I'm updating my GFX card, please help me.

[Clements]

The GeForce2 MX will work OK but only OK with N64 emulation. Basically a no thrills card. You'll get fullspeed and good quality, BUT: I don't think the card has any reasonable Anti-Aliasing so the games will have jaggies, and enabling the level of AA you do have will kill the framerate. PSX emulation will be slow if you use max settings- you must turn them down. PC games will be quite choppy and bad looking with no environmental bumpmapping or any Pixel Shader support. Forget about Ansiotropic filtering.

Save your cash for a new mobo and/or proper graphics card.

Having a PC with 2400+ and GeForce2 MX PCI is a "ultra bottleneck" in the same way as having a 800MHz processor with a 256MB ATi Radeon 9800 XT. Pointless IMO. Balance your specs out and don't waste money on this card. You've suffered with the bad accuracy of the Savage, lets not see you suffer with the bad speed and complete lack of features with the MX.

Wow, I'm sounding like Tagrineth. She was right all along...

Yet another Techtalk thread in the PJ forum!

/Boots to TechTalk

Edit: as an answer to your quote thing which I forgot to reply to, just disable your (what appears to be unremovable on-board) graphics in your BIOS, and select your PCI one as primary. I think that's about right, just search Google for a tutorial, or better yet, get someone with experience to install the thing for you if thats the way you want to go. If the Savage isn't on-board, then it can be removed, and it may leave a vacant AGP slot behind if your motherboard is decent.

 

[jessman1988]

 

[Clements]

Sorry to bash the GeForce2 MX so much, but I've gotten used to my card and can now see the disadvantages of MX cards quite clearly. If you true want to use the MX as a quick fix for N64 emulation, do it, as the choice is fully up to you. I was just making sure you knew what you were signing up to before you spent your cash.

And as said earlier, you can wave good-bye to all your black Mario heads and White Links and all sorts. See, its not all bad!

 

[Trotterwatch]

Yeah, it's a good thing to get. Just something such as an FX 5200 PCI would probably be a better bet (even if it isn't a speed demon by todays standards).

If the GF2 MX PCI is the only thing you can get, and it's affordable then go for it. It should be a big improvement over the Savage.

 

[Tagrineth]

Yeah, it's a good thing to get. Just something such as an FX 5200 PCI would probably be a better bet (even if it isn't a speed demon by todays standards).

If the GF2 MX PCI is the only thing you can get, and it's affordable then go for it. It should be a big improvement over the Savage.

Hell no, a GeForce FX 5200 PCI is even _slower_ than most of the old MXes. =|

 

[jessman1988]

I'm sorry everyone for being such a n00b ass in my latest posts, but I'm just frustraited when you guys say an extremely good thing about the GF2, and then suddenly jump to bad things. I just doesn't make sense. I got a VERY important question though. When you look at my OTHER specs, what NEW GFX card would you guys recommend EXACTLY, and how much is it? (Remember that I can only use PCI). Also, what place sells it? Thanks guys. I appreciate you all helping me this much. I've NEVER been such a n00b in anything before, lol.

 

[Clements]

Hell no, a GeForce FX 5200 PCI is even _slower_ than most of the old MXes. =|

The speed of the FX 5200 is wildly viable. In some situations it can catch the Ti4200. In most others, it is marginally faster than the GeForce4 MX440 or marginally slower.

But the FX 5200 does have all the major features of its older brothers so at least the modern PC games will look right (just slow). It'll be a nice card for N64 emulation, and a fairly competent PC gaming card (accuracy-wise), but it'll be slow compared to its bigger brothers, and the DX8 GeForces. Can't complain for the price though, as David Dickinson would say, "Cheap as Chips!"

Edit to jessman1988: I'm with Trotterwatch- I'd recommend the PCI variant of this card for you over the GeForce2 MX. More features, more speed, comes in PCI, cheap price. Enjoy.

 

[Trotterwatch]

Hell no, a GeForce FX 5200 PCI is even _slower_ than most of the old MXes. =|

Even slower, Wow... is that possible? lol

How much slower is it? Any benchmarks that compare the MXs and FXs (5200) of this world?

 

[Clements]

I think the cases of the FX 5200 being slower usually have heavy Pixel Shaders involved, while the GeForce MX 440 skips them, the FX 5200 does them, so results in a speed loss. Not a fair comparison IMO.

It's like comparing two plugins- one with framebuffer, one without, and the one without being faster but doesn't emulate the FB, but the other one doesn't skip it and as a result is slower. But we all know which is the better plugin- the one that does the FB.

Wow! An N64 plugin analogy! Must be a first!

 

[Tagrineth]

btw, just fyi, when the 5200 uses the DX9 effects nVidia touts, it DIES. Like no more than single-digit fps at 640x480 with no AA/AF.

Hell, even Tomb Raider AOD, while still allowing Pixel Shaders 2.0 for the 5600 and nVidia cards in that range, auto-disables PS2.0 for the 5200 and 5200Ultra. >_> How sad is THAT?

And jessman: Unfortunately, graphics cards are such a mixed bag it's really irritating. There is no single 'One Size Fits All' graphics card if you take cost into account.

TBH, I don't even know if the newest Radeons are available in PCI, which is quite depressing. PCI is a sorely neglected form factor... so basically, the FX5200 is pretty much the ONLY path you have. Sad but true. You MIGHT be able to get the FX5200 Ultra, which is already a pretty nice step up from a non-U.

 

[Trotterwatch]

btw, just fyi, when the 5200 uses the DX9 effects nVidia touts, it DIES. Like no more than single-digit fps at 640x480 with no AA/AF

Yeah it's a well known fact that this DX9 card shouldn't ever use DX9 unless you want to look at pretty still images

 

[jessman1988]

DANG! I'm stuck with bad cards, I guess. I just bought this pc in October! Is there any way to "INSTALL" an AGP port into my pc. I'm such a n00b at GFX cards and I'm sorry.

 

[Clements]

btw, just fyi, when the 5200 uses the DX9 effects nVidia touts, it DIES. Like no more than single-digit fps at 640x480 with no AA/AF.

Hell, even Tomb Raider AOD, while still allowing Pixel Shaders 2.0 for the 5600 and nVidia cards in that range, auto-disables PS2.0 for the 5200 and 5200Ultra. >_> How sad is THAT?

If the FX 5200 worked wonderful in DX9 it would be a bloody miracle @ £50!

Just think if it was true: No need for the £300 Radeon 9800 Pro! You can get superb performance with the 5200 for just £50 at a sixth of the price!

The real truth is, at a sixth of the price you get about a sixth of the performance as I keep saying, you get exacty what you pay for.

It's like slagging off 4p Economy Beans for not tasting as good as Heinz. What do you expect! You paid 4p!

The more cash you are willing to spend the more FPS you will get (and consequently, the larger your penis is*). For £50, you don't get very much, but what you do get is worth that £50 that you shelled out. The FX 5200 will never out perform a 9800 Pro for example, as it is a fraction of the price.

I wouldn't consider the performance of the Radeon 9800 Pro/FX 5900 Ultra in DX9 to be that good anyway, barely 60fps with any kind of filtering from what I've seen. Hardly a showstopper worth £300.

[*Males only obviously]

 

[Tagrineth]

Clements, what I meant about the 5200's DX9 performance is, that the miserable speed isn't even playable to the most vicious masochists. And yet, people still list it as a selling point for the card.

And the Radeon 9800 Pro is just fine in DX9 - Half-Life 2 gets over 60fps at 1024x768, and AF shouldn't have much of a performance hit at all. There's nothing wrong with that. At least it's better than an original GeForce3 playing a DX8 game. =)

 

[co_p3rth]

like i told u jess, GF2 works great with those games, even at 800x600x32 resolution, the gfx still looks gr8, but yes, compared to GeforceFx or other better than that, GF2 shouldn't be used FSAA, or some advanced option like that,but those games still works great with it, with good gfx, no glitch at all
so no worry mate, its all depends on u, if u could buy a better card, buy it, if not, this options is still good for u

 

[jollyrancher]

The more cash you are willing to spend the more FPS you will get (and consequently, the larger your penis is*).

You've got it backwards... when guys are desperate to prove themselves through external measures like a fancy car or something it's more likely because of an insecure need to compensate for other "inadequacies." At least that's how the jokes go.

 

[Matata]

DANG! I'm stuck with bad cards, I guess. I just bought this pc in October! Is there any way to "INSTALL" an AGP port into my pc. I'm such a n00b at GFX cards and I'm sorry.

There is no way to get another AGP slot, unless you change your motherboard you´re stuck with a PCI slot.

 

[jessman1988]

Yeah, I guess I might go to a pc shop and get a new motherboard put in somday.

 

[jollyrancher]

Like Matata said, you might want to try a PCI graphics card... it should work better than your integrated graphics.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

If that's true, I would call it a DirectX 8.1 video card with Nvidia lying about the fact it supports DirectX 9 effects :down:.

Even worse, I saw an ORB benchmark result showing the GeForce FX 5200video card scoring even poorer than my Radeon 9000 Pro 64 MB DDR video card under 3D Mark 2001 SE :down:.


-RJARRRPCGP holds on to his Radeon 9000 Pro 64 MB DDR video card