On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:50:40 +0100, "GT"
<ContactGT_remove_@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I asked a graphics card question the other day and we all got side-tracked a
>little, but when I asked a side question, it was missed...
>
>Is there anywhere (web?) that has a comparrisson table for graphics cards
>both old and new? All the comparisson tables compare cards of a simaler era
>using games of the time, nothing compares the generations directly.
Tom's Hardware vga charts
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/vga_charts.html
That's about as good as it gets.
You may not find good comparisions of very old to newer
cards because the comparisons aren't applicable. Old cards
won't even run new games and new cards are optimized for
newer DIrectX effects, not just linear framerate increases
like old generations of cards. On other words, (I'll invent
fictional numbers for this example:) a Radeon 8500 might be
40% as fast as a Geforce 6800 at a 5 year old game, but only
10% as fast at a new game.
>
>I want to know how much faster a newer card would be compared to my AGP 64MB
>Radeon 8500. Is is worth me upgrading at all?
If you are not a gamer, no it's pointless to upgrade.
If you are a gamer, you should already know quite clearly
that Radeon 8500 can't even play new games at playable
framerates. So, for modern 3D gaming, yes it is manditory to
upgrade the card.
>How much would it cost me to
>be able to run some modern games - Area 51 + car racing Sims for example.
You could spend $80 and then wish you'd spent more 1 year
from now if not 2 months later? Frankly the best value is
around $150, find a deal on a Geforce 6800 (not LE and not
GT). If you can't find one around that price, look at
Geforce 6600GT, or regular 6600 even cheaper.
However, with that old card I wonder what the rest of your
system is like. If it's as old as the card, you'll need a
newer system to reap most of the benefit from a new card.
>With our new baby arriving, I don't have spare cash for the PC any more, but
>Area 51 struggles even at 640x480 sometimes!! I'm not bothered about
>anti-aliasing or the other anti-thing, I just want good frame rates at
>1024x768 or even better, 1280x1024 in games such as Area 51.
>
>What do I buy for under £100, preferably nearer £50??
Radeon 9600 Pro? Depends, if your CPU isn't modern and you
don't have at least 512MB+ system memory, you ought to hold
onto the $$ till later.
new graphics card 
Linear Mode
