3D PCI video card for games

I think the best you can aim for is either PCI Radeon 7000 or GeForce 2MX
Don't think there are any faster performing 3D cards, but doubt anything
faster can be realized over PCI's bandwidth anyway.

E.V

"Rick" <me DeleteThis @privacy.net> wrote in message
news:bid63i$82nva$1@ID-82690.news.uni-berlin.de...
 > "sam" <sammo2 DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Emo2b.231$G1.1031@tor-nn1.netcom.ca...
  > > Hi all
  > >
  > > I already have a G400 DH AGP card for my primary video and TV -Out.
  > >
  > > I want to add a PCI video card for games
  > >
  > > Any recommendations?
 >
 > That's backwards. AGP speed is required for 3D games, not 2D and TV.
 > Since the solution involves replacing your G400 anyway, just replace it
 > with something that has both decent 2D/TV image quality and 3D speed,
 > and forget about installing a separate PCI card.
 >
 > Rick
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games 

"Erez Volach" <ivrit DeleteThis @netvision.net.il> wrote in message
news:3f4c548e$1@news.012.net.il...
 > I think the best you can aim for is either PCI Radeon 7000 or GeForce 2MX
 > Don't think there are any faster performing 3D cards, but doubt anything
 > faster can be realized over PCI's bandwidth anyway.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

From ATI, there's the Radeon 9100 PCI and 9200SE PCI.
From nVidia, there's the MX 440, Quadro 4 and FX 5200 cards.

From Matrox, well, there's the MED5mp, which is basically a Parhelia PCI
with monochrome-enabled drivers. My guess is (but no guarantees) that you
can add an entry to the inf file for the regular Parhelia drivers, and use
the card.

And the PCI bandwidth isn't the bottleneck except for for moving textures.
With a 128MB graphics card, most textures can be preloaded in the video
memory on the card, making the slowdown much smaller than you'd think.

Regards,
--
*Art<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games 

Thanks guys for all the inputs.

I really like my Matrox G400 DH for playing video to the TV. I am not a
frequent game player. I used to have an ATI as my primary vdieo card and a
Diamond Stealth 3D PCI card to play games that require hardware
acceleration. that was ok for me then.

sam

"Arthur Hagen" <art.TakeThisOut@broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:d9b121-p6d.ln1@kether.broomstick.com...
 >
 > "Erez Volach" <ivrit.TakeThisOut@netvision.net.il> wrote in message
 > news:3f4c548e$1@news.012.net.il...
  > > I think the best you can aim for is either PCI Radeon 7000 or GeForce
2MX
  > > Don't think there are any faster performing 3D cards, but doubt anything
  > > faster can be realized over PCI's bandwidth anyway.
 >
 > Wrong, wrong and wrong.
 >
 > From ATI, there's the Radeon 9100 PCI and 9200SE PCI.
 > From nVidia, there's the MX 440, Quadro 4 and FX 5200 cards.
 >
 > From Matrox, well, there's the MED5mp, which is basically a Parhelia PCI
 > with monochrome-enabled drivers. My guess is (but no guarantees) that you
 > can add an entry to the inf file for the regular Parhelia drivers, and use
 > the card.
 >
 > And the PCI bandwidth isn't the bottleneck except for for moving textures.
 > With a 128MB graphics card, most textures can be preloaded in the video
 > memory on the card, making the slowdown much smaller than you'd think.
 >
 > Regards,
 > --
 > *Art
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games 

"Arthur Hagen" <art DeleteThis @broomstick.com> wrote in message news:d9b121-p6d.ln1@kether.broomstick.com...
 > And the PCI bandwidth isn't the bottleneck except for for moving textures.
 > With a 128MB graphics card, most textures can be preloaded in the video
 > memory on the card, making the slowdown much smaller than you'd think.

The benchmarks I've seen beg to differ. 3D gaming (especially with
today's current games) on the PCI bus is painful.

Rick<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games 

"Rick" <me.RemoveThis@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:bilcqn$atu37$1@ID-82690.news.uni-berlin.de...
 > "Arthur Hagen" <art.RemoveThis@broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:d9b121-p6d.ln1@kether.broomstick.com...
  > > And the PCI bandwidth isn't the bottleneck except for for moving
textures.
  > > With a 128MB graphics card, most textures can be preloaded in the video
  > > memory on the card, making the slowdown much smaller than you'd think.
 >
 > The benchmarks I've seen beg to differ. 3D gaming (especially with
 > today's current games) on the PCI bus is painful.

Please show me a benchmark comparison between two systems where the only
difference is that one is a PCI card and the other is an otherwise identical
AGP card. That shows enough of a difference that it's "painful".

In a few cases, like with the Voodoo 5 5500, the PCI card was slightly
*faster* than the AGP card, due to less overhead. Most of the time, though,
an AGP card will be *slightly* faster, and quite a bit faster only for
transferring textures or other large chunks of data. For most games,
though, you don't transfer a large amount of data to the card except at
level load time (or "zoning"), but only send short instructions to the
graphics card, which are then executed just as fast on a PCI card as an AGP
card. And even when you do transfer large amounts of data to the card, the
data often comes from the hard drive, which makes the PCI vs AGP transfer
speed almost irrelevant, as it's not going to be the limiting factor.

--
*Art<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games 

"Arthur Hagen" <art DeleteThis @broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:q3u121-9lg.ln1@kether.broomstick.com...
 >
 > "Rick" <me DeleteThis @privacy.net> wrote in message
 > news:bilcqn$atu37$1@ID-82690.news.uni-berlin.de...
  > > "Arthur Hagen" <art DeleteThis @broomstick.com> wrote in message
 > news:d9b121-p6d.ln1@kether.broomstick.com...
   > > > And the PCI bandwidth isn't the bottleneck except for for moving
 > textures.
   > > > With a 128MB graphics card, most textures can be preloaded in the
video
   > > > memory on the card, making the slowdown much smaller than you'd think.
  > >
  > > The benchmarks I've seen beg to differ. 3D gaming (especially with
  > > today's current games) on the PCI bus is painful.
 >
 > Please show me a benchmark comparison between two systems where the only
 > difference is that one is a PCI card and the other is an otherwise
identical
 > AGP card. That shows enough of a difference that it's "painful".
 >
 > In a few cases, like with the Voodoo 5 5500, the PCI card was slightly
 > *faster* than the AGP card, due to less overhead. Most of the time,
though,
 > an AGP card will be *slightly* faster, and quite a bit faster only for
 > transferring textures or other large chunks of data. For most games,
 > though, you don't transfer a large amount of data to the card except at
 > level load time (or "zoning"), but only send short instructions to the
 > graphics card, which are then executed just as fast on a PCI card as an
AGP
 > card. And even when you do transfer large amounts of data to the card,
the
 > data often comes from the hard drive, which makes the PCI vs AGP transfer
 > speed almost irrelevant, as it's not going to be the limiting factor.
 >
 > --
 > *Art
 >

Say I had a slow 3D AGP card (eg. Matrox G400) and a much faster 3D PCI
video card (eg. Nvidia whatever PCI) in the same PC, and I connected my
monitor
to both cards using an external switch box (so I could switch the monitor
from the AGP card to the PCI card and visa versa), could I configure winxp
so that it
displays on both graphics cards. So when I want good 2D
I can switch my monitor to using the Matrox card, and when I want good 3D I
can switch
my monitor to the Nvidia card?<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: 3D PCI video card for games