I know there arent many good PCI 3D cards, but I also know(now from experience) how sucky Intel Extreme AGP graphics are.
So what's the lowest I can go with a new(or used) PCI card that will still be better at flinging polygons than the Intel 845GV crap? nVIDIA GeForce 3? GF 4? I know there will be the obvious advantage with any graphics card of freeing up that 64MB system RAM the Intel stuff hogs, but I really wanna do what I can with no AGP and a limited budget.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=70874&item=5110216020&rd=1 GeForce MX 4000. Dont think I've ever heard of that card so I'm clueless about it.
I bought a Radeon 9100 64MB PCI card from newegg, with the idea of flashing it to Mac. I haven't gotten around to that yet, but I did try it out in my Win2K 1.5gHz P4 and was pleasantly surprised with its speed.
Using Quake 3 Arena for the test, my AGP Gforce4 Ti4600 does around 145 fps at 1024x768 with all settings at max. The 9100 at the same settings does around 75 fps, not bad at all for a PCI card that cost all of $55.
Dan K
whoa.... in benchmarks the graphics im on right now do 30FPS in Quake III at moderate detail(or was it...low detail?) settings... but, would the MX 4000 be anything like a Radeon? I cant find any reasonable prices on Radeons at the moment(well none I can afford).
newegg has a nice interface for searching for vid cards
http://newegg.com/app/manufact.asp?catalog=48&DEPA=1
select the "interface" popup -> PCI and hit the search button.
Looks like US$43 will buy a MX4000, though I have no idea what sort of performer they are. The Radeon 9200SE is $53, Gf4 MX440s are similar money and probably similar performance. Don't bother with anything less, for example the R7K is nearly as much $$$ but only half the speed of the R9xxx.
Might behoove ye to do some research on the PC performance testing sites.
Dan K
US$43 will buy said card, or about AUD$40 will get it from that eBay listing.
I think I'll give the MX 4000 a go, but...
Here is a benchmark based test:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1409457,00.asp
Laterz...
well I'm about to go hunting for a 128MB DDR Radeon 9200 PCI card.
Anyone care to give me reasons not to?
nope
Yup, the Nvidia FX 5200 PCI...
Would that cost more?
"Would that cost more?"
Yes, depending on where you get it. But, it's also much better since the only PCI 9X00s (I've seen) are gimped SE versions.