what's the best economy class video card

[infielder6]

Anyways my friend wants a good card but doesn't have the dollars to back him in his search... basically he wants a new card that can play high level games but at a price of about 150 canadian.. i'm thinking on the lines of ati radeon 9000, geforce 4 MX, etc.. any other ideas and which one is the best

[klauzewitz]

Well ok u wont be playing high quality games thats for sure. Ok first off lez eliminate GF4 MX. Its horrible. Its a remake of GF2. SO forget about it! Now it leaves you with either Radeon 8500, 9000 or GF3 TI 500. Lez eliminate 9000 since it is a waste of $. It performs very poorly. Now so its down to 8500, 8500LE and GF3 TI 500. GF3 and 8500 are both a generation backwards but perform really well. Personally i'd go with GF3 TI 500, u gotta search to find a cheap price for it tho. However, 8500 and 8500LE arent bad cards either but they have their share of issues. SO i'd say find a GF3 TI 500. U wont be disapointed.

[PrairieDawg]

klauzewitz .... I'm curious as to what high quality games won't run on a GF4 MX? Not sure if I'm just lucky or not but the only program that I've ever tried that my machine chokes on is 3Dmark03. Granted I can't crank the AA up or my framerates start to suffer big time but aside from that all games are running at good enuff framerates to be very playable. I'm not saying that someone won't put out a game next week that my GF4 will not be good enuff for and I do know that I'd see a big difference with a better card but it does the job for now.

[Wiggo]

Don't discount the R9K yet but be sure to get the right brand as some of these have only half the memory bandwidth of most. Get an ATi or Gigabyte one as I know that these have the full available memory bandwidth available and my Gigabyte Maya R9K (non Pro) is up there with the GF3 Ti200 plus I hate misinformation.

But I'd definately forget the MX range of cards as these have no DX8 support and games are now comin' thru that need this support to work properly and the R9K can be had for the same price range. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[RDR]

A Radeon 8500 or 9100 (basically the same thing) get's my vote - cheaper than a 9000Pro - but better performance - & it will beat anything from the GF3 series. A Gf4Ti4200 will beat it in most benchmarks - but you've got to pay a bit more for one of those

http://www.ncix.com/canada/productdetail.php?sku=9198

Sapphire Radeon9100 64MB 250/230 clocks - $114cdn

same card is here fro $125cdn -> http://www.pccanada.com/inventory.asp?cat=videocards
but it's local so you might save in shipping :D...especially if you're able to pick it up

I picked up a Powercolor Radeon9100 128MB w/250/250 clocks for my bother-in-law to replace his GF2MX & he loves it:thumb: ...I payed $148cdn for it from here--> www.elcosystems.com

a little bit of Oc'ing & it scores ~10000 in 3DMark2001SE w/an XP 1700+ & 256MB of PC2100

[infielder6]

thanks fellas.. just what i needed to know