Gigabyte RADEON 9200 Video Card, better card for the money ?

[Richard Cranium]

Got a customer wanting a low end gaming rig.
The price limit for the card is $60-75

I've seen
Eagle1's VGA chart from Tom's and made little sense of it.
I'm totally illiterate about Video cards

Win98 1st ed
AMD XP 1700+
Biostar M7VIK KT400 mobo
256mb Mushkin Blue RAM
40gb ATA133 Maxtor [@60mb/s]
Sparkle 350w


All I know is basic stuff about Vid cards
HELP !
''
Suggestions wanted
Customer will run Nascar, NFS and other late ed. driving games.


Gigabyte RADEON 9200
128MB DDR
128-bit
DVI/TV-Out
8X AGP

Specifications:
Chipset/Core Speed: RADEON 9200/250MHz
Memory/Effective Speed: 128MB DDR/400MHz
BUS: AGP 1X/2X/4X/8X
Ports: VGA Out(15 Pin D-Sub)+TV-Out(S-Video Out)+DVI connector
Support 3D API: DirectX®8.1, OpenGL®1.3
Max Resolution@32bit Color: 2048X1536@75Hz
Reviews

Saw couple other units that caught my eye.


POWERCOLOR RADEON 9000PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit

Prolink GeForce FX 5200 Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI/TV-Out, 8X [128 bit]

Thanks
Doc

[slinky]

I noticed 2 of 3 cards were DX8. How about a good, proven Ti 4200 (add $5)?

[HeadBand]

i doubt you can find a ti4200 for under 75 bucks but if you do let me know

[slinky]

GameVE has the Gainward GeForce 4 PowerPack! Ultra/650 for $79.

[Richard Cranium]

The only ti4200 for reasonable money was the Gainward.

There is much gossip about those being bad units ?

[slinky]

Supposedly the new batch now works properly.

[rourkchris]

Used many Gainward cards and they're of excellent quality IMHO. The Golden Sample is well worth the $ if you plan to OC your video card as well. I'd get the Gigabyte Radeon 9200 as it is equal in clock and memory speed of the FX5200. They both beat the Radeon 9000. The Gigabyte card also includes(Serious Sam, PowerDVD, and V-Tuner OverClock Utility)more and the other cards don't include anything but the driver CD and S-Video out cables. The Gigabyte card is also less at $64.99 as opposed to the other 2 cards price of $73.00 each. Save the extra $8.01 and know that you got the best performer of the bunch and the most out of the bundled software. That 9200 really is a better value.

[Darthgary]

Out of that list, the 9000 Pro is the fastest. I know this cause I used to own all 3.

But if you come across a Ti4200 for that cheap, then go for it.


Radeon 9000 Pro

275 MHz core
550 MHz 128 Bit memory
4 Pixel Pipeline
1 TMU Pipe
8.8 GB Memory Bandwidth

Radeon 9200

250 MHz core
400 MHz 128 Bit Memory
4 Pixel Pipeline
1 TMU pipe
6.4 GB Memory bandwidth

Geforce FX 5200

250 MHz core
400 MHz 128 bit memory
2 Pixel Pipeline
2 TMU Pipe
6.4 GB Memory bandwidth