SOLVED My video and soundcard experience

[Me]

My first expensive video card i bought which was alittle over 2 years ago which was a AGP Voodoo 3 for $150. I recently decided to upgrade my video card to a geforce based card since everyone seems to have one and talk about how great they are. Well I went to Best Buy a computer store which offers a 30 day refund policy on video card and bought one. I purchased the PNY geforce 2 GTS PRO 64meg DDR for $185+tax which has a 201/401 core. I had major problems with the card when i first installed it because of the conflicting drivers with my 3dfx card. I eventually reinstalled windows 98se and everything worked fine. I then went and overclocked it to 447/238 with minor artifacts when playing 3dgames. Compared to my voodoo 3 was pretty good at 32 bit and it did pull off some good frame rates but nothing spectacular to my voodoo 3 16meg card. I was getting around 65fps averege in most games at 32 bit color with the geforce and i was getting the same already with my voodoo 3 card at 16bit color. After my 26 days of playing Unreal T , Elite Force, Counterstrike and quake 3 i thought to myself that this card aint worth the performance for the price. I brought it back and purchased a soundblaster 5.1 lIve card for 69+tax on sale in my area. Anyway went home and installed my old voodoo 3 and overclocked it to 197mhz from 166mhz. I then installed the soundblaster 5.1 card and removed my old ISA soundblaster awe 64 which i bought about 3 years ago. I went back and started playing some counterstrike and unreal and everything was just as fast or faster i.e unreal T but was not as colorful as the geforce card. To tell you the truth i couldnt barely tell the difference in colors and no i dont wear glasses! The soundblaster 5.1 is sooo much better then my last card when it comes to MP3's or games and actually made my computer a bit faster in games because of running off the pci instead of the ISA. I forgot to add that i previously also bought and returned the Kyro 2 4500 and all i have to say is that card sucks. In 3dmark2000 i only get 3550 with the voodoo 3 and the kyro got 4500 and my gts pro got 5900 running on 2x with the new drivers. I think anyone looking to upgrade from a mx card or voodoo 3 card should wait until the geforce2 ultra or geforce 3 goes down in price. I might just wait for the Geforce 3 mx or even buy myself the voodoo 5500 if it comes down to 75+shipping. Other than that i dont think it is worth the money to upgrade to a better video card for myself anyway ,however when those new games come out that need the geforce 3 specs yeah im definitly going to buy a new video card then.

 

[Vovan]

So you speak that Geforce Pro is not worth buying?
I have a Radeon 64DDR and I am thinking about the upgrade to Pro with 64DDR. How do U think, should I buy it?
and what is was the Pro at 5900 3DMarks? at 16 or 32 bit? 1024? 1240?

????

 

[Me]

It was at the default settings "16 bit"

Hey you can buy it if you want but i think it is a waste of money . I think the card you have now is really good and would wait until the geforce 3 mx comes out.

 

[harderclock]

i would also keep the radeon.if you want to upgrade you have to go with the gforce 3 in my opinion the radeon isnt as fast as the gforce 2 but the picture quality is better and the radeon has enough fps to play any game

 

[Me]

I agree what you said about the radeon,
You would see only a minor FPS improvment with geforce 2 pro in games. I think the best thing to do is wait until the Ultra comes down to about 150 if you really want to spend your money now. Because if you spend it now you are not going to see a huge improvment. if i were you i would upgrade your processor to a 1.333 gighertz for 135 at newegg.com and i know you will see a good improvment all around the board and plus if you overclock it even 100mhz to 1.433. Flash your bios to the newest version if you havent done it yet and go buy that processor