Voodoo 2 anyone? :)

[Galant]

Hi again, here I am feeding on that lovely info you guys are holding in your brains.

This time it's regards gfx cards. I've checked around and it seems everyone has a different opinion - I was wondering whether you guys might provide some consistency in opinion.

You see the last time I bought a gfx card I lived in Lancashire and I got a Voodoo 2 setting me back at least 150 sterling if I remember rightly!

Now I live in Arizona and it seems quite a few people are recommending the Radeon 9600 Pro.

It turns out I can get a regular 9600 for $107 (about 63 sterling).
As for the 9600 Pro, I think I can get hold of one for $140 (about 82 sterling). Then again, some suggest forget the 9600, the 9500 Pro is better but at $202 (about 119 sterling) is it really?

Or then of course you can go towards the Nvidia's - about which I know nothing.

I found one site even recommended an MSI card.

?????????????

What's more, is there really much difference between 128 and 256 on a vid card?

I'm just looking for a good card which I wont have to replace too soon and I'd love to pay around $110 (about 65 sterling).

So, is it 9600, Pro, Nvidia, or something else?

[gamezfreak]

The 9600 PRO is your answer my friend.

There's too many reasons to list - But apparently the 9600 non pro isn't up to standard as the PRO version.

[Korky]

ur best knowing nothing about nvidia , and yes the 9500pro is better than the 9600pro.

[Galant]

Oh and I forgot to mention - do I go for ATI, Sapphire, or another???

I'd heard the Sapphire Rad. 9600 Pro Atlantis was the best of the bunch.

[Galant]

Oh, and how do those prices match up to their UK equivalents?

Just curious.

[gamezfreak]

The Sapphire is a nice piece of kit.

Or you could go for the Connect3D version .

[gamezfreak]

£82 is excellent for a 9600PRO!

They are rougholy £120 over here in the UK!

[Stoo]

The US $ price is about the same as the UK£ price

You lucky snotrag

[Swafe]

yup - there nice prices

9500 pro....then 9600 pro.....then 9600

you really dont want nvidia, thats like buying a p4 when you could have an amd

its up to you, on how much you can afford really ! the memory sizes (128-256) really depend on the card, e.g. 9200s can have 64, 128 or 256, and theres apparently not a lot of difference between them , but id imagine a 256 9600 pro would be nice

[Austin]

Voodoo2 was great in its day, well below even the Rad7000/GF2MX so be prepared for a huge increase in speed and abilities. I'm just curious as to what PC this is going in to, anyway on to the info...

Rad9600PRO is what you want, no doubt. Rad9500PRO is slightly faster about the speed of the new Rad9600XT but don't pay much extra for either of those. Rad9500PRO like the Rad9700/9700PRO have been discontinued. The 9700 is you can find one is a big step up from the 9600PRO/9500PRO and when o/c'ed can easily yield 9800PRO type of speeds. Hard to find though.

256MB is a total waste of money, 128MB is what you should go for and a Rad9600PRO_128MB is EASILY better than a Rad9600_256MB in ALL cases. Brand actually matters very little but it's considered best to avoid Powercolor cards, other than that go by price and bundle. nVidia's DX9 (GF-FX) suck, FX5700ultra is the only one likely to be worth going for and even that could be alittle risky. 9600PRO is the card for you, plain and simple.

[TeePee]

The Voodoo2 was so good, I bought two of them!

[Nick]

lol, I did that too! I got two to run in SLI mode... then found that SLI needed to be 1024x768 and my poxy monitor only went up to 800x600!

[Austin]

I made do with an AGP card sporting the Intel 740 chipset (IIRC my first real 3D accelerator). IIRC it was only when the Voodoo3 came out and prices dropped that I finally got me some Voodoo Banshee lovin' which was practically a Voodoo2 with 2D built in. Ran Unreal real nice

[Nick]

I remember them... I went down the far superior Matrox G400 route... 2d graphics and DVD playback were awesome and I still reckon no-one does better 2D than Matrox.

Just a shame not one developer took advantage of the Matrox's hardware bump-mapping.. but I guess that's always the problem when you buy kit with new features on it, by the time people are writing for it, its out of date on the 'grunt' side of things!

[Galant]

My current system is running a Banshee.

It's a Celeron 433, 131 Ram, Banshee 8MB, and who knows what else?!

We (my bro and I) quit using our PC for anything beyond net access and MD Word. We had been big gamers but moved onto XBox.

[directhex]

get another voodoo2, and run them in screaming fast SLI mode