Decent sub $100 OpenGL card

#1 Most anything from nVidia or ATI. Get as close to the $100 mark as you can - the $20 "special" is liable to disappoint you.

#2 Ben,

I need a bargain basement video card for Tribes 2. Can you recommend?

#3 I Reccomend the Geforce 2 card, its around 50$ it woun't run alot of todays new games but it is stable (from my experiances) and runs some games, like BF1942 (not BF:V), HL and may run HL2, it doesn't have shader support though.

#4 Thanks Chris. I think I can afford that. Maybe I can find a sale and rebate too.

#5 A Geforce FX 5200 with 128mb and shader2.0 costs

#6 Yes but the 5200 is unstable from what i've seen/heard. Its one of those "budget" cards.

#7 You can get a Radeon 9600 Pro with 128MB for $66-$70, it's not a bad card although it doesn't have the best linux drivers. Check out www.pricewatch.com and browse the video cards. Radeon 9800 starts at $128.

#8 Someone told me that the FX5200's rendering speed is not much better than an old GeForce 2. I don't know if this is true or not.

#9 A fx5200 is roughly equal to the speed of a gf4mx 420, but is a shade faster when you start using antialiasing. I run a fx5600 in my one computer, and other than a few of the early drivers being bad for torque (and that was all nvidia cards with those drivers) its run just fine

#10 I've checked most of the major retail stores(i.e., CompUSA). I don't have an AGP bus, so have to use PCI. Anyway, I pretty much only found PNY or Radeon 128 in lower end cards with prices starting at around $70 USD. I don't want to spend over $50, but can't find budget cards like TNT2 which would be fine.

#11 BTW, am I right in my assumption that Tribes2 will not run with an onboard video card? I assume this because the memory is probably shared('nother assumption). Also, being part of the motherboard on a proprietary system like Compaq, I doubt if they update drivers, if that's even possible for onboard cards, so like Lee, I'm looking for a decent card for W2K only for less than $50USD.

Thanks.

#12 5200 chips not unstable at all.
Experienced in 3 machines, no prbs with it.

#13 The 5200 is a budget chip, so performance will be much lower than the higher end of the FX line. I have one in my work PC though and as for stability I have had no issues at all.

#14 You should be able to get a good card for under $100. Go for a card that supports 1.x shaders at least - a Geforce 3 or 4, or a Radeon 8500. If you can find a Radeon 9500+ for under $100, that would be a good deal.

I'll sell you my Geforce 3 ti 200 for $40 if you like. Still works great.

#15 Go to www.pricewatch.com. Just got me a 5200FX 256 mb card for $70USD off of pricewatch.com. The only problems I have heard was with the nVidia driver a couple of months ago....since then nVidia has fixed it.

#16 Get a GeForce Ti4200 128mb model. It will cost next to nothing, and it runs EVERY game on amazing settings and great framerates with my AMD 1800XP processor.

#17 @Mark B. thanks for link.

#18 What does everyone think of the GeForce 5400? I've found them for $70

#19 I'd aim for a 9600 at that budget, you might even be able to get a 256MB one if you shop around.

If you need to stick to PCI I think nVidia actually do the 5200 for PCI (and it has dual heads, so excellent for multiple monitor support).

#20 I've got 8x AGP, it was someone else who has still got PCI!