New vid card or wait for GeForceFX

Hey, I will be getting new games like UT2003, Unreal2, and Doom3, and with my current gf2mx 200 i dont think I will be able to play those. I can't even play gta3 that well at lowest everything. Should I wait to get a GeForceFX, if so, when will that be available, and really how much difference will I notice from a GF4 Ti4600, or should I just get a GF4 card now?

welcome to the forums

as far as doom3... the geforcefx will be out before doom3 is.

if i were in your shoes i would look long and hard into a radeon 8500. they are like 80 bucks now and are still very recent technology.

if you are planning to spend 200+ i would certainly wait to see what happens with the r9700 when the gfx comes out.

I would take Maxvla's advice. It seems you are really hard pressed for power right now, so it is time to upgrade.
You can:

A. Go all out and get a Radeon 9700pro or Geforce4 ti4600 and not upgrade for a year or two.
or
B. Spend alittle to keep you going (Radeon 8500) and then if you need to in half a year spend the money on the new GeforceFX. Otherwise you still have a good card for $80.

What are your existing system specs?? It may help you decide.

Or you could always get a mx440 64meg ddr card for like 50$ new, and like 38$ refurbed at newegg. I think the mx440 will last you a good year from now (look at sig, bros comp uses), he plays battlefield 1942 just fine at 1024x768x32 with max details ~58fps average.

also ut2k3 runs fine at 1024x768x32 medium settings, dunno about doom 3 though, that will most likely kill a mx440, and cripple a 8500le for that matter. But that wont be out for like another 2 years, and for 40-50$ you can get a card to hold you off for a good year.

8500le is like 75$ with reg ram, not bga, which tends to not o/c as well. This card will give better preformance, and last 3-6 months longer then the mx440.

I would go with the 8500le to hold me off, but if money is a deciding factor a refurbed mx440 would be sweet for the extreme budget.

xp2000+, 256meg pc2700,
Msi mx440 3dmark2k1se: 7300

Same system with geforce2 mx400: 4359

Theoretical score with 8500le: 9100

What are your system specs?

I'm sure you can't help but wonder if you should wait for the card coming out but keep in mind that running UT2K3 and doom3 not only requires a monster vid card to enjoy the eye candy but also requires a monster system to feed that card. It would be a waste of money to go buy a top of the line vid card that costs 400+ dollars if your system can't keep up with it anyways. With so many options out there its best to match a vid card with the rest of your system. I have UT2K3 and it puts the smack down on my system and i have a 4600 and 2.6ghz p4 with 768 megs of pc1066rdram and i can't even play with fsaa turned on. 1280 res with the highest vid settings in the game uses well over 600 megs of system memory and if you don't have that much the game stutters terribly. There are alot of things to consider and just buying the latest and greatest vid card doesn't solve all of your performance problems. You can still run these games with a low end system, but the image quality is about equal to quake 2 when you turn everything down.

It runs pretty well on 512 mb for me.

You shold be oaky if you don't have te cash to get more then 512 megs.

God, get anything other than that GF2 MX200

radeon 8500, Geforce 4 Ti4200, or even a Radeon 9000 would suffice.

I have a P4 1.9Ghz, 512RDRAM PC800, WinXP, Cable Modem, 40GB HD.. sound blaster pci 128 (which I will also upgrade soon)

i just upgraded my video card from geforce 2 ultra to geforce 4 ti4200 and i am gonna use this one ATLEAST for an year or two, than i am going to upgrade to the next available card

i think if you save and go for slightly lower card (ti4200,8500 etc) it will be a good bet these cards will easily last for atleast an year and they are good value for money

i also recomend the ti4200/8500 idea the 9700pro is fast dont get me wrong but until the geforcefx is actually released you might get dissapointed if you went the 9700 rout and the geforcefx is as good as 99% of the nvidiots here swear it will be... now if it was my money id get the 9700pro cause its good now and will still be good in 3 months and it costs way less than the mythical geforce fx's slated price (geforce fx$500 9700pro $350) and i dont think nvidia has such a huge performance gain that its worth $150 more... or you could wait for the plain 9700 which is a slightly lower clocked 9700pro and overclock it... just my $.02

id reccomend going for a ti4200 now, and then going all out later.