video cards

[grad]

is the radeon 7000 128mb any good?

can't find any reviews of the 128mb version..

[fugjostle]

Any good for what?

Personally I wouldn't bother but if its just being used to power an old machine then kewl.

They should cost around the £35 - £60 mark and are getting old. The Radeon 9800 pro is the latest chipset and if I was going to by a new gfx card then I would put an extra £50 into the pot and get something a little bit newer and closer to the latest release.

Ideally, I would hold on until Christmas and get a something around the 9800 (radeon) or FX 5900 (nVidia) mark for a bit cheaper than they are now. You want to make sure that any new card you get supports DirectX 9 and OpenGL 1.4 .

Just my 2 pence, but if you don't want to be able to play the latest and greatest games then go for it. Its a cheap card that offers a lot of bang for the money.

You can have my GeForce Ti4600 Pro for £120 with 256Mb on board and a pair of 3D glasses :-) I bought it for £300 4 months ago.

[grad]

cheers mate, you and your 3D glasses..

i'm after a cheapish new machine and this card keeps popping up in the specs..I'm not after anything blisteringly fast..but want to be able to play the latets games..

time to PM myk i think..

[fugjostle]

Its a good ole card from back in 2001... Its not going to impress you in the gaming departments... I suspect that games like UT2003 and BF1942 will cause it to struggle (low fps) and the newer games coming out that are using OpenGL 1.4 and DirectX 9 are going to cause it to have a heart failure.

2D graphics are exceptional with it and for the casual user the card is a bargain for around £35.

Here's a review I've come across:

"If you are a 3D gamer looking to speed up your favorite graphics intensive game (like Quake3 Arena), don't expect any help from the Radeon 7000. "

and

"As for 2D performance, the Radeon 7000 lags behind the others but not as dramatically as it did in the 3D tests."

The card was outperformed by GeForce4 MX, GeForce4 Titanium, GeForce3, Radeon 8500 and the Radeon 9000.

Maybe have a look at the "Asus GeForce FX 5200" with 128MB. You can pick one up for £52 and its comes with DirectX9, OpenGL 1.4 and AGP 8x support.

If you can push the boat out, try the "Asus GeForce FX 5600" with 256MB for £160.

IMHO, forget about this Radeon 7000 card and you'll be wasting your money if you pick anything lower than the GeForce FX 5xxx series or Radeon 9xxx series

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fug

[Myk]

Yeah Fug basically summed it up, the Radeon 7000 is a crappy card m8 even if its cheap thats no excuse. If you don't want to spend more than like 30 quid then buy a Geforce4 MX440 (not the SE version). Personally I wouldnt do even that but its cheap if money is the issue.

Right now an FX5200 for 50 notes is a pretty good buy, its not high end but you should be able to play everything ok upto about 1024*768. The FX5600 256MB DDR is a great buy also at around 140 notes and has a lot more horsepower obvioulsy (a Radeon 9500Pro would be an even better option but are now hard to find, the 9600 is a weaker card although the name suggests otherwise).

Of course the high is being lead by the FX5900 Ultra and the Radeon 9800 Pro both of which are amazing but also cost a small fortune (best to wait 2 or 3 months for them to level their price).