Hi Everyone,
I have a ATI Radeon 7200 right now and I know it wont work that great with celestia. Is there a good card that I can get that will run celestia better for under $120? And what card are you using.
Thank You,
TVT
New Graphics Card!
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Topic authorTVTExtreme4
- Posts: 45
- Joined: 30.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 9 months
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Topic authorTVTExtreme4
- Posts: 45
- Joined: 30.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 9 months
RE: GeForce 4 MX 420
Well its and OK card but not the best. It will give you the ability to see speculars but its only using 64 MB of standard SDRAM not DDR.
If you look around you can find some GeForce3 Ti200s at about $120 and some even have the hated rebate scam that can bring your price down to about $90. The GeForce3 is a superior card to the GeForce4 MX420. It has built in harware pixel and vertex shaders versus the MX420 relying on useing software shaders. I picked one up as a stop gap to my purchase of a GeForce4 Ti4200. I will be taking the GeForce3 back to the store in a week and moving on up to the TI4200 next week. The card I bought was an MSI GeForce3 Ti200 with 64MB of DDR and it cost $119.99 with a $30 rebate which I will not be sending in. This brings the total price to $89.99. The only problen I have with keeping the MSI GeForce3 is that they got cheap with their last run of cards an didn't install the large heatsink for the GPU and the DDR memory. Instead they slapped on just a small heatsink without a fan at all. Neadless to say I was quite shocked at this lame atemp at cooling. If you can live with these kind of short cuts the MSI card is a dream come true over any of the GeForce MX cards.
If you look around you can find some GeForce3 Ti200s at about $120 and some even have the hated rebate scam that can bring your price down to about $90. The GeForce3 is a superior card to the GeForce4 MX420. It has built in harware pixel and vertex shaders versus the MX420 relying on useing software shaders. I picked one up as a stop gap to my purchase of a GeForce4 Ti4200. I will be taking the GeForce3 back to the store in a week and moving on up to the TI4200 next week. The card I bought was an MSI GeForce3 Ti200 with 64MB of DDR and it cost $119.99 with a $30 rebate which I will not be sending in. This brings the total price to $89.99. The only problen I have with keeping the MSI GeForce3 is that they got cheap with their last run of cards an didn't install the large heatsink for the GPU and the DDR memory. Instead they slapped on just a small heatsink without a fan at all. Neadless to say I was quite shocked at this lame atemp at cooling. If you can live with these kind of short cuts the MSI card is a dream come true over any of the GeForce MX cards.
Hi everybody,
Don't think u need sth sophisticated to enjoy Celestia. Previously had a 3dfx Voodoo3 & it sucked (fr slow near textured bodies). Changed for a Leadtek Winfast GF2 GTS/Pro w/ 64 Mb DDR, bought used for €93 & it works like a charm, don't have to bother w/ fr now ! Didn't even overclock it though it's bundled w/ the Winfox soft that makes it easy...
Must also say i got an AMD K6-2-420, not the fastest machine around, but sufficient... So why waste €$? w/ high-end hardware when middle range ones are enough ?
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Don't think u need sth sophisticated to enjoy Celestia. Previously had a 3dfx Voodoo3 & it sucked (fr slow near textured bodies). Changed for a Leadtek Winfast GF2 GTS/Pro w/ 64 Mb DDR, bought used for €93 & it works like a charm, don't have to bother w/ fr now ! Didn't even overclock it though it's bundled w/ the Winfox soft that makes it easy...
Must also say i got an AMD K6-2-420, not the fastest machine around, but sufficient... So why waste €$? w/ high-end hardware when middle range ones are enough ?
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Benoit 'Mutos' ROBIN
http://spacesims.hoshikaze.net
http://spacesims.hoshikaze.net
RE: Your GeForce2
Well its great if your happy with your GeForce2. I had one and it was definetly showing its age when using the larger textures and trying to run it with full screen anti-aliasing. Celestia looks great with FSAA ( full screen anti-aliasing) and the newer cards do it better than the GeForce2. Even a lowly GeForce4 MX420 can out FSAA a top of the line GeForce2 card. You get what you pay for. The GeForce4 MX 4xx series at least has a hardware FSAA engine built in. Thats even one up over the GeForce3 series cards. TVTExtreme4 if you want to see Celsetia at its best go for any of the newer NVidia cards. But my personal recomendation is to stay clear of the GeForce2 series. They are getting behind the times and with some of the features everyone keeps asking for and if Chris gets at least 10% of them implemented your going to wish you had a newer card that can handle them.
Personally I wouldnt touch anything MX with a 100 foot pole...They are slow for celestia as my roommate has an MX tho its a GeForce 2 I suspect the 3's as MX are far slower than the Titaniums...
Besides the price difference isnt much between the two unless your getting a GF4...then they get expensive...but what would you rather have? a slow pos or spend 25% more for something 3 times faster
Besides the price difference isnt much between the two unless your getting a GF4...then they get expensive...but what would you rather have? a slow pos or spend 25% more for something 3 times faster
I'm trying to teach the cavemen how to play scrabble, its uphill work. The only word they know is Uhh and they dont know how to spell it!
Hi everybody,
It's also the use u make of Celestia. I usually run it in a window, test ssc files, stop it, change ssc files, restart it & so on 'till i'm satisfied w/ my systems... Then i F10 out some PNG for the Web site & that's all folks ^-^ I tested some fullscreen & it ran smoothly w/ the GF2, didn't get farther, i'm not s/o very refined, u know
What I REALLY need is a fast enough workbench for developping stellar systems. Don't care a damn about all the SGI-like stuff people keep asking for : for me, the best of these extra features is that they can be disabled...
Anyway, as i'm on a hard budget, i optimize my system w/ BUYABLE stuff. It's good & well to dream of the latest hardware, but it's quite expensive to stay on tech top - expensive & unoptimized because just by waiting 1-2 years, u get same perfs for cents as would have for bucks... Same as for games, people usually get screwed up buying them $100 when they come out, then smart people buy them 1 year later for $15 or less.
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It's also the use u make of Celestia. I usually run it in a window, test ssc files, stop it, change ssc files, restart it & so on 'till i'm satisfied w/ my systems... Then i F10 out some PNG for the Web site & that's all folks ^-^ I tested some fullscreen & it ran smoothly w/ the GF2, didn't get farther, i'm not s/o very refined, u know
What I REALLY need is a fast enough workbench for developping stellar systems. Don't care a damn about all the SGI-like stuff people keep asking for : for me, the best of these extra features is that they can be disabled...
Anyway, as i'm on a hard budget, i optimize my system w/ BUYABLE stuff. It's good & well to dream of the latest hardware, but it's quite expensive to stay on tech top - expensive & unoptimized because just by waiting 1-2 years, u get same perfs for cents as would have for bucks... Same as for games, people usually get screwed up buying them $100 when they come out, then smart people buy them 1 year later for $15 or less.
@+
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Redfish
- Posts: 185
- Joined: 22.05.2002
- With us: 22 years 6 months
- Location: Lat: 50.850 Long: 5.683 | Maastricht Netherlands
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I would never go for a Geforce 4 MX. They suck. There are way better cards available for the same price. At least go for the ATI counterparts, like the Radeon 9000 model.
A Radeon 8500 nowadays will not cost you more than 100 grand, so if you're going to spend 100 dollars go for radeon or trident. Nog geforce.
A Radeon 8500 nowadays will not cost you more than 100 grand, so if you're going to spend 100 dollars go for radeon or trident. Nog geforce.
I completely agree with Redfish about the GeForce 4 MXs, they both suck and blow, and they can't even do that any good. If you wanna buy a repackaged GeForce 2, get an GeForce 4 MX, you want something remotely modern go
ATi Radeon 9700!
This GeForce 3, will be the last nVidia card of mine, there's no way I'm buying another of their chipsets, they released a non-DirectX8 hardware card, which will now become mainstream, and putting PC graphics back several years, well done nVidia, you suck.
But Celestia is better supported by nVidia cards, so it's something you might want to keep in mind. A GeForce 4 Ti 4200 would be okay.
ATi Radeon 9700!
This GeForce 3, will be the last nVidia card of mine, there's no way I'm buying another of their chipsets, they released a non-DirectX8 hardware card, which will now become mainstream, and putting PC graphics back several years, well done nVidia, you suck.
But Celestia is better supported by nVidia cards, so it's something you might want to keep in mind. A GeForce 4 Ti 4200 would be okay.
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Guest
RE: Cards
Hey Ras
I don't belive there ever was a GeForce3 MX. Only the GF2MX and the GF4MX. But listen. The GeForce4 MX is just a sooped up GeForce 2 chipset. So saying you wouldn't touch it is kind of harsh. Its not like the old MX cards that had the nuetered 64bit memory bus versus 128bit. And that was only on the GeForce2 MX 200s. The old GeForce2 MX400s had a 128bit memory bus. Those cards can be had for a real cheap price and for some users that is all there going to need.
As for what Mutos said about upgrades. Sure you can wait for an upgrade till the price comes down but there are also problems doing that. Look at all the trouble I went through because socket 370 is going out the window. Sometimes if you wait to long you can really get screwed over and locked into hardware that has no upgrade path and this means you have to go out and buy all new stuff. If I remember corectly Mutos is in this perdicament because he chose supersocket7 over jumping onto the slot1 socket370 bandwagon. Now he has a motherboard with no upgrade path in site eccept to put a slightly faster K6 in it. In the long run he isn't going to get any real kind of speed boost and as for the video card any NVidia MX model card is all he needs with this system. He would get no real benifit out of any of the newer cards. No AGP 4x plus the known conflicts that plagued the SuperSpcket7 platform. I feel lucky that I managed to stear clear of that mistake. But I have to say I feel said that Mutos isn't even considering the posibilities that moving to a newer system will afford him. I don't even know if he as ever seen Celestia in all its glory with specs turned on and FSAA enabled. All he seems to talk about is turning these features off all the time. And as for waiting for software to come down in price. Thats a load of BS. Only the so-so games and software comedown in price like that. Any of the A1 titles that come out hold there high prices for longer that he says. In some cases you can really goof up if you don't buy a title when it comes out. I had this problem with a couple of games I wanted to buy and come to find out they were in limited release and are now not available. So sometimes waiting is not the thing to do. If I were Mutos this what I would do. Don't upgrade your CPU and don't spend money on another vidcard unless you must. Save your money and wait till the AMD hammer line of CPUs and motherboards comes out then buy into that. You will have a definet upgrade path for at least 3 years and you can donate that K6 to someone who needs there first computer. Just be sure you tell the donatee that there is no upgradde path on it and its just a starter system.
I don't belive there ever was a GeForce3 MX. Only the GF2MX and the GF4MX. But listen. The GeForce4 MX is just a sooped up GeForce 2 chipset. So saying you wouldn't touch it is kind of harsh. Its not like the old MX cards that had the nuetered 64bit memory bus versus 128bit. And that was only on the GeForce2 MX 200s. The old GeForce2 MX400s had a 128bit memory bus. Those cards can be had for a real cheap price and for some users that is all there going to need.
As for what Mutos said about upgrades. Sure you can wait for an upgrade till the price comes down but there are also problems doing that. Look at all the trouble I went through because socket 370 is going out the window. Sometimes if you wait to long you can really get screwed over and locked into hardware that has no upgrade path and this means you have to go out and buy all new stuff. If I remember corectly Mutos is in this perdicament because he chose supersocket7 over jumping onto the slot1 socket370 bandwagon. Now he has a motherboard with no upgrade path in site eccept to put a slightly faster K6 in it. In the long run he isn't going to get any real kind of speed boost and as for the video card any NVidia MX model card is all he needs with this system. He would get no real benifit out of any of the newer cards. No AGP 4x plus the known conflicts that plagued the SuperSpcket7 platform. I feel lucky that I managed to stear clear of that mistake. But I have to say I feel said that Mutos isn't even considering the posibilities that moving to a newer system will afford him. I don't even know if he as ever seen Celestia in all its glory with specs turned on and FSAA enabled. All he seems to talk about is turning these features off all the time. And as for waiting for software to come down in price. Thats a load of BS. Only the so-so games and software comedown in price like that. Any of the A1 titles that come out hold there high prices for longer that he says. In some cases you can really goof up if you don't buy a title when it comes out. I had this problem with a couple of games I wanted to buy and come to find out they were in limited release and are now not available. So sometimes waiting is not the thing to do. If I were Mutos this what I would do. Don't upgrade your CPU and don't spend money on another vidcard unless you must. Save your money and wait till the AMD hammer line of CPUs and motherboards comes out then buy into that. You will have a definet upgrade path for at least 3 years and you can donate that K6 to someone who needs there first computer. Just be sure you tell the donatee that there is no upgradde path on it and its just a starter system.
lol who is this?
MX is slower than Ti thats why I wont touch em...Why pay for an MX when you could spend the cash on something better? Well to a point anyways...I like the middle ground so to speak...not too slow and not too expensive
MX is slower than Ti thats why I wont touch em...Why pay for an MX when you could spend the cash on something better? Well to a point anyways...I like the middle ground so to speak...not too slow and not too expensive
I'm trying to teach the cavemen how to play scrabble, its uphill work. The only word they know is Uhh and they dont know how to spell it!
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Topic authorTVTExtreme4
- Posts: 45
- Joined: 30.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 9 months
Hi Rassilon,
I know, MX is crap. But I have been able to get some more money and I have enough to buy a VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB DDR AGP! I know that is a great card and will run celestia better then my radeon 7200!! http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=111 ... 1&scat=522 <-- a link to it on best buy's website!
Thankx,
TVT
I know, MX is crap. But I have been able to get some more money and I have enough to buy a VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB DDR AGP! I know that is a great card and will run celestia better then my radeon 7200!! http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=111 ... 1&scat=522 <-- a link to it on best buy's website!
Thankx,
TVT
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Topic authorTVTExtreme4
- Posts: 45
- Joined: 30.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 9 months
YAY!
I get the card on Tuesday when my mother gets her check from work, I found the card for $199.98 (US) at Wal-Mart. Its cool. I cant wait. I hate one fact, SCHOOL STARTS MONDAY!!!! So I won't be able to play with it much until Saturday 
! Ohh well.
Thankx,
TVT
P.S.
Now, all I need is my new 1.4 gig AMD Athlon Processor and I will have a good system
(I have a AMD Duron 750 MHZ. With 576 mb of ram now. Celestia runs at an average of 36.2 frames a second.)
! Ohh well.
Thankx,
TVT
P.S.
Now, all I need is my new 1.4 gig AMD Athlon Processor and I will have a good system
(I have a AMD Duron 750 MHZ. With 576 mb of ram now. Celestia runs at an average of 36.2 frames a second.)Re: Cards
Hey Ras,
That post was from me. My system didn't log me in so it went under anonymous. I to can't wait for this next weekend and I get my Ti4200.
Now I just have to deside on the brand of the card I want.
That post was from me. My system didn't log me in so it went under anonymous. I to can't wait for this next weekend and I get my Ti4200.
Now I just have to deside on the brand of the card I want.
Hi everybody, hi he whose name i know not ^-^
In fact, the best system is the one that fits what u do & what money u got ! 4 years ago, when i bought tha mobo it had a good upgrade path : i began w/ k6-200 & still can go to k62+600. I won't buy a mobo if it can't take me 5 years of estimated needs...
For now, Very Important Projects (like paying back my house, eating, taking care of my '72 VW for instance) take all my money & the part for 'puters is near naught, in fact i have no immediate need for it !
I can foresee K62+600 in some 3 months, then a 20 Gb HDD in 3 more months, this'll take me 2 years fwd. Then i'll see a highly upgradeable card w/ a low-end proc (Duron 1Ghz w/ mobo to 3 Ghz) that'll be 5 times faster than than K62+ & i'll keep the rest of the config. Then i'll be able to upgrade proc in some more years. That's how i proceed : one part at a time...
I'm not at all against tech geek attitude... if u can afford it & choose to do so & sacrifice other areas... My choice is rather to assess need, adapt means to need, always buy the n-1 gen & NEVER, OH NEVER latest gen, that's all ^-^
@+
In fact, the best system is the one that fits what u do & what money u got ! 4 years ago, when i bought tha mobo it had a good upgrade path : i began w/ k6-200 & still can go to k62+600. I won't buy a mobo if it can't take me 5 years of estimated needs...
For now, Very Important Projects (like paying back my house, eating, taking care of my '72 VW for instance) take all my money & the part for 'puters is near naught, in fact i have no immediate need for it !
I can foresee K62+600 in some 3 months, then a 20 Gb HDD in 3 more months, this'll take me 2 years fwd. Then i'll see a highly upgradeable card w/ a low-end proc (Duron 1Ghz w/ mobo to 3 Ghz) that'll be 5 times faster than than K62+ & i'll keep the rest of the config. Then i'll be able to upgrade proc in some more years. That's how i proceed : one part at a time...
I'm not at all against tech geek attitude... if u can afford it & choose to do so & sacrifice other areas... My choice is rather to assess need, adapt means to need, always buy the n-1 gen & NEVER, OH NEVER latest gen, that's all ^-^
@+