I need your advices on this please

[dhkimboa]

hello to everyone out there !
I am planning to upgrade my video card, riva tnt2 m64 that I bought a few months ago, to a geforce 2 mx or mx 400. I live in mexico so you will know they are more expensive than usa. Would you recommend me this ? They cost like $ 125 down here.

[Betamax]

Well I'd wait a little. From what I heard the next nvidia card is due soon which always means that the existing cards will be available at a cheaper price. I'll check that magazine again when I found it.

[Rargh]

If you are going to buy one of those two cards, I wouldn t buy the Gforce MX400, I ve heard it had very bad ram on it...
The Gforce 2mx 200 would be a good choice..
But, i agree w/ Betamax, waiting is best solution, christmas is coming, companies will drop the prices...

Bye

[Raziel]

Originally posted by Rargh
If you are going to buy one of those two cards, I wouldn t buy the Gforce MX400, I ve heard it had very bad ram on it...
The Gforce 2mx 200 would be a good choice..
But, i agree w/ Betamax, waiting is best solution, christmas is coming, companies will drop the prices...

Bye

I guess you got wrong Rargh,it's the GeForce 2 mx 200 which sucks,not the 400,the 400 has performences equal to a normal GF2mx.

[dhkimboa]

thanks for your comments but why mx 200 sucks then ?
which is the difference ?

[dhkimboa]

the difference the difference please ?

[Fury]

Originally posted by dhkim
the difference the difference please ?
well i don't know the difference...
why don't u buy geforce2 gts??i heard it was good...


i'm buying a new videocard,too.
but i don't know wish Vcard should i buy????
i was thinking about buying geforce 3 ti500 but it is so expensive!!!!!
I want a good VCARD...can u help me choosing one???


:confused:

[dhkimboa]

well, can't buy geforce 2 gts. They're pretty expensive here ( almost 200 ). Anyway, I've got a geforce 2 mx 400 64mg. It works just nice.

How can I overclock my video card ? I've heard overclocking this video card can achieve the performance of a gts.

[Xeven]

well if you're really interested go here: Tweak3D (http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/gfmxoc/) :)

[Fury]

well can u ppl help choosing a good and
not very expensive Vcard?


:confused:

[Demigod]

I was stuck with this same dilemma a week ago and I decided to go with a GeForce 2 GTS. It was 50% more expensive than the GeForce 2 MX 400 but it was worth it(actually the card was a GeForce 2 Pro [as can be seen in my specs] although it was advertised as a GTS). If you can squeeze out a couple more bucks I highly recommend a GF2 GTS or Pro. With the release of the GF3, prices have plummeted to outrageous levels (original price of GF2 GTS = $429, now = $169, CDN pricing).

[Ryos]

> With the release of the GF3 prices have plummeted to outrageous levels

Yep. Definitely an economical way to get very good cards.

[Xeven]

that's right, if you follow nvidia's six month product cycle, you'll know when and when not to buy nvidia cards, at least on a price standpoint anyway.. or whatever it was i was saying.. coz i seem to have forgotten what it was.. ehehe:heh:

[rio]

Originally posted by dhkim
hello to everyone out there !
I am planning to upgrade my video card, riva tnt2 m64 that I bought a few months ago, to a geforce 2 mx or mx 400. I live in mexico so you will know they are more expensive than usa. Would you recommend me this ? They cost like $ 125 down here.

$125

thats too expensive

ge force mx series should be lower than $60

[Fury]

i'm buying THE GF3...that is a good choise??

well i think it is...is a bit expensive but i think it will do just fine...

any one know the gf3 price in europe??

thanks;)

[Iran]

THE Diff. in of MX400 nad MX200 according to my inno3d mx400 manual

mx400 64mb mx200 64 mb
mem bus 128 bits 128bits
gpu core 200mhz 175mhz
mem clk 166 166
ramdac 350mhz 350mhz
mem
bandwith 2.7gb/s 1.3gb/s
fill rate 400m pixel/s 350m pixel/s
800m texel/s 700m texel/s

[dhkimboa]

hey Rio, I said that I live in mexico that's why they are that expensive. :mad: :(

[Cerberus]

Here's what really matters when you're buying a video card:

Keep in mind that there is no standard for specs.
Most specs you see out there don't mean jack.
While they advertise that a card can do 25 million poly/sec & unlimited hardware lights, what they fail to mention, is that it can't do both at the same time. You get the idea. The main things you want to look for are the RAMDAC speed, MEM Core speed, MEM Bandwidth, and AGP specs. Now, the other specs might be useful for comparison, but just remember that they are optimum, theoretical maximums, and have no *real* bearing on real-world performance. They represent what the card "should" be able to do. But again, they list the abilities assuming that that's all the card will be doing at one time, so specs represent the cards FULL processing power performing that ONE action, which (needless to say) doesn't happen in a real-world app.

RAMDAC speed is going to have the most effect on overall speed, with the memory bandwidth limiting the card's texturing ability.
The new GF2 GTS is a good buy with a RAM bandwidth of about 1.7G/sec. If you really want some power, you can go with the GF2 pro which has super-fast ram at like 3.2G/sec. I have a Geforce 2 GTS & I love it. I will eventually upgrade to a GF3, but like someone else pointed out, you have to watch nVidia's product cycle and wait until the price comes down enough. Anyone looking at a GF3 should hold off a few more months, cause you're gonna see the price start to drop about $200

[ToM_E]

Ok...look! Geforce 2 mx 200 sucks and so does 400 (Im using a 400) I think all Geforce 2 series suck. Just buy a Voodoo 5 off ebay like me and fivefeet8 :) It rocks. And Its $125 there? Whoa!!! I bought mine for $80

[Demigod]

Originally posted by Cerberus
RAMDAC speed is going to have the most effect on overall speed, with the memory bandwidth limiting the card's texturing ability.
The new GF2 GTS is a good buy with a RAM bandwidth of about 1.7G/sec. If you really want some power, you can go with the GF2 pro which has super-fast ram at like 3.2G/sec. I have a Geforce 2 GTS & I love it. I will eventually upgrade to a GF3, but like someone else pointed out, you have to watch nVidia's product cycle and wait until the price comes down enough. Anyone looking at a GF3 should hold off a few more months, cause you're gonna see the price start to drop about $200
I think there are some inaccuracies in your post. First of all the RAMDAC speed doesn't have any effect on 3D graphics what-so-ever. All it determines is how fast graphics (2D or 3D) can be drawn to the screen. Most modern videocard have a RAMDAC of 350 Mhz or higher which should be more than enough to display full frames at 1600x1200 or higher (provided the videocard can run that fast). Second, the memory bandwidth of the GF2 GTS is MUCH higher than you've posted. On Nvidia's site it claims a memory bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s, which is pretty close to its actual performance. The GeForce 2 Pro is a bit higher, at 6.4 GB/s, since it uses 200 Mhz memory instead of the 166 Mhz of the GTS. I have a GeForce 2 Pro and I can testify that the memory is not more advanced than the GTS, it just runs faster. I think memory speed is the most important thing to consider on modern day videocards. The GF2's primary performance bottleneck is its memory, as can be shown in benchmarks of the GF2 GTS and GF2 Ultra (30% improvement in speed).

[Cerberus]

Oops. You are correct about the RAMDAC, my appologies. I didn't remember the ram bandwidth of the GF2Pro, and I don't argue that it's the same type of ram. Sorry if I made it sound like it wasn't the same in the post. And you're right, ram bandwidth is probably the most important thing in todays video cards.

I response to Tom_E's post about the Voodoo5, I have only one thing to say: I've been an nVidia fan since I bought my first Diamond Viper V330 (PCI Riva 128). If 3DFX is really still the best chipset out there, then why did they sell all of their intellectual property rights to nVidia? :)

[Xeven]

because they wanted to monopolize their own business and in turn drove away oem manufactures.. in other words.. they screwed themselves really good...

[Demigod]

There are many factors that contributed to the death of 3dfx. One of them, as Xeven posted before is that they drove away OEM manufacturers. They became a videocard manufacturer (from a chipset manufacturer) upon the release of the Voodoo 3. I think one of their reasons for this was to get rid of Nvidia. By leaving OEMs high and dry, they expected them to eventually fade out of the videocard business and in turn leave Nvidia no where to sell their chipsets. However, this actually backfired on them with Nvidia releasing a superior chipset to the Voodoo 3 and I guess you could say the OEMs were able to enact their revenge. Nvidia's ascension to the frame rate throne (with the TNT2) was acknowledged by most hardware sites but the real bomb came with the release of the GeForce256. This card blew away all the competition and 3dfx took 6 months to respond to it. After a long wait the Voodoo 5 was finally released and it was supposed to take back the throne from Nvidia but it fell short. Nvidia, with their 6 month product cycle was able to, once again, release a superior chipset to 3dfx's. And this was the primary reason for their demise. They constantly failed to produce a faster videocard than their competition. They also didn't incorporate any advanced features until they were, as 3dfx put it, "in demand". In short, they got lazy, and it caught up with them.

[Cerberus]

Well put :)