Gyrene Posted January 25, 2002 Share Posted January 25, 2002 My cousin has a low-buck Cyrix II 300mhz PCI only PC, Win 98SE with (soon to be) 160MB of RAM and the 8MB Rage card in it isn't doing the trick (Sluggish performance at 800x600 like when shooting LOS's in TCP/IP) What would be a good choice for a low-buck video card? Are Kyro II cards pretty decent? Would GeForce 2 based cards be overkill for this system? I guess it's really down to those two. I figured that 300mhz and an 8mb card would be plenty as my Rev D iMac is only 333mhz with a 6mb Rage slower than my cousin's and it runs very smoothly at the same rez. Thanks in advance Gyrene 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 25, 2002 Share Posted January 25, 2002 Unfortunately a direct comparison between the PowerPC speeds and speeds of Intel-compatible CPU's isn't accurate. Your Mac is quite a bit faster than your relative's Cyrix 300MHz (which is among the slower CPU brands; Intel and AMD are typically much faster, especially in floating point IIRC). Assuming that your relative's computer actually has an AGP slot (you'll want to double-check - I believe the Cyrix 300MHz may be a Socket 7 CPU)... The Kyro II-based cards work fine in CM with the exception of the concurrent use of FSAA and transparency effects. When FSAA is on, the settings to enable proper transparency in CM will lockup/corrupt the screen. The Kyro's don't handle transparency (internally) as well as they should, so it requires external buffers. Anyway... with the right settings selected the Kyros can work fine with CM (and support all effects). I'd suggest the Hercules, Inno3D or VideoLogic brands for the Kyro chipset (and get a 64Mb card too). The GeForce2 will be a faster card, though your relative's CPU is going to be 'dead weight' for it. The latest drivers seem to work fine with CM and all effects are supported. Between the two of them I would say that the GeForce2 would probably be the faster (even on the Cyrix 300MHz), but it probably won't be noticeable most of the time on this PC. Your relative's motherboard could pose a compatibility problem for either videocard however. Unfortunately there's no absolute information on which particular motherboards or chipsets would pose a problem or not. If your relative decides to upgrade make sure that they are clear on the return/exchange/credit policy. It may come down to upgrading the motherboard and CPU in order to get a good video card working (as a near-worst case scenario). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted January 26, 2002 Share Posted January 26, 2002 Go for a 32mb TNT2 PCI. Still faster than the CPU, and much cheaper. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazy Canuck Posted January 26, 2002 Share Posted January 26, 2002 I'm running a lowly GeForce 256 with a P3 600, it runs fine up to a 5000 pt game, only then does it slow down. As to compatability, that's beyond my limited knowledge. KC 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gyrene Posted January 26, 2002 Author Share Posted January 26, 2002 Schrullenhaft : That PC is PCI only. wwb_99: I forgot about TNT cards...Those might be the way to go price-wise. That Cyrix 300 might be slow, but so far the price is right: About $30 total for a new 56k modem and 128mb of RAM, the rest was free. Thanks for the replies. Gyrene 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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