Hello, I know this may not be the right forum for this but I need a little info and more people visit here. Anyways, I had a major system meltdown last week and had to build a new computer from the ground up. New motherboard has an AGP 1.0 slot. My questions are: 1) What brand would card would some of you recommend in the around $200 or less category? 32m memory would be a plus. 2) Are the new AGP 2X 4X cards downward compatible i.e. will they work in a 1.0 slot? That way if I ever get a new motherboard, I wouldn't have to get yet another video card. Thanks, hdrider

AGP is just a Windows's Driver. So, yes you can put a recent one in an older one... Me i like the ATI line, Their drivers are always up to date(Very Important). I have ATI Rage Furry(Really cooks with 3d Apps, Poser too!). And i have the Ati Wonder(Can capture Video with it too!). They do play games very well, if that's a concern of yours(Although, My games are mostly 'OpenGl' ones). RivaTNT2 are pretty good too. Oh! Forgot, the ATI cards have Great DVD acceleration(A must for me, cause i have a lot of DVDs that are imported...That i can only play on my CPU). Hope this Helps! Marc

It depends on what you need if for. If it's just for Poser and such, a TNT2 with 32MB would be the way to go (that's what I hope to upgrade to - my 8MB ATI card is starting to show its age, but I need to increase hard drive storage first!), and those come in at around $80-$120... For game-play, you'd probably want to go for a very low end GeForce or a Voodoo 3 or 4 - if you're careful, you can find the older GeForce cards (Older? It's only five months old - sheeshe!) for about $190-220, and Voodoo 3 and 4 run between $100-200, IIRC..

Marc, Thanks. I've been very happy with STB cards over the years but since they merged with 3dfx, I think they may be slipping in customer relations. I emailed them about a week ago with questions about their cards and haven't recieved a reply yet. I did visit ATI's site and it is quite impressive. But still, I like Nvidia. Right now I'm running an older Riva 128, which has served me faithfully for several years. Jeesh, so may cards so many decisions! hdrider

CharlieBrown, Thanks. I need all the info I can get. I haven't shopped for a new video card for some time. I do play games, but most of them aren't of the opengl variety so that's not a great concern. I would like something that does 3D programs a bit faster and yet I can play the occasional game - just to relax a bit you know. My main concern here is if the card I get will work in my system. Thanks, hdrider

For faster work with 3D apps, you need: 1) Higher memory (16 or 32 MB - 64 is overkill, and only properly implemented - at present - on some higher-end Dell machines). 2) A good Direct3D and/or OpenGL driver 3) If it works as promised, the ATI card (Radeon) due out later this year - it's the first card that I've ever heard of that can do it's own keyframe rendering.

ATI Fury 32MB is the way to go. I joyfully samshed the piece of *%#$ nVidia TNT card ripped out recently. It did its job, parted me with some cash. The first TNT I put in would run exactly 23 minutes between lockups. placing an extra fan on it extened that to 28 minutes. The warranty replacement started burning transitors after about a week. (leaves streaks when you scroll) They refused to replace the card again. AND software render can out run their OpenGL, sad.

Hello All, Well, I decided to go with the 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP card. I've always liked STB stuff and the price is right. There is a $30 rebate on them right now. I got it this evening and it only took me about a half hour to have everything installed and up and running. So far so good. The only thing is I really don't notice any speed as far as rendering goes. Probably need to set it up right. Still learning. Again, thank everyone for your help. I don't know what I would do without this forum and fine group of people. Probably waste a lot of time and moolah. hdrider

Poser, unfortunately doesn't take advantage of accelerated graphics cards. That's why you don't see any improvement in render times or frame rate when you are previewing animations.

nerd, I have Vue3 and Bryce 4. Still don't see any speedup. Could be just me. I was expecting something close to the speed of light. Or there abouts. hdrider Also, anyone know of a benchmark program for AGP cards? Curious to see how fast this bugger really is.

Ashlocke- I've got the OEM version (not the dual head one) of the Matrox G400 card, its a very solid card, never a problem. The one I have is not supposed to have very good Open-GL drivers, but I think they are supposed to be better in the dual head model. Poser dosen't use tham anyway, but Max can.

P3 vs. Anthlon, The AMD can outrun the P3 by just a little on render tims. BUT, it runs very hot. I've had a lot more warranty work on the Anthlon systems than the P3's. If a fan fails it will cook the CPU. If you go AMD be sure to get a MB that has Hardware monitoring and fans that have the RPM detector in them. The P3 is definately more stable. I've seen them run for who knows how long with no fan and still live. Personal opinion on RAM, I'd rather have 512MB of SDRAM than 128 of RAMBUS, about the same price.

A PIII Coppermine is more stable than the new Athlon Thunderbird, and runs at about 98% of the speed for most applications. The "older" Athlon chips are actually SLOWER than the same speed PIIIs because of the L2 cache on the chip. Other versions of the PIII are slower than the equivalent Athlons however, so be careful of what you buy... Also, if anyone's interested, the current issue of Maximum PC magazine lists a "Smackdown" of some of the top current consumer-level video cards (i.e., those priced between $150 and $300). None have a significant effect on rendering in Poser and Bryce, however.

Ashlocke- I haven't noticed any improvement in bump mapping, I don't know if the later drivers (which I've downloaded, but never installed) help that or not. I did try the Open GL driver in Max, instead of the Z-Buffer, it seemed to work about the same speed but made the vertex dots smaller, so I turned it off. My machine was state-of-the-art (almost) for about 15 minutes, how fast things change! I do have the P3 500 overclocked to 525, never got the courage to go to the next speed, which is 550. But everything has been very solid at that speed. Incidently, I've never felt that Poser is slow on rendering, but I do think that about Bryce - I think there could be lots of improvement in the code in Bryce.