Well said.
I am still all PII based on my 5 gaming computers. Hehe, I'm not planning
on upgrading any of them to PIII until I can find a game that can come close
to stressing the GeForce + PII 450 combination. At that point, it will be
time to go for the latest PIII or PIV and grab the ultimate video card
available at that time. That way, I'll at least buy myself a year or two
without really needing to upgrade all 5 computers again :). For now,
however, the games on the market are primarily video card bound and not CPU
bound. I was disappointed with the Voodoo3 and TNT2 cards, but I'm
overjoyed at the results that I've seen with the GeForce.
If you are running a PII computer and think you need to upgrade to a PIII to
play some of these new games, I'd highly recommend dropping the $300 or so
(got my GeForce for $275) on a new video card instead and buy yourself
another 6 to 9 months before your framerates start to go south.
If you are running a PIII then the cheaper TNT2 sounds like your best
alternative until the new Voodoo4/5 series or NV15 come out. Even then,
what would be the ultimate goal? Full particle density on a dragon raid?
Hehehe, you wouldn't be able to find the dragon in all the flashing lights!
You'd be blind for weeks :)
> Your statement does not give enough information. If you all have the same
> setup as each other (except video cards) and the systems are NOT PIII or
> Athlon then you will see tremendous improvements from the GeForce Card
over
> the TNT2 Ultra in all areas. Otherwise (if you did have a PIII setup or
an
> Athlon to a much lesser extent) in many areas the TNT2 Ultra will do
almost
> as well as the GeForce card. This is because the PIII SSE and the Athlon
> 3dNOW instruction sets do a lot of the work that the GeForce processor
does
> thus giving a 'diminishing returns' effect to the GeForce. There's still
> improvement by upgrading (as I said before) but it's not as much.
>
> See Tom's Hardware page for a full run-down on the differences and
> advantages of GeForce 256 DDR over Riva TNT2 Ultra.
>
> There is still a noticeable improvement of the GeForce over a TNT 2 Ultra
> but is the difference worth $300? Not in my world but others may have a
lot
> more money to throw around. As I said in an earlier post:
>
> If you have an older system an upgrade to the GeForce may be a good idea.
> If you're on a newer PIII system I would wait till the NV15 or Bitboys new
> Graphics cards come out. Both cards are at least 4 times better than the
> GeForce and should market at about $400.
>
> Up to the buyer: $300 (yes I know you can get them for around $230-$260
as
> well) now and $400 later this year? Or stick to what works now and just
pay
> $400 later? The advantages of the GeForce are great. It's
> an AWESOME card. But I would recommend doing some pretty extensive
reading
> about the pro's and con's of the GeForce (or any 2nd gen card) before I
run
> out and buy it. 3rd Generation cards are just around the corner.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> OH: For the hard core Gamers: If you get a Gig system: Don't get one
> based on Intel's i820 or i840 chipset, get either the VIA FBS 133 chipset
> with 133 SDRAM or get a BX 440 chipset and overclock the board to 133mhz
and
> use SDRAM 133. You will get FAR better performance out of the Intel Gig
> system on those Mboards and your games (IE: EverQuest) will run a lot
> better.
>
>
>
>
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