Damn you, GeForce!

[bionic sheep]

I recently bought a new computer. It had in it, among other things, a GeForce 4 MX. "Great!" Thought I, "Loads of jolly super games can be avalible to play for a low low price!"

I only recently found out that the MX range is simply a souped-up version of the GeForce 2 range, and hence will not run Deus Ex 2. This makes me most unhappy.

It has been said that all unhappiness seeks company and so I pose the question; has anyone else been duped into buying a bloody expensive card just to find that three months down the line it doesn't run the latest games? Or am I just a Mass-media fool who fell for the dodgy marketing banter?

[Playbus]

Yeah the GF4MX series is a bit of a trap. It's only a DirectX 7 card.

Easy to avoid if you look at the price difference from a normal GF4 card.....but I suppose if it came bundled with a PC it might have been harder to spot.

Better luck next time!

[Cainam]

Just another good reason to build your own computer.

Does the computer you got have an AGP slot that you can put a better card in? I've seen GeForce FX 5600 cards for about $70 ( U.S. ), and that isn't a bad card.

[Digga]

the MX is a good budget range, but thats exactly what it is. It's an older slightly overclocked chip that can give fairly decent but not top of the range graphics but is a very low price as a result. All in all the geforce 4 series is dated anyway, and if you want a goods card now, but don't want to spend too much money, the best one to get is a radeon 9600 pro or XT, which are about £100/£120, and if you get the XT you get a voucher for (single player only) free half life 2.

[Stringy Pete]

There are many good cards that you can buy now, mainly due to NVidia's deficit on the Performance side of things.

If you want tidy Dx9 performance then the safe money is on the ATI 9600xt. About £120-130.
Best place to look (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ATI_Graphics_Cards.html)

If you want exceptionally good value for money, and openGL performance that will dessimate ATI's mainstream offerings then go for a NVidia 5900xt. This is a watered down 5950 and it will scare you girlfriend's grandma so badly she'll need another Hip Op.
Best place for it, and leaves enough change from £150 for a McDonald's happy meal and a McFlurry (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/leadtek_nvidia_graphics_cards.html)

[monkeymullen]

geFORCE 5200ultra fux0red me over when i installed redhat linux. i had to mess around in the unix prompt without gui for about a month before i got the drivers to fix it. teh ghey. now i dont even use linux anymore because i cant get my dsl workin on it.. but thats another thread.

[leeroy]

or you could spend 300 quid on a radeon 9800xt and enjoy stunning grafix for a long length of time (sorry i must promote this card as it is stunning, i love it)

[Scribbly]

I've got a Geforce FX 5200 (128mb)..I'm guessing it's just fancy talk for "Geforce 5 MX" because it isn't all that great.

It wasn't very expensive but I still expected a little more out of a new graphics card... I have to run the latest games on 640x480 but that's ok with me.. I don't need all that fancy artsy graphics stuff, as long as it runs smoothly.

I've seen GeForce FX 5600 cards for about $70 ( U.S. ), and that isn't a bad card.

Wish I bought that one for that price..

[Cainam]

Originally posted by Scribbly
I've got a Geforce FX 5200 (128mb)..I'm guessing it's just fancy talk for "Geforce 5 MX" because it isn't all that great.

It wasn't very expensive but I still expected a little more out of a new graphics card... I have to run the latest games on 640x480 but that's ok with me.. I don't need all that fancy artsy graphics stuff, as long as it runs smoothly.



Wish I bought that one for that price..

A FX 5200 should be able to run better than that. I have an older computer that I let other people use for lan games when they come over, it is an AMD 2100+ with a GeForce 3, and it can usually get steady frame rates at at least 800X600. Check your drivers.

The FX 5200 to FX 5600 are fairly close to the same, just small tweaks. The FX 5700 to FX 5950 are a significant jump in performance. It's like going from DDR 266 memory to DDR 333.

[eleanor]

Bionic Sheep, it really hurts my eyes to look at your sigs with the blue backgrounds.

[Destrukto]

Originally posted by eleanor
Bionic Sheep, it really hurts my eyes to look at your sigs with the blue backgrounds.

That could have been PM-ed...

Back to topic

[Playbus]

I have:

AthlonXP 1600+
384Mb RAM PC2100 (266Mhz)
64Mb Geforce 3 Ti200

and I get a 3Dmark2001 score of 7,597


A friend of mine has:

AthlonXP 1800+
256Mb RAM PC2700 (333Mhz)
128Mb GeforceFX 5200

and he gets a 3Dmark2001 score of 6,567

Also my PC generally plays newer games much smoother. I do have a bit more RAM than this guy but I didn't think it would make such a difference, as his processor is better and (reportedly) so is his gfx card. And his graphics card has 2x the RAM of mine.

Both PC's are set up correctly with all the latest drivers etc. I did them both myself.

So, draw your own conclusions.

[Mystical Parrot]

ram is very important to a computer and probably explains why you can play games better graphics cards are useful but ram is what everything runs on tbh

[Lewiji]

Originally posted by Cainam
A FX 5200 should be able to run better than that. I have an older computer that I let other people use for lan games when they come over, it is an AMD 2100+ with a GeForce 3, and it can usually get steady frame rates at at least 800X600. Check your drivers.

The FX 5200 to FX 5600 are fairly close to the same, just small tweaks. The FX 5700 to FX 5950 are a significant jump in performance. It's like going from DDR 266 memory to DDR 333.

The 5200 chipset is pretty buggy, but agreed, shouldn't have to be run at 640x480. There are a lot of problems with 5200's texturing. The 5600 is a lot better. Going from a 5200 to a 5950 is more like jumping from DDR 266 to RD 1200 :)

[Stringy Pete]

Can the topic be changed to
'Damn you, out of date GFX card!'

[Scribbly]

Well ok.. I don't (always) have to run it at 640x480 but I prefer smoothness over quality so I usually choose 800x600...

If I put Deus Ex 2 on the lowest settings and on 640x480, it still runs like sh*t..

(oh and I do have the latest graphics, a P 1.9 ghz and about 768 DDR so that shouldn't be a problem)

[notnotbob]

Originally posted by leeroy
or you could spend 300 quid on a radeon 9800xt and enjoy stunning grafix for a long length of time (sorry i must promote this card as it is stunning, i love it)

seconded! Deus Ex 2 never looked better :D :D

[hyperboy]

We used to have geforce and it never let me play any good games :( But now we have ATI radeon 9200 SE and it plays most games at 1024x 768 pretty smoothly

[sidneylopsides]

I had an MX440 and then an FX5600 and they both stank. Went for the 9800Pro and never looked back