I’d probably pair a GF4 Ti with a Pentium 4 of that speed. A GF2 Ti will be a bottleneck, a GF3 Ti will be about on-par with the system, but a GF4 will allow you the luxury of enabling AA and AF without dropping to slideshow framerates.

You could also pair an FX series card with the system for much the same reasons, but good FX cards seem to cost too much these days.

I had a Pentium 4 2.4 with a Geforce 2 Pro back in the day. The Geforce 2 is very much a bottleneck for the system.

If the budget works I would much prefer a Geforce 3.

Saying this, for 2000-2001 games the Geforce 2 should work well.

paradigital wrote on 2024-01-28, 08:54:

I’d probably pair a GF4 Ti with a Pentium 4 of that speed. A GF2 Ti will be a bottleneck, a GF3 Ti will be about on par with the system, but a GF4 will allow you the luxury of enabling AA and AF without dropping to slideshow framerates.

You could also pair an FX series card with the system for much the same reasons, but good FX cards seem to cost too much these days.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, the FX series or the Geforce 4 have also been recommended already in the thread where I have asked for other components that have to be upgraded to turn the p4 into a gaming rig.

Other cards are not of the question. The gf3 and the gf2 were just the only cards I could find being sold at a price I would consider acceptable.

I will keep looking and if I can locate gf 4 or fx series card at a good price I will get it.

@mwdmeyer Thanks for your reply as well. Like I said above the gf 3 and gf2 were the only cards I could right away being sold a a good price.

I will keep looking though to get a neat card at a good price that won't bottleneck the p4 that much.

Maxing out the cpu is not on my agenda but having a card that works pretty well along the p4 would be still a good thing.

FX 5600 should be a reasonable priced card.

GeForce 2 series were the last cards with functional options for texel alignment and GeForce 2 Ti is faster in 16-bit modes vs stock GeForce 3 Ti 200. Other than that, GeForce 3 always wins.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-01-28, 19:56:

GeForce 2 series were the last cards with functional options for texel alignment and GeForce 2 Ti is faster in 16-bit modes vs stock GeForce 3 Ti 200. Other than that, GeForce 3 always wins.

Thanks for the infos. I have already figured out that my question is not as simple to answer as I have thought.

I really need to research more about the games I want to play. Need to figure out if a missing texel aligment function would lead to some issues in the games I want to play.

Having a fast card in 32 bit mode is not a must but it would be still nice to have a fast card with that color depth. After enjoying lots of games on my voodoo 3 system in 16 bit color mode i also would be curious to play some of the games again in 32 bit color.

i am curious If I can spot a difference at the first glance or not.

@alll I am watching the market rather close now and in case I coul find a geforce 4 or one of the radeon 8000 or 9000 series at similar price to gf 2 or gf3 would it be worth considering them as well?

predator_085 wrote on 2024-01-29, 07:27:

Need to figure out if a missing texel aligment function would lead to some issues in the games I want to play.

It mostly causes text corruption in older games.

These problems aren't too bad on GeForce 3/4 cards, but things get a lot worse on the GeForce FX series.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-01-29, 07:36:

predator_085 wrote on 2024-01-29, 07:27:

Need to figure out if a missing texel aligment function would lead to some issues in the games I want to play.

It mostly causes text corruption in older games.

These problems aren't too bad on GeForce 3/4 cards, but things get a lot worse on the GeForce FX series.

Thanks for the info. Well it won't be that big of a problem then. According to your thread it seems that only some older games are effected like you said.

These games should run well enough on my V3 3000 apg system anyway. So it would not a big loss of these games won't run on the more powerful P4 System.

Instead of spending $$$ on rare GF2ti you can get $10 gf4 MX440 or MX460. NV17/NV18 are theoretically gimped (rops, pixel shaders), but in reality packed with new optimizations and clocked higher die shrinks of NV15. All the optimizations let 460 beat everything below gf2ti500.

@rasz_pl Thats a neat advice. I will chek out the gf 4 mx440 and the mx440 asap. Have not considered them due their not so good reputation back then. But case they are not as bad as people made them the mx 440 or 460 would be the perfect budget card.

Just be careful that the MX440 has 128-bit memory. Most of them should, but I've read of some 64-bit versions which will be a lot slower.

Oh I totally forgot. There are a lot of castrated gf4mx cards around 🙁

shamino wrote on 2024-02-03, 12:41:

Just be careful that the MX440 has 128-bit memory. Most of them should, but I've read of some 64-bit versions which will be a lot slower.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-02-04, 07:40:

Oh I totally forgot. There are a lot of castrated gf4mx cards around 🙁

Thanks for the warning guys. I was not aware of that issue. That's a bummer. So I must closely examine the cards' specs online before purchasing.

I will start researching the different manufacturers to find out if some companies are more prone to sell these castrated cards compared to other vendors.

Some general rules to visually identify whether a card is 64-bit or 128-bit:

Memory types for the 64-bit / 128-bit DDR / SDR card era:

• TSOP - thin-rectangular profile with legs on 2 of 4 sides. Part code usually contains '16' to indicate 16-bits wide per chip. Haven't seen 32-bit wide TSOP DDR chips, though 32-bit SDR chips exist and you'll see them on the TNT2-M64 type cards
• PQFP / TQFP - Quad-flat-pack, rectangular profile with legs on 4 of 4 sides. Part code usually contains '32' to indicate 32-bits per chip
• BGA - Ball Grid Array, square with pads underneath. Part code for BGA DDR SGRAM usually contains '32' to indicate 32-bits per chip

Things to look for:

• Check the front and back of the card, some cards put all memory on the front (usually 8 chips)
• All chips facing same direction are usually lower bus-width cards
• Cards with 2/4x chips vertical and 2/4x chips horizontal are more commonly 128-bit card cards. Check whether RAM is on the back of those as well to confirm
• Cards with 4x empty ram spots either as a group of 4 or placed at every other positiion are more often 64-bit cards
• Cards with BGA or PQFP memory are more often 128-bit and fast

Model Names to look for:

• Some cards in the GF4-MX range even use SDRAM, best to just avoid those - for example the Asus V8170SE low profile
• For the GF4-MX / FX era cards, SE and other variants indicating the memory bandwidth are not good indicators of 128-bit / 64-bit
• There can be 128-bit DDR equipped GF4-MX440 'SE' cards and 64-bit regular FX5700 cards
• MX420 is almost always 64-bit DDR or 128-bit SDRAM
• MX4000 is mostly 64 or 32-bit slow DDR
• MX440 / FX5200 / FX5500 / FX5600 / FX5700 can be just about anything fast or slow, but always DDR
• MX460 should always be fast 128-bit BGA DDR
• Geforce 2/3/4 Ti cards are always 128-bit DDR unless they're damaged. i.e. Geforce 3 Ti 200, Geforce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro, Geforce 4 Ti4200
• Early high-end BGA cards like the Radeon 9700 / 9800 and Geforce 4 Ti4400 / 4600 are very failure prone
• Radeon 9600 / 9550 are usually 128-bit fast DDR

64-bit cards:

• 4x 'TSOP' memory chips
• 2x 'PQFP' / 'BGA' chips. PQFP/BGA DDR is usually found only on 128-bit cards though. 2x PQFP/BGA DDR would be more typical on laptop video card implementations
• Low profile cards are mostly 64-bit implementations, the exception is where the card uses 4x BGA or 8x TSOP (rare). Even then the low-profile TSOP cards could be 64-bit to simplify trace routing.
• Open spots on the card i.e. 4/8 chips installed means 64-bit generally. But there are MX4000 cards with just 2x TSOP 16-bit wide chips for just 32-bits bus width

128-bit cards:

• 8x 'TSOP' memory chips - all on front or 4 front / 4 back
• 4x 'PQFP'/'BGA' chips - Usually 2 front / 2 back, sometimes all on front
• 8x 'PQFP' / 'BGA' chips - these are usually found on weird non reference design 128-bit cards. Or early DDR cards like the Geforce 2 GTS

That is a solid guide.
On top of my head, there were some TSOP MX460.
I have a 64-bit GeForce2 GTS. By Manli, those amazing recyclers.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-12, 17:32:

Geforce 2/3/4 Ti cards are always 128-bit DDR unless they're damaged. i.e. Geforce 3 Ti 200, Geforce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro, Geforce 4 Ti4200

Could you elaborate on this, are you saying all GeForce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro cards do not have DDR and are damaged? Not sure if I’m reading it right 😂

zuldan wrote on 2024-02-12, 20:43:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-12, 17:32:

Geforce 2/3/4 Ti cards are always 128-bit DDR unless they're damaged. i.e. Geforce 3 Ti 200, Geforce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro, Geforce 4 Ti4200

Could you elaborate on this, are you saying all GeForce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro cards do not have DDR and are damaged? Not sure if I’m reading it right 😂

Hmm, just that if a Gf2/3/4 Ti card reports only 64-bit memory, it's broken in some way. Just as I have a 64-bit 32MB Gf4 MX440 because one of its BGA memory chips is bad and it only sees half the RAM now. I have another copy of the same card and it's got 4x BGA memory chips for 64MB of 128-bit DDR memory.

Sadly the same certainty can't be had for the later FX series cards unless you only look at the FX5800 to FX5950 cards. I just got burned buying a 64-bit FX5700 🙁

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-12, 22:20:

zuldan wrote on 2024-02-12, 20:43:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-12, 17:32:

Geforce 2/3/4 Ti cards are always 128-bit DDR unless they're damaged. i.e. Geforce 3 Ti 200, Geforce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro, Geforce 4 Ti4200

Could you elaborate on this, are you saying all GeForce 2 GTS/Ti/Pro cards do not have DDR and are damaged? Not sure if I’m reading it right 😂

Hmm, just that if a Gf2/3/4 Ti card reports only 64-bit memory, it's broken in some way. Just as I have a 64-bit 32MB Gf4 MX440 because one of its BGA memory chips is bad and it only sees half the RAM now. I have another copy of the same card and it's got 4x BGA memory chips for 64MB of 128-bit DDR memory.

Sadly the same certainty can't be had for the later FX series cards unless you only look at the FX5800 to FX5950 cards. I just got burned buying a 64-bit FX5700 🙁

I have a GF2 GTS Ti. What tool can I use to see if it’s reporting 64 or 128?

zuldan wrote on 2024-02-12, 22:35:

I have a GF2 GTS Ti. What tool can I use to see if it’s reporting 64 or 128?

I like Everest. It's Win9x compatible and you get lots of good info.