Any advice? Time is running out on this auction ...

[[AK]Abaddon]

Hi guys,

I am considering purchasing a Powercolor Geforce II GTS Pro 64 mb card with DDR memory from Ebay, for about $150. Does anyone know anything about PowerColor?

Here is the link, to see the card to which I am referring:

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAP...item=1256711856

Your opinions would be greatly appreciated. P.S. - I asked the vendor the brand of the card. It is nowhere in the listing.

I currently have a GeForce II MX with 32 megs of SDRAM (Not DDR!) I think this card would be a huge step up, as long as it will run Nvidia's reference Detonator drivers.

Apologies for the repeated post ... figured more people would see it here.

P.P.S.: I just bid $139.00 for the card. I figured for a total price of $151.99 it would not be a bad deal. Time will tell.

Thanks,
[AK]Abaddon

[Zorro]

Well, this is a two sided question, IMO. First, I would say that anything under $150 for a GF2 Pro is a good price. On the other hand, are you willing to pay $150 for the fairly miniscule performance increase you'll get from the upgrade? Were I you, I would wait for a month or so and get yourself a discount GF3 from eBay or another, more conventional, retailer.

[[AK]Abaddon]

Zorro,

Is it just a miniscule increase in performance?

With my PIII 733/256mb memoryand the GeForce 2 MX 32mb card I have, I can only play Tribes II at 800X600, with some details turned down and no anti-aliasing. The increase in memory alone seems like it would yield quite an spike in performance.

I am able to clock the memory and processor on my current card at 195 mhz. I hope the clock frequencies will be higher on the GTS.

Also, I have noticed that graphics cards stay expensive much longer than in the past. I have waited months for a GeForce 2 GTS Pro to drop down under $200. Many retailers are still selling the GeForce 2 Ultra for substantially more than $200 and the GeForce3 clocks in at $399 at most shops.

At Best Buy, Fry's and CompUSA, no GTS Pro is available for less than $200.

If I will have a noticeable performance gain, I'll go ahead and buy this card off Ebay. So, do you think I will notice a difference? Or will it really be imperceptible?

[AK]Abaddon

[Zorro]

If we were talking about anything other than Tribes2, I would probably say that the Pro would give you a noticable increase in performance. But, T2 has a dirty little secret:

Tribes2 is a fat, bloated, whore of an engine...Fact of the matter is that Tribes2 is heavily cpu bound due to the sheer number of polygons it has to process for a given frame. This is why you dont see much of a performance benefit from dropping resolutions - the fillrate of your video card isnt being heavily taxed, its just that your cpu cant crunch numbers that the engine is supplying fast enough (sad as that is).

So, T2 is bound more by your CPU than your video card. If you're really looking to beef up the performance of T2, you'd probably be better served by upgrading the CPU...or dropping Intel altogether and moving over to the light side of the force.

[[AK]Abaddon]

Argh. Well, I bid on it ... so I guess I will go ahead and buy it. I'll try to sell my current card. And I'll work on convincing my friend to get me a Pentium 4 upgrade.

Thanks for the advice Zorro. I wondered what was up, since I get ungodly high frame rates in Counterstrike at 1280X960 resolution. Oh well. This card will help a bit. If I upgrade to a P4, I'll get more use from my Rambus memory too. Don't the P4s have higher front-side bus rates? My current processor has a 133mhz front-side bus.

I just cannot convince myself to go with AMD. I had such a bad experience building a computer around an AMD K6 400 mhz chip a couple of years back that I still have flashbacks. My experiences with Intel have been much better ... and less prone to mysterious errors and bugs.

[AK]Abaddon

[Zorro]

Things have come a LONG way since the K6, my friend. P4's DO have a quad-pumped 100MHz FSB (functionally equivalent to a 400MHz FSB), but clock speed to clock speed, the Athlon kills the P4 hands down. The things that have helped AMD the most are on-die cache and astounding chipsets here of late. I'm all but convinced that I need an AMD 460MP-based motherboard with a couple of 1.4 Athlon4's and 512M of PC2100 DDR SDRAM. THAT would be a bad-assed machine... If I can help it, I'll never buy another Intel CPU again. Intel's lack of motivation to innovate has really begun to piss me off. Building on the same lame core for 5 years and simply boosting clock speed don't cut it for me. I dunno, that's just my opinion...

[[AK]Abaddon]

But is there a board which will let me use my Rambus memory with an Athlon? I don't want to shell out the dough for new memory, when I have 256mb of good stuff right here.

Thanks,
[AK]Abaddon

[Zorro]

No... partially due to the fact that RAMBUS ain't all that good... In truth, RDRAM becomes a little more usable in the P4 configuration since it interleves between two channels, but you have to have two identical sticks to support a P4 configuration. DDR SDRAM is the way to go, IMO, and, hey, it's CHEAP... Use your P3 system as a server system (or donate it to AugustKnights.com...either one will work) and just roll your own AMD setup. I'm more than happy to imbue what little knowledge of hardware I have to assist you in making your purchase decisions.

[[AK]Abaddon]

Hmm ... I will have to look at where to go from here.

I'll probably stick with just this new card for now, unless I can score a new processor/motherboard/memory combo cheap. I wish I had the dough to pursue an entirely new system. Many parts of my computer are due for replacement ... including my old 6.4 gig and 15.7 gig drives.

Thanks for the help Zorro. I will let you know well before I embark upon any future modifications.

[AK]Abaddon

[Zorro]

Check out my post in the Hardware forum in reply to Leo's questions for a quick breakdown of my current recommendations.

[[AK]Squidly]

For all the hoopla over marginally superior speed in this app or that app, I'm happy with my PIV 1.5 w/GeForce 3 card installed. I've got 256 Meg of the PC800 in it, and it flys.

Maybe a 1.4 ghz Athlon would've given me 5-10 more frames in T2... but I'm already getting over 100fps on most maps. Dunno that I'd notice 'em.