New video card needed

[Greg12]

I need a cheap (not more than $150) video card.

IT MUST BE AGP. AGP ONLY. NO PCI.

It would be nice if it had a tv tuner and video capture functions.

u can't get hardware mpeg for that can u?

[mike416]

For $150 you'll get a good AGP card
I'll go for Matrox G450,32MB DDR
No tuner/capture though

ATI radeon AIW cost about $225 (35MB DRR,tuner,capture)

[Greg12]

I need a place to plug in the monitor to.

[mike416]

both of the cards I'm talking about are AGP video card,of course you can plug your monitor

I'm using the matrox g450 dual head,you can even plug 2 monitors on it and the other monitors can behave differently,either zooming,playing movie etc,depends on how you set it
check it out
http://www.matrox.com/mga/dualhead/whatisdh.cfm

[Macros746]

ooooo. Hmm...IF you want to go exclusively for capturing maybe get the Matrox but that is really an old card. I would recommend the AIW (yes, the driver support is flawed as is the software but it is a VERY good card) It can be had for WAY less than $225 (I got mine from Best Buy during a sale for $120 shipped) Goto Pricewatch.com and see what the going rate is there.

Macros

[BigTen2k2]

Here is the best buy on the market today.....VisonTechs Xtasy

specs:
controller: Nvidia Gforce2 mx\400
Bus Type: AGP
Memory: 64mb
Core clock: 200Mhz
Memory Clock: 166Mhz
RAMDAC: 350Mhz
Vertical Refresh: 640x480(240 max)
2048x1536(60max)
API Support: Directx, OpenGL ICD
Connectors: VGA, TV/s-Video out

800 Million texel fill rate
25 Million triangles/sec setup
2.7 GB\second memory bandwith

128-bit Single Data Rate (SDR) or 64-bit Double Data Rate (DDR) memory
Digital Vibrancy control
NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
TwinView Technology
High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP)
AGP 4X with Fast Writes
32-bit color
32-bit Z/stencil buffer
Cube environment mapping
DirectX and S3 texture compression

Heres what you get after Overclocking....

Default Core...175
Overclock Core...210

Default Memory...166
Overclock Memory..215

Thats good stuff right there..And the price well....(drum roll)....$99, but Ive seen it for $90 on the net($99 BestBuy, CompUSA). Sure its not nearly the best for gamers, But for a budget card that can dish out perfomance at this price, just cant be beat. I would go for if if you dont have the money to buy the BigDogs toys..Hope this helps

[Greg12]

Is the Xtasy personal cinima hard mpeg encoder or software?

[Greg12]

i like it

ney others

[Greg12]

bump.

[sommersby]

You had better ead the review of the xtacy in the new Maximum PC magazine, it would be nice if they put it on a good video card but the card the use, in Maximum PC's own words is almost obsolete, it is gforce technology not even up to gforce 2, they did not recomend it untill they put it on a better card, You can get the AIW Radeoon for about $100 if you watch for sales and you get better than gforce2 performance, there is a reason this card won video card of the the year in 2000 and finished third this year, it is a solid performer for capture and gaming.

[sommersby]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-30 22:04:06, sommersby wrote:
You had better ead the review of the xtacy in the new Maximum PC magazine, it would be nice if they put it on a good video card but the card the use, in Maximum PC's own words is almost obsolete, it is gforce technology not even up to gforce 2, they did not recomend it untill they put it on a better card, You can get the AIW Radeoon for about $100 if you watch for sales and you get better than gforce2 performance, there is a reason this card won video card of the the year in 2000 and finished third this year, it is a solid performer for capture and gaming.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
I made a mistake on this and want to correct it, it is on a gforce2 card only the chip set on the card is older than the current gforce2 cards, a slower bus speed. The mag said they would of given it a higher rating if they had put it on a card with the newer chipset and would of given it a kick ass award if they put it on a gforce3 card.

[sommersby]

And it is a good buy if your not a big Gamer, in fact, Best Buy has it on sale this week for $49!!

And Gforce2, even with the ti200 chipset is still a great card, My son is a big gamer and that is what I put in his puter and he hasn't complained yet.

[sommersby]

Another nice feature of this card, which is why I bought the AIW radeon, is the external connection box, makes it much easier to change your video source.

[dumwaldo]

first none of this really has anything to do with the original post but...

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-30 22:04:06, sommersby wrote:
You had better ead the review of the xtacy in the new Maximum PC magazine, it would be nice if they put it on a good video card but the card the use, in Maximum PC's own words is almost obsolete, it is gforce technology not even up to gforce 2, they did not recomend it untill they put it on a better card, You can get the AIW Radeoon for about $100 if you watch for sales and you get better than gforce2 performance, there is a reason this card won video card of the the year in 2000 and finished third this year, it is a solid performer for capture and gaming.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

i recently purchased this card and posted a bit about it here for anybody interested. https://www.videohelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=71859&forum=2

i read the review in maximumPC as well and nowhere does it say that it is inferior to other GeForce 2 cards. what they say is they would have liked to see a GeForce 3 on the same card. it uses a GeForce2 MX400 chip (because the GeForce GTS chops do not support the twin view used in this card). personally i do not play games and i am very glad it does not use a GeForce 3 as that would do nothing for the cards performance other than improve the 3d gaming and it would double the cost of the card. the suggest list price for this product is $200 while the suggested list price for any GeForce 3 based card is around $350 or better. the only fault Maximum PC (minimum BS) found was that it could not do 3d gaming on the same level as card that sells for twice as much money.

just to be completely clear about this...
ANY GeForce card = $350 or better
64MB Visiontek Xtasy Everything = $200
64MB AIW Radeon 8500 = $350 or better
in order to get a cheaper AIW card you must wade through the already confusing product line of ATI for the model with lesser hardware like the 32MB model that sells for considerable less and uses the Ti200 chip not the Ti500.

the Xtasy everything is a new product so mentioning previous accolades is immaterial as it was not available so it could not have won any previous awards (as is awards mean anything).

the Xtasy everything also boasts a feature absent in the radeon models and that is true dual head output. the best you will find on a radeon is one VGA and one Digital connector masquerading as dual head. this is NOT dual head IMO because you can not connect 2 CRT's, but the Xtasy has 2 VGA connectors to make it a true dual head video card. for the money i see the Xtasy everything as the better value.

now before someone jumps all over me saying i can get it off pricewatch for half the price you quoted, well thats very nice but the same can be done for the Xtasy so i used approximate MFG list prices. the MFG sets a list price based on how it will be priced based against competitors so if a MFG sets a higher list price than a competing product they expect it to sell for more than said competing product. i dont consider the prices on pricewatch to be valid anyway because 90% of the products listed on there are OEM parts that come with no warranty. even if the seller tries to claim that it does have a warranty they do not have the authority to change the MFG policy and the MFG policy regarding OEM parts is NO WARRANTY. thats what makes it an OEM part as opposed to a retail part. i hope you understand this because i really do not feel like explaing how the distribution chain brings products from the MFG to the consumer while insuring a lucrative whosale and retail market. you know there is a good reason why you cant just go to ATI and get the whosale price.

_________________
peace out,
dumwaldo

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dumwaldo on 2002-01-01 09:30:45 ]</font>

[dumwaldo]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2002-01-01 08:33:55, sommersby wrote:
And it is a good buy if your not a big Gamer, in fact, Best Buy has it on sale this week for $49!!

And Gforce2, even with the ti200 chipset is still a great card, My son is a big gamer and that is what I put in his puter and he hasn't complained yet.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

oh yeah there is no such thing as a GeForce2 Ti 200
there is a GeForce2 Ti
there is a GeForce3 Ti200
but there is no GeForce2 Ti 200

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dumwaldo on 2002-01-02 07:27:49 ]</font>