Buying a new video card

[Ravenous85]

I have decided it's time to finally upgrade the old TnT 2 m64 card. I need help though, on deciding which card to get. Are there any brands (visiontek,leadtek,etc) that I should look out for that are good/bad?

I was looking into getting something along the lines of a Radeon 8500 128mb or Gf4 4200/4600. I will be willing to spend around 400 dollars Canadian. Thankyou

[DaddyB]

check out www.ncix.com (http://www.ncix.com/canada/productlist.php?majorcatid=101&minorcatid=108), they have some good deals. you can get an MSI GF4 Ti4400 for $387 at that site. I think leadtek and gainward are the 2 most popular GF4 brands around here and they may OC a litle better, MSI cards are usually a little cheaper but they all perform nearly the same. I dont think there is really a bad GF4Ti.

on monday the radeon 9700 will be released so other cards prices should fall shortly after that but the 9700 will probably sell for $600 or more.

I would reccomend a GF4Ti over the 8500 and the radeon 8500 over a geforce 3 (and 9700 over them all but it will just cost too much).

[Ravenous85]

Ok about 4 hours from where I live I can get this:

"Leadtek GF4/TI4200 A250LE-TD MyVIVO: 128M DDR AGP4x w/TV-out, DV-i, cables, 2 game CDs, $290 canadian"

I have no idea if this is worth getting, so let me know please :)

[DaddyB]

yeah thats a good price and a good card, it has 128mb of ram which will be good for running future games like doom3 but there is also a version of that card with 64mb of faster ram. I myself would go for the 128mb that you are looking at but if you want to be able to OC the ram on the card a lot then the 64mb is the way to go. If you plan on using that card for a few years then the 128mb of ram will pay off in the long run but either card will blow away the TNT you are using.

[MospeadasDark]

Stay clear away from visiontek. They're in the process of killing themselves.

Poor quality components. A dab of thermo goo that covers not enough.

What you get when you let marketing run the company=\

[Ravenous85]

DaddyB thankyou very much for the info.

I'm not looking to OC anything on my computer really, don't really know how it's done and don't wanna wreck anything at this point, possibly when it's a little older.