Number one PCI card

[noobtech]

Well, I want to know what the top 5 cards are for Nvidia, ATI, & Other... PCI, not AGP or PCI-Express...

Nvidia
1. 6200
2. 5500
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?

ATI
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Other
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

I just got a GX110 tower w/ the Slot 1 Pentium III, 866... It currently has a TNT 16meg video PCI card... looking to upgrade it to something better. It's going to be my Linux box for Suse 10.0. I also have two 120GB HD's w/ 2MB cache... that should be no problem putting all that inside, right? I can't wait to set that badboy up. LoL.

 

[CEpeep]

I just got a GX110 tower w/ the Slot 1 Pentium III, 866... It currently has a TNT 16meg video PCI card... looking to upgrade it to something better. It's going to be my Linux box for Suse 10.0. I also have two 120GB HD's w/ 2MB cache... that should be no problem putting all that inside, right? I can't wait to set that badboy up. LoL.

If you're going with Linux, be sure to pick up an nVidia card. ATi's Linux support is crap.

 

[pxc]

Well, I want to know what the top 5 cards are for Nvidia, ATI, & Other... PCI, not AGP or PCI-Express...

Nvidia
1. 6200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143058 (OOS)
2. 5700LE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814139166
3. 5600 (rare)
4. 5500 128-bit
5. 5200 128-bit

ATI
1. 9100 128-bit
2. 9250 128-bit
3. 9200 128-bit
4. 9250 64-bit
5. 9200/9200LE 64-bit

Most of the cards except the 6200 and 5700LE come in 128-bit memory versions. It might not matter if you're not playing games, but the performance difference might come in handy for a 3D accelerated desktop. nvidia is supposed to have better Linux support and when the 6200 is in stock at newegg it's a steal. Sign up for notification.

I like the Radeon 9100 PCI 128-bit memory card. It's a PCI version of the 8500LE: 250MHz core, 250MHz DDR memory (500MHz effective speed). I'd choose that one out of the 10 cards listed above for gaming. The 6200 has more features (SM3), but it's not very fast for DX9 gaming. The 9100 is a good DX8.1 card.

 

[DanK]

One thing to note: ATI Radeons with model numbers <= 9250 have free/open 3D drivers from the DRI Project. There are free/open drivers for R3xx- and R4xx-based cards (9500s to X?00s), but they are experimental and incomplete.