Whats with video cards these days?

[Syndrome]

Did anyone else notice that you cant really upgrade to a decent card if you want to have the video-in/capture ability? All the cards either only have video out, or simply dont support both!!

start making some better cards (128meg DDR) that have video in capabilities!! I have an ATI Radeon 64meg DDR, and its not keeping up with todays gaming demands, but I dont want to lose my video capture option (since I dont have a dvd-ripper, and cant afford to spend $400 on one) so im stuck with it until they come out with a better one.

boooooooooo!!!!
Syndrome

[Tiribulus]

If by DVD "ripper" you mean DVD "burner" you can get one for less than 200 bucks and with just a simple DVD rom drive you can do a plenty useful DVD/video work. Also you can get a seperate capture card which will do better capturing in most cases anyway and run any card you want for gaming. Can get pricey, but such is life friend. I'm not sure where the relation between a drive and a capture card came into play here.
Tiribulus

[Syndrome]

I'm not sure where the relation between a drive and a capture card came into play here.

I was really just stating that since I dont have the dvd burner, i can only resort to a capture card to optain backups of my movies.

Plus being canadian, dvd burners are over $450 still here... most are over $600 if you want a decent one.

it blows!
silly canadian dollar BOOOOOOOOOOooooooo........

Syn

[Coop]

Syndrome,

I'm using a Gainward Geforce4 Ti4200 VIVO card with 128mb ram (Golden Sample). It works great !!

The cards are out there, but you should do your homework before buying

[Treebeard]

I have an ATI Radeon 64meg DDR, and its not keeping up with todays gaming demands


Syndrome

I would venture to say that your processor (your profile says athlon 800) is being pushed harder than your video card on some new games.

newer games are requiring 800mhz or higher (c&c generals & splinter cell) and recommending 1ghz or more. where the video requirements for those games are 32mb and recommend 64mb.

I have a cheap 64mb video card and can play new games without problems, but my processor is a 1.4

[Tiribulus]

I have an ATI Radeon 64meg DDR, and its not keeping up with todays gaming demands


Syndrome

I would venture to say that your processor (your profile says athlon 800) is being pushed harder than your video card on some new games.

newer games are requiring 800mhz or higher (c&c generals & splinter cell) and recommending 1ghz or more. where the video requirements for those games are 32mb and recommend 64mb.

I have a cheap 64mb video card and can play new games without problems, but my processor is a 1.4

I don't mean this as a flame, but the amount of video memory is only one consideration in the capability of a video card and a much less important one than is commonly realized. Cards with the same amount of memory can be worlds apart in their performance. A first generation Radeon 64 will be quickly brought to it's knees by even older games like Q3A when you start to crank up the eye candy no matter how powerful the CPU. What's more the MSR you see on game boxes usually means you can run it poorly with that hardware only if you use low res and low detail and not at all if you try to make it look good. A faster processor is ALWAYS better so I'm not disagreeing with that, but it is not making a greater difference in game performance than his video card. Try running UT2003, Jedi Knight2, Serious Sam2 or any of the newer gaming benchmarks if you doubt what I' m saying. I am willing to take all kinds of correction when it comes to digital video work, but performance hardware is my specialty and I know whereof I speak. The Frankenbox is a mounstrously fast gaming machine with a highly overclocked Radeon 9700 pro and even that is pulled below 30 fps in Serious Sam2 (with the eye candy enabled) and down to 10 in the nature bench in 3DMark 2003. The point is I'm glad you're enjoying your games and would never try to take that away from you, but neither a Radeon 64 or "cheap 64 meg card" (depending somewhat on what that means) are up to the task of todays games and will soon not be able to even launch tomorrow's. I'd get a new card if I were him.

I was really just stating that since I dont have the dvd burner, i can only resort to a capture card to optain backups of my movies

@ Syndrome. I'm still honestly not getting how having a DVD burner would let you no longer have to resort to your capture card for movies, unless you mean a DVD reader where you could rip movies instead of capturing them by playing them into the capture card with a DVD player maybe? As far as being in Canada, I assume you live too far North to take a run down here to do some shopping huh?
Tiribulus

[BJ_M]

I'm not sure where the relation between a drive and a capture card came into play here.

I was really just stating that since I dont have the dvd burner, i can only resort to a capture card to optain backups of my movies.

Plus being canadian, dvd burners are over $450 still here... most are over $600 if you want a decent one.

it blows!
silly canadian dollar BOOOOOOOOOOooooooo........ :shock:

Syn

the cnd $$ is very strong right now .. anyway .. you can buy a sony or pioneer for $400 CND at future shop for example - even mail order

(thats = to $240 US)

[neonflx]

This are the SPECS to run Unreal II haha agree with Tiribulus try running this in your compaq, hp, dell, gateway with integrated video that you tought you got a deal on when you only paid 699.00 at K-Mart


Unrael II Sys Recommendations
Operating System: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Processor: Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon 733 MHz processor (Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz or higher RECOMMENDED)
Memory: 256 MByte RAM (384 MByte RAM or greater recommended)
Hard Disk Space: 3 GByte free HD space
CD-ROM Drive: 8x Speed
Video: 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX (64MB NVIDIA GeForce3 or ATI Radeon 8500 or higher recommended)
Sound: Windows compatible sound card. NVIDIA nForce or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio. (Sound Blaster Audigy series sound card recommended)

[thxkid]

Problem ever since 3DFX went belly up, now Nvidia can turn out crap(and are) and your stuck with it, many of times thought of replacing my VooDoo 5500, but would take a $300 to do so I have -0- problems withmy card, no bluse screens, no lockups, true won't play some of the newest hotest games strictly designed around the Nvidia chip, keep in mind the Nvidia chip are CPU based while the Voodoo cards while card and ram based, so the faster your processor the better the crappy Nvidia card will work. The ATI is also a CPU based run video card also.