Geforce3 to Radeon 9250?

[MeatLoaf]

Dads got a GF3 Ti500 64Mb GFX card and hes just started playing COD2. Too be honest on low details it runs ok but he wants to up the detail a bit so i thought a cheap 9250 mite be a bit better? He wont spend more than £35 so its a choice of a Radeon 9250 128Mb or a FX5200 128MB.

Which will be best for him? He has an XP 2400+ cpu and 512Mb RAM.

 

[RandomTom]

I think that for that price maybe a geforce 4 ti4600 might be an okay buy, although COD2 is a right hog so I don't know what'll improve it greatly.

 

[daz]

The best thing would be to stretch to something like a Radeon 9800 Pro, or even a 9700 Pro. You should be able to pick one up from the members market for £50.

AFAIK, the 9250 and the 5200 won't be a step up at all from the GF3 Ti500 - they may even be worse.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

As above, try and stretch to a second hand 9700Pro/9800Pro. If you can't look at a second hand 9500Pro

The FX5200 and 9250 aren't great cards and AFAIK they're worse than the GF3 Ti500

 

[MeatLoaf]

Well he went out and got a 9250. Seems a little better on COD in DX9 mode but he only scores 3915 on 3dm01, im sure the GF3 used to get almost 5000.

 

[alan]

i had a geforce 4 mx420 and i played cod2, but it was pretty much unplayable with 30 fps most of the time. U sure hes running cod2 on dx9!?!? coz i would have thought his fps would be below 30 with that card and dx9

 

[Duke]

The 9250 would be better in some newer games, as it has more upto date features, however the 'raw power' isn't going to be great as it's a budget card.

So when are you going to post overclocking results?

 

[MeatLoaf]

i had a geforce 4 mx420 and i played cod2, but it was pretty much unplayable with 30 fps most of the time. U sure hes running cod2 on dx9!?!? coz i would have thought his fps would be below 30 with that card and dx9

On the GF3 he played in DX7 mode, and DX9 on the 9250

 

[Cyber-Mav]

your looking at no performance increase to a slight decrease in performance if you go to a 9250 from a gf3.

i got a gf3ti200 64mb and bought a 9250 128mb and it did not score any better and in some games it was a little slower in ut2004 especially. however some games did show a improvement of around 10%. probably because of the extra ram on the card.

i bought the 9250 for its tv out and vivo capabilities so its not too bad.

but if i were to buy again, i would spend the extra 7 quid and get a 9550 card which is a lot more powerful than the 9250.

 

[Andydewar]

On the GF3 he played in DX7 mode, and DX9 on the 9250

I would be surprised if it is really running in DX9 mode. IIRC the Radeon 9250 is based on the Rad 8500, but had AGP 8x support, clock speeds increased and pipelines halved from 4 to 2. This being the case, it will only support PS 1.4, not the required PS 2.0 for DX9.

The geforce 3 ti 500 supports up to PS 1.3 and wasnt much slower than a GF4 ti4200, so should be considerably faster in most games when set up correctly.

EDIT: Pipelines remain at 4, I was thinking of the 9000 which had 2. Clock speed was actually lowered on the 9250 to 240 MHz as well.

More info here:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=1238

 

[Cyber-Mav]

the 9250 has core clock speeds of 240mhz-ish stock and the gf3 ti200 has a core speed of 175mhz stock.

both cards have 4 pipes but the gf3 has 2 texture mapping units per pipe so it can perform much better in multi-texturing games, and most games these days do use multi texturing.

either way if your on a budget the bare minimum you should go for is the 9550 since it is fully dx9 certified and is a lot faster than a 9250 for only a tiny bit more cash.

 

[MeatLoaf]

Ah well, he seems happy enuf with the 9250 and even better hes given me the GF3... which ive promptly stuck on MM