Graphic Card

Hello guys,
I want to know witch is the best card to use OpenGL, I have a machine that looks good for me, but I think the card is nor the apropriate one, the machine is a AMD K6 III 450 Mhz, and the card is a Diamond Sthealt S540, 32 MB , the applications that I develope and also other applications that use OpenGL is coming to slow, can someone give a solution, or a sugestion of a good card ?

Thank you for the moment
Best regards

Kurt

IMHO, the NVIDIA and ATI cards are the best way to go for OpenGL. The question is, how much you want to spend…
ATI Rage, Rage II, Rage 128 and similar are not really up to date anymore (the Nvidia counterparts would be Riva TNT and TNT2) but sufficient for ‘smaller stuff’ and available used for under $100
Today’s high end cards are Nvidia’s GeForce II, GeForce III (there’s no real competitor to the GF3 from a technical point of view), and the ATI Radeon. These cards can do a lot more (as far as functionality as well as raw performance goes) than the above mentioned, but of course, are significantly higher priced.

Another alternative you might want to look into are Matrox’ G200/G400 cards (good cards from what I hear, but the driver support is supposed to be not as good as with Nvidia and ATI). As far as the best card driver support and updates goes, this prize I personally would definitely award to Nvidia

Take a look at the card specs and prices, and decide which would be best for you.

Thanks Dodger. I will check, do you know something about the Diamond Sthealt S540, some driver or this is not the best card to support OpenGL stuff.

Tnks
Kurt

I used to have a Diamond Stealth. It’s now sitting in my closet with all my other misc. parts. I couldn’t even bring myself to put it into my dad’s computer and he usually gets all my discarded parts.

My opinion is this, if you are JUST programming buy a nice cheap Riva TNT or TNT2 which you should be able to get second hand or very cheap, but inevitably you will be playing games so in that case you should spend a little more and go for a GeForce (as high a spec as you can afford). Remember you may buy a card that suits you know, but what about six months or a year down the road? I have a TNT at home which I seriously thinking of replacing because most new games crawl on it.

Of course you could always spend $5000 on a wildcat 4210, but then again, will this compare to the Geforce III ?! :wink:

Yeap…thanks guys, I will think about a GeForce II…

Your Stealth is in the closet? How nice.

I have my savage 4 (stealth S540) holding open my door, it makes a great door jam!

Stay away from anything S3 related, anything from ATI pre Rage 128, anything from Matrox (really crappy openGL).

Nvidia Geforce or better, or ATI Rage 128 pro or better is a good bet. However, ATI has slow driver support for the most part (I don’t know about the radeon though), so it really depends on what your looking for. Knowing what I know now, I would get a Geforce 2 MX (low end sytem) or a GF2 (mid range) or a GF2 Ultra (high end). Now all I need is to win the lotto, and then I can get a GF3!

Dear Elixer,

If you win the lotto, don’t forget your friends here of the OpenGL Forum .

Tnks for all the replies.

im not to sure if a geforce is a good idea with a k6-450 (it sort of likes a powerful cpu)
if youve got the cash get a duron + geforce/radeon or if u dont save your dosh and get a tnt2/m64 or vanta

So, a GeForce2 Ultra will be a good choice ?

Tnks
Kurt

I think zed tried to state that a GeForce2Ultra is not worth the money on a K6 III 450. The faster a card is, the more food it needs. Athlon’s became really cheap in the last time.
Actually I’m gonna upgrade my system somehow. But however I’ll stay with my TNT the first weeks or months, since I’m not so much gaming (and it’s still enough for Counterstrike) and I don’t come to hardcore programming OpenGL because of school(these damn mathematic works @home…) and another project which is related I’m working on…

sorry about not being clear.
for a slower machine (k6-450) basically having a faster card is not gonna mean that everything will run quicker cause your cpu becomes the limiting factor

couldnt find much comparisons http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=992&p=6

notice how good the voodoo3 does in comparison with the tnt2 ultra + the ultra is a faster card by heaps. im not saying get a voodoo aaarghh

Right, but a TnL card do some things instead of the processor. Perhaps a GF2 mx is what you are looking for.

Hello guys,

Anyone discard of the Mango’s opinion ? Is a GeForce2 MX a good choice ?

Tnks
Kurt

I used to run my GeForce 256 DDR with a K6 II 350MHz. And it was a massive big improvement over my previous card.

If your CPU isn’t too hot at 3D stuff, moving it onto the GPU has a proportionately greater effect than if you’ve got a 1+ GHz Athlon/P3/P4.

If you try to implement complex algorithms (e.g. ROAM) then it won’t help much but for most stuff it will.

A GF2mx is probably worth going for but you might like to see anyone has a GF 256 you could pick up really cheaply first.

dave j

A GeForce2 MX would be a good choice…

Tnks guys, I will check about a GeForce2 MX.

I would wait until the GeForce3 has been out for a couple of months, Then the GF2 should be a lot cheaper and might be able to pick up a GeForce2 GTS for the same price or even less. Interestingly I have seen a really cheap GF2Ultra, i think it was made by Elsa for about £250 sterling, they normally go for £400 or about $600. Anyway the longer you wait the cheaper the card is and the more powerful a card you will be able to get, so if your card is just about ok then I would leave it a bit ( just about ok will depend on what you want it for,if you want to run Q3 at 1600 120032 with ultra high detail at 1000 FPS then I would upgrade now)
Tim

Tnks Tim, good idea, I will wait a little more, so in your opinion witch is the better card GeForce2 Ultra ?

Tnks
Best regards
Kurt