I am after a new video card and i am wondering what vid card do you guys suggest for under $400 and is the best on the market.
Thanks.

you can get a GF4 Ti4200 for under 400 easily

hmm :)

you can have my gf2mx for under $400 :P

mx= crap i beleive

GF4MX - ok
GF2MX - crap :) (by today's standards).

339 for a 64meg GF4-Ti4200 :D

GF4MX - ok

that must be some goooood crack you're smoking if you think a Gf4 MX is any good.

WHY NOT JUST GO THE FULL HOG, gf4 ti4600

cus no one here is mr moneybags capt0 :)

note to nick: steal capt0's moneybags

that must be some goooood crack you're smoking if you think a Gf4 MX is any good.

For the price, what else would you consider?

Gainward Gf4 Ti4200 Golden Edition 128 meg is fairly cheap and compares very well with the Ti4600. I have been reading up on it and even though i am not hunting for a good video card atm i would get one of these.

For considerably less then any Ti4600 it is a awesome card. Seen it in action.

If you bought a 4600 you would be either made of money or compensating for something IMHO.

see this thread i posted in a day or so ago, i know a guy that sells Gainward Golden Sample GF4 Ti4200 128 meg for $335

got one of them, its great :)

http://qgl.ausforums.com/?agn=thread&id=802451

Triplex 64Mb GeForce 4 TI 4200 TV & DVI Out $325

The Gf4 Ti4200 128 meg cards are slower than the 64meg versions.

Excruci@ting, you really need to define a few things before you try to buy. Otherwise you'll end up with something that isn't much better than what you already have - or spend a bucketload (or both).

Answer these questions;

What do you want to do with the vid card (ie: which games at what res, which apps, do you watch DVDs, do you need multimonitor, etc)?
What card have you got currently?
What CPU & RAM have you got currently?
How long till you want to upgrade again & how much money do you think you'll spend next time?
How much do you need it now as opposed to just wanting it now (ie: do your games run crap or have you just got money burning a hole in your pocket)?

If you can answer those questions then we can give you some more meaningful answers.

For the price, what else would you consider?

id build my own vid card using pipe cleaners and glitter before spending ANY MONEY ON A gf4MX

http://www.overclockerzsupplies.au.com

good card msi

yes 64mb ram is faster then 128mb ram

yes but when games of the future start utilising 128 meg of ram, you are going to be left with a card with faster ram that loses in performance because of the ram quantity.

I already had a 64 meg card, so i took the next step up when upgrading, and even so from all the reviews out there, my gainward golden sample 128 outperforms all the 64 meg "faster ram" cards out there according to the benchmarks in the reviews.

The ti series gf4's with 64mb ram arent always faster then their 128mb counterparts. It all depends on what ram chips the video card manufactorers use when producing the cards. Take SUMA for example, their 128mb ti4200's use 3.3ns ram which is what their 64mb versions use as well.

Excruciating, get a GF4 4200, we just bought an 64 MB X-Micro card here, around $325 at Gamedude, and its sweet.

Otherwise my first choice would be a Triplex 4200, but I dont know where any are in Brisbane, only at Aus PC Market.

What do you want to do with the vid card (ie: which games at what res, which apps, do you watch DVDs, do you need multimonitor, etc)?

Gta3, Jediknight, BattleField, Halflife and Mods, WarCraft3

What card have you got currently? Geforce2 GTS PRo. I am wanting a new one as i am getting artifacts and i have not overclocked.
What CPU & RAM have you got currently? xp1600+ and 512mb sd
How long till you want to upgrade again & how much money do you think you'll spend next time? I am only thinking around the 300 - 400 mark. No idea, untill it bungs up or really out of date. I don't want to upgrade for a while after this.
How much do you need it now as opposed to just wanting it now (ie: do your games run crap or have you just got money burning a hole in your pocket)?
As said above. Card is borked :|

Ti4200 By Gainward sells for only 320 bux @ Pc Range. Don't worry about that 128mb s***, 64mb is faster cos the nanoseconds itz rated @ is faster!

But more apps and games are going to be needing 128 MB RAM soonish. Besides, the RAM on 128 cards can be overclocked more than that on a 64 MB card.

ok I want the BEST not the fastest(poor quality)

money is burning my pants off, so it doesnt matter.

I want to know whats the BEST gf4 thats out, and will it enhance my fps.

and anyone got a 2ghz with a gf4? if so can you say how many fps you get in Americasarmy with max everything.

I get 40-60 in 1024x768 with low detail, but everything else checked.(expect that no client s***)


so whats the best gf4?

If you wanna save some money and still have a high quality card get a Radeon 8500LE 64mb - $250

Edit: Oh yeah and to answer the gf4 question the 4600 is the fastest atm.

XABER400 for 199.. it kills its GF4 counterparts, not the 4400, the 400 i think. f***ing good card from a company witch had a bad rep

need new card.. that is all :)

OK Excruci@ting from what you've said here's my thoughts...

A card being stuffed is the best reason to upgrade. If you're want to try and keep it running you can probably underclock it a little and that may get rid of the artifacts. But of course your performance will degrade. NOTE: If you are overclocking your CPU by increasing the FSB that actually overclocks the AGP bus and your video card - which may in turn create artifacts/instability.

Looking at your other hardware you can make good use of a fast new vid card. If you had an old celeron (for example) you wouldn't see huge differences in performance between say a GF4MX and a GF4Ti. This is because slower CPUs and bus will struggle to provide enough date for the video card - they become a bottleneck.

If you want to play GTA3 I'd avoid the Radeon 8500 and go the GF4 route. You will get better performance. Although there has been a patch released to help the radeon with GTA3 I've been reading a lot of horror stories. I don't unfortunately, have GTA3 to test their compatibility myself.

Warcraft3 and pretty much any Halflife mod will run quite happily on GF2 cards and up. They also run very nice on the Radeon :) So pretty much anything you get would do the job in that regard. I run Warcraft3 at 1600x1200 with all detail settings maxed on a 1.2GHz Athlon + Radeon 8500 and it is smooth as butter - same with DoD/CS/Halflife. Jedi Knight I believe will appreciate the GF4s but it is more CPU limited than vid card limited - the benches show little difference between the various GF4 cards and the new Radeon 9700. I have no idea what Battlefield is...

If you want to try to make the card last then I would suggest going a step higher than the GFMXs either a GF3Ti (if you can find them) or the GF4Ti4200 (or the 4400 if you can find it cheap enough). The other alternative is go cheap now and get the GF4MX - it'll cope with everything (might struggle a bit on GTA3) but it's noticeably cheaper. Save the money and plan to upgrade again in 12 months time.

If you can bear to wait another month I'd suggest waiting till the new Radeon 9000 and 9700 hit the market and drive the GF4 prices further down. The Radeon 9000 is a better performer than a GF4MX (about on a par with the Radeon 8500) and will be about the same price. It's a pretty fair bet that nVidia will drop the price of the GF4MX further to compete. Similarly the Radeon 9700 should force the price down on the GF4 Ti range.

I know that's a lot to read, but I hope it gives you a better idea :)

Oh and on a brand note... A lot of people recommend Asus and anything else is crap (blah blah blah). Look at it this way - if you only plan to keep a card for 12 months and it's got a 12 month warranty then if it stuffs up you get a new one anyway. Performance differences between the different brands vary VERY little. The big roundups done by places like Toms Hardware show bugger all difference speed wise between the cheapies and the "premium" brands. About the only thing you tend to notice is some of the cards have better quality ram for overclocking. And if you're not intending to overclock then don't worry about it.

So if it was me I'd compare prices on the same chipset and buy the cheapest whether it be MSI, Leadtek, XMicro, Asus, whatever.

OMG sif u'd buy the 8500LE version.
LE = POO RAM!

bad bad bad LE.

Umm 3.3ns isn't good enough for ya Enigma?