Best/Worst Video Cards...

[asphix20]

yep.. but its still an impressive card.. and for what it does.. its sweeet. The card just looks cool!!! its MASSIVE! <BR><BR>And ill take your word on ATI. Im glad they finally got their driver situation together. Ive stayed away from ATI based boards for about a year now cause that but if they have their driver support team up and working productivly now then more power to them. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[GNXtreme]

IMO...The GeForce4 Ti series are the best graphics cards...I personally went with the economic Ti4200 and love it.<BR>

[XKShadow]

I am just starting this thread, to find out peoples opinions on which ones are the best and/or worst video cards out there... If you stop by and read this, feel free to add what you think is the best or worst video card by your opinion... <BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>By my opinion, best video cards out there are: Geforce 4 TI 4200, ATI Radeon 8500LE... For the simple fact that, they both have the advantages of the higher end cards of their family, and a nice price... Simply there is a nice balance between speed and price... They are 15% or so slower, but the price is pretty much cut in half or at least 100 dollars <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">... Today, putting too much money into a video card prooves to be pointless, technology advances soo fast, it would just be a waste of money...<BR><BR>The worst video cards out there by my opinion are or better is: Geforce 4 MX and the only reason is that NVIDIA just created a faster Geforce 2 MX which is pretty much useless in gamming today... Ofcourse I do not say it is a bad card... By all means it is good, there are worst out there... But for 10-20 bucks more or pretty much the same price, you could easily get an ATI 8500LE which has all the technologies out there for gamming, rather then add up with a Geforce 4 MX which ends up a little bit slower, lucks ALL the new technologies out there and pretty much is an updated Geforce 2 MX... You would expect better from NVIDIA... As I said before, today technology advances too fast to waste money... So paying 150 dollars (canadian) on a Geforce 4 MX which is yesterdays technology is just a waste of money... Since it is allready old <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">...<BR><BR>A promising video card out there is the new Matrox one comming out... Parhelia 512... (It also seams expensive <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">)<BR><BR>

[Colin]

As for best, IMO the Ti4600 is #1. There is nothing even close to that card in terms of performance! Of course it's also the most expensive, but you only said what is the best card! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0"> My favorite card at the moment however is the Radeon 8500. It has the most features, yes even more then the GF4 Ti line and it's very quick as well! To top things off, it's also a very good value!<BR><BR>The worst cards I say are TNT2 M64's. Dell, Compaq and HP seem to equip their machines with these "3d accelerators" but they're slow as hell. The GeForce2 MX200 is not much better with its 64 bit memory architecture.<BR><BR>I think the GF4 MX line of cards has gotten a bad rep. They're not really that bad! The only card I've tested myself the ALbatron GF4 MX440 could handle almost everything I threw at it (max resolution of 1024x768-32bit colour though). The only real problem is it's not very future proof. DX 8 titles are finally starting to show up and without a programmable T&L engine, you're right XKShadow it is a waste of money. Still if you play older games, the card isnt' really that bad! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif" border="0">

[Avid6eek]

I just purchased a GeForce 4 Ti4200 XKShadow and I agree with you that right now it is the best card out there. It can easly and stabily be overclocked to perform just as good, and sometimes even a little better than the Ti4600. As for paying $399 for a 4600, not a chance. I paid $166 for mine. There is no reason I need to pay over twice that for a card that may perform 10% better at best. Technology like that is not needed in gaming. You know as well as I do that the retard that did buy that card will buy another $400 video card before the technology from their "old" one is even used by upcoming software.

[Avid6eek]

As you can see I'm still sporting my GeForce 2 Ti card and will be for a few more days til the GeForce 4 arrives in the mail. I have yet to find a game that it can't handle. It may not get me 200 fps, but 60-100 is more than enough.

[XKShadow]

I know Geforce 4 Ti 4600 is the best out there... But I am consetrating on Best buy... <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"> And for 399$ it isn't worth it, especially when it is only 10-20% faster then 4200 and ATI 8500, and when the technology advances sooo fast... Ofcourse if you DO have the money, by all means go buy it... It is the best out there right now, end of story...

[Colin]

<br><br><< <i>I just purchased a GeForce 4 Ti4200</i> >><br><br> Oooo... Shiznit, what did you get? Yes, I'll agree with you that teh Ti4200 is absolutely the best value card out there. I was extremely impressed by theMSI G4Ti42000-VD64 I tested earlier this week. It's amazing how close it is in terms of performance to my Ti4600!<BR><BR>Hehe, I guess waiting is very hard eh? <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">

[Comixion]

I noticed nobody mentioned the Ti4400 amongst these. a card in the price range between the 4200 & 4600.<BR>So how far behind is it to the 4600 and ahead of the 4200? split the difference?

[Colin]

The Ti4400 is also a very good value card, not quite as much as the Ti4200 though I would say.<BR><BR>I'd say the Ti4400 is closer to the performance of the Ti4600 then the 4200. The extra memory bandwidth at high speeds really does help performance.

[Avid6eek]

After you finish overclocking and tweaking the Ti 4200, 4400, and 4600 they all perform nearly the same. For that reason I saved my money, and waited a little longer so that I could get the Gainward GeForce 4 Ti4200 for only $166. Well worth the amount of performance I'm going to get out of it.

[Colin]

Well, for the extreme performance freak out there, I'd say the Ti4600 is the best option... Yes all the cores max out at about the same, but the larger memory bandwidth helps out quite a bit especially at high resolutions and when using AA.<BR><BR>Shiznit did you get the 128MB or 64 MB version?

[omz007]

I've always wanted to know which video card is the best. If you are rich and can buy any video card, which is the best, most expensive video card?

[Colin]

Best videocard is rather difficult to define. IS it speed, IQ, features that you're looking for? Obviously any card based on the GF4 Ti4600 is the fastest gaming card out there right now, but the Radeon 8500 has more hardware features.<BR><BR>As for most expensive, the Ti4600's hold that crown.

[Max Power]

What about the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128 MB?

[Colin]

The All in Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB is an excellent card, we thought so in our <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1111">review</a>, but it might not be for everyone. It's not the fastest card around and many ppl want speed. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif" border="0">

[asphix20]

the 8500 is a good card, but driver support from ati has always been pretty slow and not that great. At least thats what my experiences have shown me. Nvidia on the other hand has great driver support and come out with a new/updated driver every couple of months. You can get a Nvidia based board with decent features as well. I just recently bought an Asus V8460 Ultra Deluxe geforce 4 ti 4600. Its a real nice card. Comes with Video in and Video out (both svideo and composite) and has a jack on it for the included 3d shutter glasses which are nice as well. The only things its lacking from the Radeon 8500 all in wonder is the Tv tuner and the firewire port. But if you keep up with the times and hardware you most probably have a soundblaster audigy which comes with a standard 1394 firewire port and as far as the TV tuner, that thing generates a lot of heat and in my own opinion i wouldnt want a thermal generator of that calibur sitting right on top of my video card. <BR><BR>The best video card for gaming performance wise is a geforce 4 ti 4600 chip on a good board such as Asus, or Leadtek and what not. Best budget video card I would have to agree would be the GF4 ti 4200. The best upper end video card for CAD/graphics would have to be the 3d Labs wildcat III. That card performs amazingly.. but the downside is it comes with a price tag close to $2,000 USD.

[Colin]

<br><br><< <i>the 8500 is a good card, but driver support from ati has always been pretty slow and not that great.</i> >><br><br> Actually I haven't had any problems with ATI drivers for the last half year. They're easily as stable as nVidia ones.<BR><BR><br><br><< <i>The best upper end video card for CAD/graphics would have to be the 3d Labs wildcat III.</i> >><br><br> You're right that card is amazingly fast, but it's not a gaming card. It would perform worse then a Ti4600 easily in games because it's built for professional 3D Rendering. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif" border="0">