rate in UT, buy a card that's designed to give you max frame rate in UT, but that won't be a 'value' card.
  • The GeForce 2 Ultra and GeForce 2 GTS are Nvidia's high end cards. They are extremely expensive, though. Nvidia sells it's chipsets to different companies, so extras will cary. I have seen some with built in hardware MPEG deconders.

    The VooDoo5 6000 is the lastest card from 3dfx. Technologically there's nothing much in them..In my opinion the card is an oversized, inefficient(it requires an EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE), expensive piece of crap. It's about on par with the Geforce2s in price, but the Nvidia cards are doing better on the benchmarks.

    Then there is the ATI all-in-wonder Radeon 64 Meg DDR. It's framerates are slightly slower than the Geforce, but with it you get built-in hardware MPEG (for DVD) decoder, TV in/out, and a DVD player that takes full advantage of the MPEG decoder. Now you might be saying "wow, the RADEON IS DEFINATELY BETTER!!" But ATI has been known to have REAL shitty drivers on it's new products, so you'd probably have to wait a few months to get it going stabily, but by then the price would have droped by at least 30%...

    as for DVD drives, they are all pretty much the same, the question you should be asking yourself is how are you going to play the DVDs. By this I mean hardware Decoder card(either separate or built into a video card) or a software player...

  • As a lead developer for the manufacturer of a major video card I can tell you that they sweep a lot under the rug. For instance I had devised a new hardware enabled double buffering anti-flicker method that would revolutionize the industry. But when the CEO's caught wind of it they forced me not to use it because they want to keep selling the bad hardware to make more money. The good news is I can use it in 2 years after my NDA runs out. If you think your card is smoking now, just wait. My new methods use a simple linear vector transgression that once you see it you will kick yourself, it is so simple. All I can say is "think f(x) = x*x. That's it, any more and I could get in trouble. Well, think parabolic polygon too, but that's it.
  • Buy an 810e motherboard. It has integrated video, and you can pick one up (sometimes) for less then or equal to $150. A whole motherboard for the price of these "budget" video cards.
  • Not really you can pick up a generic 2xagp w/banshee chipset( can anyone say first gen.v3 ) for $30-$35 in any mailorder mag, cdw, pc-connection, etc, etc, etc.

  • Cost about that, does great 3D and almost perfect DVD off of a vanilla DVD drive. I'm quite happy with it.
  • Everyone has there price i guess. For some people its a few FPS, if you have more than 72FPS then who cares.

    I used to be quite happy playing svga-quake with 22FPS on a S3 video card. Should be able to get better than that these days without compromising ones values.

    NVIDIA did fight the good fight against 3dfx with opengl/glide, but now the tables have turned, NVIDIA is the one keeping secrets and 3dfx (and others) are the ones opening up and trying to do the right thing.

    NVIDIA have said that they cant opensource there drivers becasue they dont have rights to some of the intellectual property. Have stupid is managment at nvidia, without drivers for there hardware their product is totally useless, you would think they would at least be attempting to develop drivers that they do have control of.

    We need to support companies that will stand up to NVIDIA, if there isnt competition then all consumers loose.

    Glenn

  • You need at least 120 FPS. Thats Showscan(tm). I'm only half kkdding, I udnerstand serious Quakeaholocs do this. I've never seen a system running at this rate but I HAVE seen real Showscan (120fps movie) and the effect is astounding. The sense of presance is most like what a CD sounds like the first time you hear one. The film just seems much more real. (So real that the attraction I saw it at pretends you are watching live people and all the reviews I've ever read bought the story hook, line and sinker. If your curious its the "Present" show in the Luxor's "Past, Present and Future" simulation trilogy.)
  • You need at least 120 FPS. Thats Showscan(tm).

    I'm only half kidding, I udnerstand serious Quakeaholocs do this. I've never seen a system running at this rate but I HAVE seen real Showscan (120fps movie) and the effect is astounding. The sense of presance is most like what a CD sounds like the first time you hear one. The film just seems much more real. (So real that the attraction I saw it at pretends you are watching live people and all the reviews I've ever read bought the story hook, line and sinker. If your curious its the "Present" show in the Luxor's "Past, Present and Future" simulation trilogy.)

  • Re:Goes to show you... (Score:3)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @07:37PM (#664226) Homepage
    Don't forget that you pay for your stuff with post-tax dollars.

    It takes about 100 hours of labour to earn $600 post-tax dollars. That's two and a half weeks of full-time work.

    And I'm not even bothering to factor in other paycheque incidentals, like insurance and workers comp and so on. Truth is, once all taxes and so-called "optional" debits are withdrawn from your paycheque, it's probably closer to 120 hours to earn $600 on an $8/hr wage...

    --
  • The GeForce 2 MX would probably be the best for Linux gaming (best driver support), but that would require XFree 4.0. Why do you want 3.3.6, just out of curiousity?
    1. Speed. Everything review of 3D cards that has compared performance under XF3.3.6 with XF4.0 has rated XF4.0 as slower. If I'm getting a less expensive card, it might as well be one that gets the most out my environment.
    2. Time. I'm running RedHat 6.2 (my preferred distro until RedHat gets most of the 7.0 bugs out) and I would prefer not to waste time chasing down XFree86 4.0 bugs in addition to chasing down adapter 'features'. I'd rather spend my meager free time enjoying myself ... <g>

    Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
  • Is can it do 72 FPS [slashdot.org]
  • By better support in Xfree86, I mean actually supported by Xfree86, which NVidia is officially not. You have to get NVidia's closed-source drivers directly from them. They may be better, or they may have problems that won't be fixed, you have to put your trust in NVidia.
  • But how many fps does an Oxy do in Q3A?

    Just to keep on topic.
  • ATI has the worst support i have ever seen. I was going to buy their new cards until they totally dropped support for the card i had. When I got the all-in-wonder v1. they decided they weren't going to make new drivers for it when windows 98 came out, so i had to screw around with it forever. And guess what, with their drivers it was slower. Now the same card is only supported to work as a video card in win2k. I have other cards for my linux box, but they just don't care.


  • Buy a 64MB memory module. It's still cheaper than buying one of these cards and a motherboard to plug it into, and anything that doesn't come built in (most 810e mbd's have a LOT of stuff integrated)
  • and go straight to . [sharkyextreme.com]

    28 freakin' pages... SharkyExtreme is a joke!

  • ... Open source and free software are moving ahead nowadays, but we sure could use some open source-like hardware. Everybody is against big software companies making big bucks on std.users, but still - we could use a equivalent in hardware. The manufacturer who makes cheapest things gets all the users.
  • To heck with you. My Linux box has no running power!

    Wait, that's my typewriter...

  • I get 15FPS out of my G200 (OEM SDRAM version) in Q3 (with a Celeron 533) under Linux, when timing demo001. I could probably get a few more, in particular by upgrading to XFree 4.0.1 and using DRI. Anyway, 15FPS isn't great, but you say you're not a speed freak, eh?

    My advice for the simplest way to go is this. Get the G200 working. If it's still not fast enough for you, get a G400. They work with the exact same GLX module (and the DRI module, if you ever decide to go for XFree 4.0.1), so you won't have to change your setup much. The plain G400 OEM goes for under $100.

    I recommend this despite the fact that the GeForce 2 MX would no doubt be faster, and not a whole lot more expensive. The problem is that the drivers for the GeForce 2 MX only work under XFree 4.0.1 .
  • Typewriter...

    Now that is an Open System.

  • I've got a Voodoo 4 4500 myself (I bought it for $143), and I'm afraid that I'm pretty happy with it. Not a bad card, good frame rates, and I can finally rail people properly...
  • Sorry about the double post. The reason that the Voodoo 4 holds 60fps on Quake between 16- and 32-bit color is that it doesn't do 16-bit color.
  • the conclusion [sharkyextreme.com]
  • You hate ATI and you're a PC user?

    Lucky you aren't one of those miserable Mac users, the crap we've had to put up with from ATI. . .
  • Yes, ATi tends to have some really cruddy drivers, but their hardware's some of the best. If you're looking for decent linux drivers for ATi products, take a look at the utah-glx [sourceforge.net] project, where you can get an OpenGL GLX module for 3.3.6 of X. (Supposedly, the DRI module's in the works, but since it's being done by just one guy, and only in his spare time while he's working on the Radeon driver...) Also, if you're interested in video capture, that too appears to be a bit iffy, but you can find the GATOS [binghamton.edu] project online which provides at least a tv-viewing app, and the beginnings of an xv module.

    The preminary work on these two projects has been done, so if people really wanted to start making kernel modules or whatever, it could be done. It's just that no one apparently has the time, and since the cards are pretty old anyways, I think everyone pretty much considers them obsolete.

    Personally, I know several people who've said that they'll never buy ATi again, because (a) they can't make windows drivers, and (b) they pointedly ignored linux for yeaaaaaaars, when the Rage Pro was the big thing.

    Me, I'm still undecided. ..but this time, I'm waiting for the drivers before I make my purchase.

    James
  • I don't know what all this talk about "video" is. If you want special effects, go see one of those moving picture thingies.

    My serial port is a very high powered video card that drives my Wyse terminal on linux.
  • I've got a G400 Max on my home system and Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament are both pretty damn snappy (Athlon 700, 384 megabytes of RAM) on it. I haven't made the jump to XFree86 4.x yet, so I'm still running Utah GLX on 3.3.6.

    While setting up GLX was a pain in the ass, most of the ass pain came from the flakey AGP slot on the cheap motherboard I got. If you go for high end made in Taiwan rather than low end made in Taiwan (or Intel) your life should be much easier.

    I set up Xfree 4.x at work and that seemed to be pretty easy, as long as you use a kernel that supports the DRI stuff.

    Anyway, I like Matrox since they've traditionally been one of the more Open Source friendly companies. If Nvidia's opened up their Geforce2 drivers yet, it'd no doubt be a more future proof card.

  • Another big Matrox plus is that drivers for all the cards going back to the beginning of time are available (and EASY to find) on Matroxs web site.

    Check out the matrox closeout/discontinued store section too, they have nice deals on older cards.

  • If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  • Can anyone tell me what the best card available at the moment is (price is not a factor), I want to upgrade and I'm hearing that the GeForce2 is the best, but will the Voodoo 5 6000 be better (when it comes out)?

    Also if anyone knows the best DVD drive to get I'm looking to retire my CDROM, and the DVD controller which will be on the V56K is certainly going to be a plus.

  • Re:ghetto bitch. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then he should have said "MDA" = "Monochrome Display Adapter".
  • Geforce2 MX ain't older. It's a new "Value" chip from nVidia.
  • PCs need video cards to POST. I donno about other platforms.
  • Uh, if you don't play 3D games, you probably don't need to buy a 3D video card, do you? Just like if you don't drive in demanding road conditions, you don't need 4 wheel drive. You can't buy a video card that'll run Go or chess poorly. C&C II (I'm assUmeing you're talking about Tiberian Sun) will probably run great on any video card with a bunch of VRAM.

    Basically, you aren't the person the review was talking to. The review was aimed at people looking for high performance video cards for little money. If you don't need a high performance video card...(wait for it...)

    Don't buy one.
  • Am I the only one that can't stand to read an article at Sharkys? How many pages do you have to go through to get to the end? The world may never know...

    All I want to know, is which card came out on top.

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?

  • Just 'cuz you were modded insightful doesn't mean you're right. All of the chipsets (and video card) reviewed are just about brand spankin' new.
  • Sure you can get a cheap card for under 100 dollars, but you don't get one with nifty features, i.e. TV out... DVD decoder, S-Video, etc... Maybe even a TV tuner, why not just go All-in-Wonder. When I really want to upgrade my video card (since I have only 1 computer that I mostly use) I would much rather have the options, rather than have just a vga out, and nothing else. What if I want to play my DVD on TV? :)

    GO BIG!
  • Actually, I just got myself a Radeon. It's nice and fast, so far.

    By the way, if ANYONE out there gets this, make sure you get the updated drivers, especially if you have a KT-133 chipset on your mobo. It hangs if you don't. Yes, firsthand experience tells me so.
  • Forgot to mention, that 15FPS is in the lowest resolution (640x480) with lots of prettiness features turned off. Then again, it's 32-bit color as well.
  • 3dfx may be falling behind the times, but it looks like they give you the most bang for your buck under Linux. The Vooodoo3 has possibly the best driver support in Xfree86 4, and should be sufficient for playing Q3 Arena, and fun Mesa 3D stuff. For this reason, I just purchased myself a slightly used Voodoo3 3000 w/ 32 megs of RAM from a guy on ebay for $69 !! (how's that for value?) I'm just hoping it gets here in one piece and works as advertised.
  • You do realize that it is around the turn of the centry. It's only a little more than 2 months away.
  • My ATI rage plays Q3 with all options maxed at 30fps, more than enough for me
  • 1.Speed. Everything review of 3D cards that has compared performance under XF3.3.6 with XF4.0 has rated XF4.0 as slower. If I'm getting a less expensive card, it might as well be one that gets the most out my environment.

    The only comparisons have been between cards that have 3D support in both XF4 and XF3. In these cases, the XF3 drivers are usually more mature and thus better optimized. NVidia cards, on the other hand, have nothing resembling a 3D driver for anything less than XFree4 (the XF3 driver sucked), but their XF4 drivers are faster than any 3D driver for any other card in Linux, period. In other words, don't choose the card for the XFree version, choose the XFree version for the card.

    2.Time. I'm running RedHat 6.2 (my preferred distro until RedHat gets most of the 7.0 bugs out) and I would prefer not to waste time chasing down XFree86 4.0 bugs in addition to chasing down adapter 'features'. I'd rather spend my meager free time enjoying myself ...

    XF4.0.1 runs perfectly for me on my NVidia GeForce 2, and on RH6.2 it should be very easy to set up (with RPM's). I doubt it would be any more trouble than trying to get any other graphics card to work right, but then you never know when it comes to X and XFree86. :/

    ------

  • If you actually DO any form of modeling/rendering, you know that a little better antialiasing makes a lot of difference. Most people that are any good working at a company that's worth a damn are going to benifit from a good monitor and a good card. If you're doing anything less than top-quality graphics, then go get yourself a low quality card, and it won't matter. But if you're a company (and an artist) that demands quality, (and some do, believe it or not) then you're going to want the best cards you can buy. Some companies don't have ot worry about the cost/quality aspect, since they realized from the start that increased rendering speed is not more important than good graphics. So I guess if you suck to begin with, you can just worry about more memory, since that's the kind of attitude you have towards your work. I've got a feeling you know what you're talking about, except for the fact that it's not a good idea.
  • Why in the world would someone spend $150 on a video card? When I read the title, I expected affordable video cards to be in the $10-$20 range. Why do you need to spend $150 on a card for a CLI?? My old ISA 1 meg SVGA card works fine.

  • Uh, if you don't play 3D games, you probably don't need to buy a 3D video card, do you? Just like if you don't drive in demanding road conditions, you don't need 4 wheel drive.

    Using that logic, how do you explain all the soccer mums with their Explorers and Suburbans? I bet the most demanding driving condition they get is driving up the kerb into their driveway...

    Back to the topic... I think the previous poster was trying to point out that all gamers have been lumped into a group and they all need a 3D card, cos 'you need it'.

    I personally have a Celeron 500 with a TNT 2 and I am very happy with my 64 fps in Quake 3...

  • Why would you trust XFree86 to write a better driver for NVidia's cards than NVidia themselves? Sure, it's open source (and yeah, open source is usually good), but if you look at the state of current 3D drivers, the "open source" Voodoo 5 driver is crap [linuxgames.com]. The drivers for all NVidia cards, on the other hand, have consistently shown themselves to be of extremely high quality. I use them myself (GeForce 2), and obviously I'm a happy customer. :)

    ------

  • Just a clarification: There are plenty of good open source drivers out there. My point is that "open source" does not always mean "better", although it often does. :)

    ------

  • Marketing vs. Necessity (Score:4)

    by Poligraf ( 146965 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @12:40PM (#664266)
    Manufacturers probably hate such reviews since they get most of their profits from the latest and greatest hardware. So, everything that tells smart shoppers to avoid wasting money and be happy with a bit older hardware that is still perfectly capable deprives them from the stupidity tax enthusiasts and ignorants pay (I know that some folks MUST have this hardware for CAD, but they are minority and usually don't pick the tab themselves, leaving it to their employer).
  • The fact of the matter is that you want a card with an open source driver, so that's what you buy.

    Why can't it be that simple? When you suggest boycotting you turn this into a political agenda. You want to punish NVidia because after all, every hardware make who isn't releasing open source drivers MUST be the spawn of satan, right?

    NVidia isn't the only company out there keeping their drivers closed, only the most successful, so you're basically punishing them for being the best.

    It'd be much simpler to understand if there were no linux drivers for NVidia cards, like in the matter of the newer Logitech quickcams, but in reality, NVidia has hands down the best graphics card drivers out there.

    A penny for your thoughts.
  • I already have a reasonable AGP video card (a GeForce DDR), but I'd like a second (and perhaps third - I have spare monitors) screen since both OSes I use now support it (Win2k and XFree86 - on FreeBSD currently), but this support seems to have arrived just as hardware manufacturers have given up completely on PCI!

    What I really want is a G200/G400 dual-head PCI, but you can't get them anywhere! Someone could do really nicely making a decent-spec PCI video card specifically to be a second head - not super-fast, but reasonable. Re-release the PCI TNT. Make a GeForce NotSoUltra (same capabilities, 1/4 of the bandwidth). Whatever. I think there really is a market for second-screen video cards.

    (of course, I'd also like nVidia to support 3d on other Xfree86 implementations rather than just provide a great big linux-only binary hackup, but that's another story. I don't use GL on X too much, although partly because of this)
  • Why hasn't any company taken this info and made a card that runs at 72fps no matter what the conditions. Put the greater processing power to work doing something important. Jeeze

  • Re:Voodoo 4 4500 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dude, the V4 sucks. Check out benchmarks on any hardware review site like Anandtech, FiringSquad, or Tom's Hardware and you'll see that the GeForce2 MX owns it in everything for a lower price. (Sure you've got hardware FSAA but your card isn't fast enough to do it and still be playable)

  • The following affordable linux games are known to work perfectly under all the tested cards.

    • adventure
    • fortune
    • mille
    • wargames
    • worm
    • wump

    In fact, almost every game in the bsd-games package is well suited to these "value" cards, with the exception of maybe "fish".

  • "What about decent PCI cards? (no, really)"

    3dfx still makes decent PCI cards. They're widely available, and you can sometimes find the V3-2000 PCI for $60 or less. Image quality and performance are actually quite good, and the V3 overclocks well (if you're into that).

    If you're looking for something a little newer, the V4-4500 PCI and V5-5500 PCI cost a little more, but still perform quite well compared to their AGP counterparts.

  • All other things being considered, the Matrox cards continue to have the best output quality, bar none in this price range. From the Matrox Millenium II on forward, this has been true.

    If you want a card that really holds up to high refresh rates at high resolutions for your 2D work, the Matrox deserves extra consideration.

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