New VID Card - Suggestions?

[Panzer Leader]

As mentioned earlier, I am getting a new video card, but am having a hard time deciding. This is what I am looking for:

32MB DDR (or 64 if I can afford it)

TV Out (fingers crossed on this one!)

$100 or less

ATI Radeon makes pretty much that, but I heard you can't do fog with it. Is this true? Is their a way to get it to show fog? Anyone know if you will be able to see fog in CMBB with a Radeon?

Okay, if Radeon is out due to the fog factor, what else is there? A Geforce2 seems to fit the bill, though I haven't seen a DDR with TV-Out for under $100, has anyone?

[Panzer Leader]

OK, I did a search (groan)

And it turns out that my TNT2 is a good video card, though a little old, for CM. But Dammit! I think it is heating up my system too much.

Here is my system:

Athlon T-Bird 1.4

TNT2

256 DDR RAM

7200 RPM 100 DMA HD

SHuttle AK31 motherboard

Okay, It sounds like I've got money to burn but that's not really the case. I just want a good 3D card, maybe to hook up with the TV and maybe to be DDR (after all my RAM is ) but I just keep having computer problems and am pulling my hair out trying to fixt them.

The only reason I hate my TNT2 is because everything else practically has been upgraded but still CM screws up, and still it boots me out of most 3D games. I even have troubles playing Rogue Squadron! Lock ups, blue screens, this is what happens when I try to play 3d, and I have uninstalled re-installed, REFORMATTED, updated drivers, EVERYTHING! Acch! Pulling hair out.

[Gyrene]

If you can live with no TV out you can get a GeForce2 MX 400 with 64Mb for about $90.

Gyrene

[Schrullenhaft]

The entire Radeon line is incapable of displaying fog-tables under DirectX. Until ATI decides to put the effort into fully supporting the feature there will be no way of getting fog in CMBO/CMBB (on the Mac fog-tables are supported under RAVE). One advantage that the Radeon line has however is that some of the models may be capable of simultaneous output to both a standard CRT and a TV (most cards can't do this). The Radeon VE's are under US$100 and can do video out (and the PowerMagic version has 64Mb, while the standard ATI OEM/Retal has 32Mb), but the VE's have several functions eliminated/disabled in the GPU (T&L) and they only have a 64-bit memory path, reducing their performance.

Looking on Pricewatch under Multimedia > Video Cards > GeForce2 TI it came up with a number of distributors that sell a TV-out capable GeForce2 Titaniums (64Mb). These are slower than the GeForce 3 line and the GeForce2 Ultras, but faster than the rest of the GeForce line. Some of the more brand-name like boards are hovering at about US$100 (before shipping and handling).

However, unless your TNT2 is actually malfunctioning, these newer video cards will draw more current and produce more heat than your current video card. Do you know if your current video card's fan is spinning ? Has the heatsink ever been removed and reinstalled (usually you don't want to do this, that's why I ask) ?

[ 12-09-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]</p>

[Panzer Leader]

Maybe that's it! I know the CPU fan is working, but as for the rest -- no idea. I've always been afraid to open the case, so I take it to the shop I bought it from (an hour away) when I need something done. Perhaps (under my wife's glare) I will open it up and see just what's going on under there. I know I bought an extra case fan, but don't know if it's running either. I'm not even sure if it's a heat problem, only what that Sisoft program tells me, but by hitting escape to the desktop, I can watch the CPU temp rise as I play the game.

So whether it is accurate or not, that reading DOES seeom to prove that when I play CMBO the temperature steadily rises. I wish I had the time and know-how to really get into this problem, but it's hard to find the time.

I saw a 64MB DDR Geforce3 ti-200 (I think) with TV-Out for $160, so I might go with that, but man I WANT that All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500, damn those fog tables!

I think tomorrow (while my wife's at work) I will crack the case and see if my fans are going.

[WWB]

WRT price-performance curves, one is better off buying the old GeForce models rather than the titanium line.

The GeForce2 Pro, with 64mb DDR is avaliable for about $100, or at least I got one for that price. It has slightly better benchmarks than a GeForce2 Ti 200 for less.

The GeForce3 has slightly worse performance than the GeForce3 Ti 500s, but it is significantly less. And it is not like one can actually push these cards to the limit in CM.

Driver support is a moot point, there are no signs that nVidia is going to drop support for some parts of the line to force people to upgrade.

WWB

[SpazManOught]

SHuttle AK31 motherboard, is that a VIA chipset motherboard? if so reinstall the AGP drivers in standard mode, and then force AGP into 2x mode in the BIO's, this has sorted all of my lockup problems and you really wont notice any performance drop.(you could always try 1X if you still get crashes)

What about kryo2 based cards? are they any good with CM? do they support all the features? is there any graphics corruption like Geforce under win2000/XP?

I would suggest that you try to fix all your PC woes yourself, paying some shop staff loads of cash just to reformat/reinstall windows every month gets a bit tyresome

[WWB]

Kyro based cards have big issues with CM. And it seems that the GeForce/Win2000 issues are close to being resolved by the newest drivers.

Note that I have the thing working perfectly with a GeForce, but I might be an odd case.

WWB

[Schrullenhaft]

In regards to Kyro II cards - using the 9031 drivers CMBO works fine. The only issue is one of an object in front of transparent buildings becoming transparent as you view them at Level 1. In other words if you had an AFV in front of an occupied building that was transparent, at Level 1 as you line up the AFV with the building the part of the AFV that 'clips' the building will be transparent. Other than that there don't appear to be any issues as far as I'm aware. The 9031's are available for Win9x/ME, Win2K and WinXP and they all perform the same (with DirectX 8.1).

The 23.11 drivers for the NVidia line are buggy and I don't recommend them, but unfortunately they have become the latest official driver from NVidia. Many users (in other games) have had all sorts of display problems and there is hardly any 3D performance increase with them. The results with them have varied for a lot of people, but there seems to be far more complaints about them than previous drivers, hence I wouldn't recommend this latest driver. Several users here have had better luck with the unofficial driver version 23.10 and 15.70.

As for speed, this is the general hardware difference between the top line GeForce2 family (from HardOCP):

"A GeForce2 Pro is clocked at 200/400 (video core speed in MHz/Memory speed in MHz) and a GeForce2 Ultra is clocked at 250/460 and the new GeForce2 Ti is clocked at 250/400. So what we can see is that it's a GeForce2 Pro with an Ultra core clock speed, however the memory is still at Pro levels of 400Mhz."

Technically the GeForce2 Ti should be faster since the core clock speed (manufacturer specified default) is 50MHz higher than a GeForce2 Pro, but since the memory speed is the same, the performance gain won't be quite so great. For a number of titles there may be no discernable difference in speed between a GeForce2 Pro and a GeForce2 Titanium. Basically a Titanium is the current GPU core that is being manufactured in a new fab that allows for higher clock speeds. Other than the process for manufacturing them (and the resultant ability to clock them at a higher speed) the chips are exactly the same - family per family (though the GeForce3 Ti200 is actually slower than the standard GeForce 3 - a marketing lesson everyone learned from Intel a decade ago).