Which video card for my budget...

[JeffnNetti]

dont think you would be disapointed with either the radeon 8500le or the nvidia ti4200 though i cant keep up with which nvidia card maker is best this week lol.
i truely wish nvidia did things like ATI and made a card you know is going to work well themselves AND had 2nd parties making cards using their chips etc.. i never know what brand to buy.

i have both the 8500 and ti4200 and they score within 5% of eachother (ti4200 being the higher) on madonions 3dmark 2001. i paid $110 for the 8500 and $139 for the ti4200, you do get a lil bit of extra performance for the $29 dollar diference so its up to you.
one thing to take note of although it doesnt make that much diference currently but will i assume as games progress is the ti4200 at that price only has 64mb of ram and the 8500le has 128mb.

 

[o0OBruceLeeO0o]

how much does the ram affect it, im sure there have been lots of posts about this, but how?

 

[PhobMX]

it doesnt make a difference right now, but wait until post doom3 era, and 128 will be gold like...

 

[rlemieux]

If you plan on upgrading before Christmass time get the 64MB, If you plan on keeping this card longer than 6 months get the 128MB.

 

[Stoanhart]

get an MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128mb. They're cheap, and come with a ton of full games as well as many demos. The 128MB is a bit slower than 64, but not very noticably (6-7 frames in extreme cases), but the 128 mb puts it ahead at higher resolution and in new games like unreal tournament 2003 benchmarks. Also, the gainward pink screen thing is that they overheat. increasing circulations by adding more fans to the case solved the problem. these problems only appear in the standard 1 80 mm exhaust fan computers.

 

[youngbuck]

I like PNY. Just my opinion cause that what I got. I think they are high quality.

 

[o0OBruceLeeO0o]

what about the leadtek? nobody mentions those?

 

[TK421]

I've never heard of anyone mentioning Leadtek in a "good" way so I'd stay away from those winfast thingies if you can. though I can't say from personal experience.

 

[natopotato]

would asus be top of the line or are they juz overpriced... and would u say the 8500 and the gf 4200 are equaly compatable with games? back 6 mo ago or so.. ppl were saying that the 8500 was slightly less compatable

sory iv been outa the loop for about 6mo so fill me in

 

[Dragonbud]

besides the oversized/over-rated heatsink on the gf4 leadtek's, they are very good reliable cards.
i have a leadtek gf2mx400 for 2 years (still going) and a gf4 ti4400 and had no problems with both cards...................yet.

i bought a hercules 8500 le 128mb and a gf4ti4200 64mb for my 16 and 12 year old bro-in-laws and both are superb cartds.
Cant go wrong with either one for less than $150.

 

[vogster]

The 8500 and the 4200 are both equally compatible in my opinion. For a while ATI was know for releasing poor drivers. Recently they have corrected the problem so that is probably what people were talking about 6 months ago.