Best PCI (not PCI-e) Video Card

T

tiebird321

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 6, 2004
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I am looking for a sub $150 PCI video card
From doing some research I have found some 9250's 9200's FX5500's, 5200's, and one 5700LE
I have no idea how these cards would stack up against each other

What I idealy want is a PCI 9600 Pro/SE 128 but I have had no luck finding one
I am upgrading from a rage pro 16mb card.
I want something that can run doom3 at 640x480 @medium/high or maybe even 800x600. Be able to run CS at 800x600 and Halo at 1024x768
The other thing I play is C&C generals and it would be good if it could keep up with it at 1024x768 with low/mid detail

If your wondering what sort of machine i have and why I havent upgraded to something with an AGP slot already...
This is going to go into the DOCK for my IBM A22p laptop
The dock has a PCI slot and when testing it with the PCI 9000SE card I have, it works really well playing CS 1.3
the Lappy has a p3 1.2ghz, 512mb ram, 80gb 5.4k hd so the only short bit on it is the internal video card
 
The best new PCI video card I'm aware of is this 256MB FX5600. It's awfully expensive for an obsolete GPU but it's about the only new PCI card which doesn't suck at DirectX 9 shader stuff. There are no PCI Radeon 9600 derived cards because that chip doesn't support the high signalling voltage required for PCI cards. You have to watch out for the PCI 5700LEs because they all seem to have 64 bit video RAM rather than 128 bit RAM (info here) unless you get the 256MB models. In fact, that's a pretty common theme among PCI cards these days: if you want 128 bit video RAM you get stuck getting 256MB. Given your relatively slow CPU, I'd just stick with a decent DirectX 8 card like this Radeon 9250 at $60. It's got 128 bit RAM and is a decent match for your CPU.
 
This is the fastest PCI card made, but it's kind of pricey:

http://www.amamax.com/gefx5712ddr1.html

Inno3D 5700 256MB/128-bit memory $147.00. AFAIK, Inno3D was the only maker of 128-bit memory 5700 PCI cards (both 128MB and 256MB... I can't find the 128MB version anymore). Don't worry about the "5700LE" on that card. The core speed is lowered due to the power that a PCI slot can provide, but it has a full 128-bit memory bus and you can overclock it if you want.

PCI cards that use only 5v or 3.3v to power the card have slightly less power (~5W less) than AGP slots provide. I think that Inno3D card above should overclock to at least 5700nu speeds easily. A 5700nu is much faster than a 9000 SE.
 
Thank you all for the help so far
I'm stuck between 2 of the 128mb 5700le's
this one or this one

or is it worth the $50 to step up to the known 128bit memory bus with the 256mb card

How are the 5700le 128mb cards going to compare to a 64mb 64bit 9600SE?
 
ok i dont know what to post i posted nothing informing and didnt read the whole post :(

IMO ive had better exp with ATI (still using them today) i had an AIW 128 32meg it pwned
get ATI if you can :p

edit: ok so im bored and only read like 2 paragraphs :p

soulsaver_8229
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
Sub 150$ pci card? with 150 itself you could get buget agp card, mobo, and 512 ddr ram

soulsaver_8229
Click to expand...
The problem is, that PCI video card is for a docking station for a laptop PC. And AFAIK there is no docking station available for any laptop/notebook PC which accepts AGP cards at all whatsoever.
 
soulsaver_8229 said:
ok i dont know what to post i posted nothing informing and didnt read the whole post :(

IMO ive had better exp with ATI (still using them today) i had an AIW 128 32meg it pwned
get ATI if you can :p

edit: ok so im bored and only read like 2 paragraphs :p

soulsaver_8229
Click to expand...

Meh, read the rest then... The answer is no. ATI does NOT make a better card in this range. I've been trying to help a friend find a good PCI card and researched for days. The best I could ever find was definitely the 5700LE. (BTW, I had the AIW Rage Pro 32MB, which is the predecessor to the 128. It SUCKED. Just because you had one good experience doesn't make the entire company failproof -- mind you, I'm not saying nVidia is better, I'm STILL upset over the giant marketing hype known as the GF4 MX series...)

The "Bloody Monster" or the other with the higher memory bandwidth (amount of memory isn't going to matter much as long as it's at least 128MB, that's a cheap marketing trick to sell two different cards rather than just one -- at least with cards like these. Memory bandwidth is a good thing though.) Under the circumstances, since you aren't exaclty looking at a super-high-end card, I'm inclined to say it's not worth 2x the price for better memory bandwidth. In the end, the bottleneck is going to be transferring TO that memory anyway.
 
tiebird321 said:
Thank you all for the help so far
I'm stuck between 2 of the 128mb 5700le's
this one or this one

or is it worth the $50 to step up to the known 128bit memory bus with the 256mb card
Click to expand...
Both of the 5700LEs you've listed are 64 bit cards which plod along at 3.2GB/s. If you're looking at Doom3 and Halo, you really should be trying to get a card which isn't hobbled by extremely low memory bandwidth. You'd probably be happier with a DirectX 8 card with 128 bit RAM than with a DirectX 9 card with 64 bit RAM. If you really want to play modern games then you should just eliminate the 64 bit cards from consideration and decide which 128 bit card to go with.

Regarding the 5700LE versus 5600 issue, keep in mind that these 5700LEs come with 200MHz DDR RAM whereas this 5600 comes with 275MHz DDR RAM. Even if you overclock the 5700LE GPU (not really much of a challenge), you're still stuck with a fairly limited GPU whether you have a 5600 or an overclocked 5700LE. You're really not going to be able to crank up the shader effects in a serious way for either of them. They're both 4 pixel pipe boards and so can only do shader effects on a fairly limited basis. The one thing which differentiates them is their memory bandwidths and in that case there's quite a difference. When you're dealing with low-end video cards like these trying to run modern games, low memory bandwidth can get you into serious trouble so I would definitely spend the extra $50 to get 128 bit RAM. Look at how much the games cost and how much better they run with fast video RAM and then the $50 sounds like a very good deal.
 
5600 5600 5600... You keep saying that, but, what you don't say is where it is... Remember, he's stuck with PCI... That means the number of cards that are possible is VERY low.

I kind of wonder about that supposed 128-bit card though. Look at the details there. It says it's the 5200 core. Is the 5700LE really using the same core as the 5200? Are you SURE that there is a 256MB 128-bit model of a PCI video card that is definitely low end by today's standards?
 
I went with the Blody Monster 3
The price was right and there are a fair number of reports around on how easily it will OC
PLus I'm hoping it will have some sort of "powerd by" sticker I can put onto the lappy :D
The card shows up on thursday
I'm going to take some pictures and post them with Bechmarks when the card comes in
Thank you guys for all the help you have offered
 
I would of went with the Jaton over the apollo. The Apollo is only 64 bit for $89, the Jaton is 128 bit for $104, for th extra $15 i would of wanted the better bandwidith, it wil make a sizable difference. PLus the Jaton is a Low factor card, which would of fit into your dockig station nicer.
 
The card came today
Instalation went easily and it works great
couple things to note though
It disables the graphics integrated into the Lappy
So you have to have an external display to use anything
The CPU and FSB are definetly limiting factors
set at either 640x480 or 1024x768 W/4xAA i get the same 3dmark 2001 score of ~3701
CS, HALO, and WOW all work Great at 1024x768
never dropping below 30fps

I got one of my coworkers to plug his A31 (p4-m 1.8, 1gb ram, 60gb 5.4k) into the Dock.
With his system we were seeing 3dmark 2001 score of 8900 and a 3dmark 03 score of 1780 (1024x768)
then using the omega Nvidia drivers we Oc'd the card from 250/400 to 400/450. the card was completely stable at these speeds
with the OC we got a 3dmark 01 of 12,386 and a 03 score of 2245

The Idea is definetly a sucess, and the card works really well
I just need to see about getting an A3x with the p4-m with a dead screen to use with the dock when i want to game
 
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