OK a couple quick questions on which vid card to get today Please help me out guys

[Shatter]

First of this card is going to be for my bros PC. I gave him my old PC and it is lacking a good video card. He has a Voodoo 5500 PCI, and the frame rate with CMBB is just completely crap, I have never seen such lag on any game ever.

His PC only has PCI slot so it is somewhat limited in video cards options.

Here is what I came up with:

Either a Geforce MX420 or MX440.

Leaning toward the Geforce MX440 has better performance stats with it.

Only problems is all I can find is one called Geforce MX440 TV OUT PCI.

1st what does the TV OUT mean, and will it work?

2nd there are numerous manufactors, such as Vision tech, Xtacey, Verto, Prowler & PNY. Which one of this should I go with?

[ September 27, 2002, 05:57 AM: Message edited by: Shatter ]

[Bruno Weiss]

Visontech is a solid company. TV Out is for television output, but you don't have to use that and can disable it.

On the otherhand, if it is an older PC (you didn't say what CPU), and only has a PCI slot, your only going to get minimal results. Today's software and card hardware are basically made for AGP transfer speeds. I have no idea what CMBB would look like on a PCI versus an AGP, but the basic math is, not as fast.

[ September 27, 2002, 06:03 AM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[Shatter]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

Visontech is a solid company. TV Out is for television output, but you don't have to use that and can disable it.

On the otherhand, if it is an older PC (you didn't say what CPU), and only has a PCI slot, your only going to get minimal results. Today's software and card hardware are basically made for AGP transfer speeds. I have no idea what CMBB would look like on a PCI versus an AGP, but the basic math is, not as fast.

The specs for his PC:

Pent 3 700 Mghz

256 MB Ram

Vodoo 5500 PCI 32MB

His card info(Voodoo 5500 32 MB PCI)

Core clock speed 166.80 Mghz

Memory clock speed 166.80 Mghz

The Geforce 4 MX440 64MB info:

Core clock Speed: 270 MHz

Memory clcok Speed: 400 MHz

Seems like a big improvement to me. It not that the CMBB looks bad, its just the frame rate is completely awful, even with no trees and the doodads turned off.

[Bruno Weiss]

Well, there's no doubt the GF4 chip is a big improvement over the voodoo (now pretty old technology), but you'll still be limited due to the PCI slot, and the lower end CPU. What the overall results would be is difficult to predict, but I think it safe to say it would be better than what you have.

[Sirocco]

How does the demo play on that system? I currently have a P2 350, with 256Mb of RAM and a Voodoo 3 card, and framerate and graphic quality is good with CMBO and the CMBB demo. Before thinking about replacing the video card I'd be taking a long hard look at the resources that are being used by other tasks when you load CMBB.

[Malakovski]

That sounds like a pretty handicapped system. A new gfx card may help, but it sounds like the performance bottleneck may be somewhere else. I'm not expert enough to know whether it is the PCI vs. AGP bandwidth, maybe a slow motherboard, or something else.

I would consider an upgrade using some of the parts you have now. This is what I did a few months ago. I got a new motherboard, a 1.4 GHz processor, a new case/power supply, and a Geforce3 Ti200. I used my hold hard drive, memory, et cetera, and went from a 300 MHz Pentium II to a 1.4 GHz Athlon for about $400. Prices are even lower now. If you know yourself or have a friend who can put a machine together, this is the way to go.

I would really hesitate to recommend any individual upgrade for the machine you are using currently. Seems like the problem is more likely the motherboard or the PCI only video.

[Shatter]

Hey guys I had a thought, could the problem be that the drivers for the Voodoo 5500 card are not completely compatible with Direct X 8.0 and above?

He is running Windows Me with direct x 8.1.