Gf4Ti-4400

[jclem]

I've been looking to upgrade my dinosaur PC (T-Bird900, GF4Ti4400) and realized I have no clue about the cards that are out now or PCI express in general, which is all that seems to be available from Dell, ABS, etc. I'm just looking for something that will be at least as powerfulas the 4400 since I don't play any new games. What should I look at?

 

[v8envy]

Short answer: Pretty much anything from NVidia and ATI made in the last 2 years. A 9600 pro for $55-ish is a very good upgrade.

Long answer: gpureview.com. You can compare the 4400 to any card in the $50-60 range, and just make sure the candidate has at least as much MPixel/sec power and memory bandwidth.

PCI express requires a new motherboard which has PCIe slots and potentially no AGP slots. Your rig requires an AGP card. Possible problem is your motherboard may be too old to support 8x AGP, which is what most recent AGP cards require (different voltage, etc.)

You could probably find a 4600ti still in stock, but prices on those are fairly nutty. Still, it'll beats having to upgrade your entire machine (cpu, motherboard, power, ram) to use a recent video card.

 

[nitromullet]

I image that this $70 9600Pro would meet your needs just fine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...xPrice=&SubCategory=48&Submit=Property

 

[jclem]

I guess my post wasn't very clear. I'm looking to buy a new machine and all that is available are machines with PCI Express cards or onboard video. I just don't want to get stuck with an LE/SE of the current generation that will actually be slower than my current card (4400).

Are you saying that any current gen card is at least equal to the GF4?

 

[Fenuxx]

An ATi Radeon X300 or something would do you fine I believe . If you want a bit more power, then go with a GeForce 6600 (non-GT) .

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: jclem
I guess my post wasn't very clear. I'm looking to buy a new machine and all that is available are machines with PCI Express cards or onboard video. I just don't want to get stuck with an LE/SE of the current generation that will actually be slower than my current card (4400).

Are you saying that any current gen card is at least equal to the GF4?

Basically. The RADEON X1300 and GeForce 6200 might be similar in power (though both have much better feature sets), but anything else you can get will be a big step up.

 

[w00t]

get an X300 or 6200.

 

[Corporate Thug]

6600 vanilla

 

[RussianSensation]

get a mobo with onboard 6100 gpu?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
get a mobo with onboard 6100 gpu?

I would get an onboard solution if you don't plan on playing any games for the moment. Just make sure that you get a system that has a PCIe X16 slot so you can add a card later if you like. If you won't be playing games in the foreseeable future, don't buy a video card for some games you might play sometime. Video cards depreciate in value very quickly, so you would end up paying too much today for a card that will be to slow to play the games you might play a year or two form now.

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: jclem


Are you saying that any current gen card is at least equal to the GF4?

More or less. Ok, since you're looking to play vintage 2002 or older DX7 and DX8 games, new card features won't do much good for you. Comparing raw processing power is pretty much all you gotta do.

Your current card has 1100 MPixel/sec pixel fill rate, 2200 MTexel/sec texture fill rate, 8.8 Gb/sec memory throughput.

An X300 has 1300 MPixel and MTexel fill, 6.4 Gb/sec bandwidth. So it wouldn't be quite as good of a performer, unless overclocked a bit.

A 9600 pro/x600 pro (same card, second in PCIe) would probably do better, since it's at 1600 Mpixel/Mtexel fill rates and 9.6 Gb/sec mem bandwidth. On average, the 1100 MPixel fill rate will be more of a bottleneck for directx8 games than a 1.6 MTexel/sec fill rate.

If you are getting a new box, consider spending a couple of extra dollars on a video card just in case a new game comes out you'd want to play. 6600GT and X700pro can be had for around $100 after rebate, with some careful timing. Be wary of suffixes -- for example, a 9550 has 1100 fill rates, but a 9550 Pro has 2000! Suffixes matter more than model numbers, in some cases. Look on gpureview before you buy.

You could also consider a used PC and/or vid card. Some obsolete hardware can be had for a song.

 

[Eureka]

Well, right now your best option (if not to build a new machine) is to get a eMachines with a PCI-E slot, and then use its card (usually low-end, but should be sufficient for your needs). And, you could always upgrade the card to a 6600GT or something of the sort later.

EDIT: For example, these:
http://emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_T6524
http://emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_T6412

Uses a 939 slot I believe, which means you have a nice upgrade option, plenty of RAM and HD space, and a basic x200 video card, which can easily be ugraded.

Norm

 

[v8envy]

Those emachines with AMD3500+ are serious overkill. Outside of gaming and video encoding, there really isn't much call for a powerful CPU.

A sempron or celeron based rig, like the occasional $150-ish boxes at bestbuy and/or frys may be a better call. Yeah, the box may still be AGP, but he could recycle his current 4400 until a $50 6600 deal comes along.

 

[jiffylube1024]

GeForce 6200 or ATI Radeon X1300 should do the trick.

Or if you want to upgrade a 6600 series GeForce would be a nice step up.

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Those emachines with AMD3500+ are serious overkill. Outside of gaming and video encoding, there really isn't much call for a powerful CPU.

A sempron or celeron based rig, like the occasional $150-ish boxes at bestbuy and/or frys may be a better call. Yeah, the box may still be AGP, but he could recycle his current 4400 until a $50 6600 deal comes along.

The CPU isn't that powerful.... and it allow shim to keep it for a longer period... and room for upgrades without bottlenecks.

Norm

 

[Nextman916]

6200 theres absolutely no need for a plain 6600 even if theres going to be no gaming.

 

[Goi]

Very few cards that you can buy now is slower than a GF4-Ti4400, especially not within the last 2 generations. If you don't play any new games(Doom 3 or newer), virtually any PCI-e card you can buy now from ATI/nvidia will work for you.

 

[kurt454]

6600 non gt at a minimum. I have one in my htpc. Smokes those old games, just fine.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: Goi
Very few cards that you can buy now is slower than a GF4-Ti4400, especially not within the last 2 generations. If you don't play any new games(Doom 3 or newer), virtually any PCI-e card you can buy now from ATI/nvidia will work for you.

Not being that intrigued with the PCI-e, I haven't tried keeping up with which AGP cards' chip sets are now on PCI-e cards. But there certainly are AGP's still on retailers' shelves that are three generations old, such as numerous FX's and low power Radeons in the 9250 bracket. I have seen PCI-e versions of the FX 5700's, which were certainly slower than a Ti-4400, unless they were the Ultra version, in which case the speeds were about equal, perhaps.

You seem to have forgotten How Quick the GF4 Ti cards actually were!


:Q

 

[Zap]

Yeah, I was using a GF4ti4200 in my main rig when BF2 came out. Not that I play that game a whole lot, but I downloaded the demo and it wouldn't run.

For the OP, don't worry too much about video cards, just plan your system to have a PCIe 16x slot and set aside at least $100+ for the video card and you should be fine with a 6600GT (I just got one for $100AR) or X700Pro.

Be wary of some SiS chipset boards that have a PCIe 1x slot (courtesy of Southbridge) but only has AGP.

What are you planning for the system? What's your budget?

 

[jclem]

No real plan, I was just looking at the lower end pre-built stuff from ABS and Dell. I don't have the time to spend on building stuff anymore. Thanks for all of the replies. I'm probably going to try and grab an eMachines deal at Best Buy or soemthing like that.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Forget the 9600 Pro. Apart from DX9 support, it can be sometimes slower than the Ti4400 in DX8 games. You'd want at least a 9800 Pro to get a more appreciable difference.