Video cards
 

I'm in the market for a new PC, but I also want to juice up my current PC a bit for gaming purposes. It's an Athlon 1300 with 256MB RAM and 98SE, which should do for the time being.

My video card is a 32MB GeForce2 GTS, which has served me well, but there are a lot of newer alternatives out there. I'm looking for something that's a reasonable bargain (read as: is far from state-of-the-art) but is a measurable upgrade from what I've got.

GeForce 3s, lower-end GeForce 4s, Radions. Enlighten me as to what're the best <$100 buys out there.

A decent video card that will get the job done is the Radeon 9200 from Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspe...cat=Video+Card

No guarantees for full linux perfection (ATI drivers are a bit spotty sometimes on that platform), but for Windows, with a sub $100 in mind, this should handle all of your needs. I've been happy with all of my ATI cards from Crucial.

You have 256Mb ram and you think a video card will help?

First, get 512.

2nd. Get a Geforce3.

You don't need a Radeon 9xxx, your CPU, bus, ram will be the bottleneck in that PC anyway.

1) I'd get 512 if I could figure out exactly why my system's memory (PC133) costs time-and-a-half MORE than DDR memory that's newer _and_ faster. What is this, an antique shop where older products appreciate in value?

2) Show me where I can get a GeForce3 new-in-the-box at a price low enough to make buying an older card worthwhile.

(I'm staring hard at a $125 ASUS GeForce4 Ti4200 on Newegg.)

Holy cow. I admit it's been a while since I spent much time playing PC games, but 512 megs of memory? What game(s) need that kind of space?

I've got 512 in all of my machines, but that's 'cause I'm working on a Java product at work.

My 2 cents = for what it's worth

98SE = more memory won't change as much

ti4200 = in my system now and does the job nicely

Your real need = probably anything that will be able to run the doom 3, half life 2 engines that will be the basis for those and many future 3d games

The good news = the xbox target has reduced the low level playability so that even geforce 2 may be able to run them decently

The bad news = both games will take advantage of geforce 4 level capabilities to improve the overall experience

Final recommendation = get the ti4200

Why do you still use Windows 98? Windows 2000 and Windows XP are SO much more stable.

Because I don't own a single program that requires Windows XP to run. Therefore, I'd be spending $100+ on an OS that doesn't let me do anything in particular that I can't do already. When I have a glaring need for XP, I'll move on.

It's sort of like how I resisted moving from WfWG 3.11 to 95 and from 95 to 98SE. My old PC across the room is still running 95, because it doesn't need to be running anything more modern than that (and with its specs, it'd probably run 98 like a constipated wombat).

*cough* eMule it *cough*

What game doesn't require 512? I have 1gig and had 1 gig for the past 2 years...

Lets see, MaxPayne 2, Need For Speed Underground, Chrome, Day of Defeat. I could go on..

Ram is cheap as dirt these days. Hell my laptop has 512..just because it can.

But yeah..I'm a gamer. I can't help it.

If 256MB of Crucial PC133 RAM at $70.99 is "cheap as dirt," I need to start putting my back yard's dirt on eBay. PC100 (what my dad's system needs) is even more ridiculous -- 256MB of DDR memory is _cheaper_ than 128MB of PC100.

(half that price on the 'bay, btw)

Half price, but is it NIB, or is it likely to have been static-zapped somewhere along the line?

(I've bought memory from eBay before, but they were 1MB SIMMs for my wife's family's old 486. That was a very different price range.)

And why are people asking $15 for shipping for an item the size of a pocket comb?

I searched for crucial pc133 256mb and then clicked on completed items and saw a whole range of prices between $25 and $53.

I wasn't referring to what programs will or won't run on it. What I mean is that probably 90% of all the problems you've encountered with your PC would not have occured under Windows XP. Windows 98 sucks. It and the versions before it are the entire reason Windows has such a bad reputation.

As far as the money, I'd just pirate it. But I can understand if you are against that.

I could suspend my ethics long enough to pirate Microsoft products... if I knew that I wouldn't end up getting whacked by the Product Activation thingy, if I knew that I was getting an accurate copy of the CD that didn't include some diabolical bug that'd turn my hard drive into chop suey or forward my PayPal password to Mongolia, and if I hadn't been unimpressed by XP's performance on both PCs I've seen it running on.

At the time that I bought my current PC (2 1/2 years ago), 98SE was a no-brainer compared to Windows Me.