why is visiontek ti200 so cheap?

[Lt. Max]

in pricewatch i can find them under 90 bucks... ? are they crap or are they not. my cousin definately needs a new video card so im lookin at a ti200..

[slim_lim]

Visiontek is considered to be pretty good. High quality components, good image quality, warranty. As for ti200 cards, they used to be pretty popular a few months ago. They're underclocked versions of regular GF3's (175/400 vs. 200/460, I think). Some ppl reported to have been able to o/c them all the way to GF3 or even GF3 ti500 speed, which makes for a major performace boost. I had a Visiontek GF3 ti 200 though, and it only went as high as 430mhz on mem :(. At stock speed ti200 are fairly good cards but it may be worthwhile to get a vanilla GF3 for ~$20 extra IMO. Or is you're looking for great performance and are willing to spend a bit more, grab a GF4 ti4200 for ~$150. Best bang for the buck right now and FAR superior to any GF3.
Oh yeah. There's also Radeon 8500LE for ~$100+ that alot of people have been very happy with lately. I can't vouch for it myself, as I never used one, but it might be worth checking out.

[josephtischer]

I have the Visiontek GF3 TI200. Decent card.

I was able to oc all the way to 230/500 on it.

The main reason they are probably so low priced is that retailers got burned by the quick release of the GF4's. Usually retailers get a year before a full upgrade on graphic cards. In this case it was about 4 months. That's the only reason. That and nVidia is flooding the market with the MX cards and confusing the consumers with bad numbering schemes.

[Penguin4x4]

And when a new GeForce series comes along, the previous line is discontinued