Hello, my first post here...

[FuzzyNips]

Hi everyone, I've been reading all of the sharky forums for quite sometime but just decided to register now, especially considering the decision I'm about to make. First off, some information about me. My name is Ryan and I'm a sophmore in High School which makes me 16. (no, I don't have my liscense yet ) I know a moderate amount of computer stuff but in no way am I a pro. My dilemma is this, I want to get a new graphics card. First main question is, should I get a GeForce 2 ULTRA or wait for the GeForce 3? Either card that I get, I'm borrowing money from my parents that I have to pay off over the summer. It makes sense that I'd like to keep costs "moderately" low (yeah right, an ULTRA or GeForce 3 is anything but low) so I don't have to work all summer. I don't want anything below an ULTRA right now so I'm set on these 2 cards. I'm looking at getting a GeForce 2 ULTRA by Hercules or the Elsa Gladiac one. I see that the Hercules is no lower than $500 (retail version) anywhere on the web that has it instock and is legit. I've searched pricewatch and other sites pretty well. I did find an Elsa Gladiac ULTRA for $328 with free FedEx ground shipping and no sales tax. I checked the site on "www.resellerratings.com" and it has 118 reviews on it and the overall score is 6.4/7, which I think is really well considering the fairly large amount of reviews it has. The site's address is "www.newegg.com" One last note, if I did get the GeForce 3 it would likely be the Hercules one, but possibly the Elsa. Also, I do NOT plan on upgrading my graphic card until sometime next year because this fall I have the XBOX and PS2 games to worry about paying for. I have a fetish for playing games in resolutions around 1024x768-1280x1024 with all the detail settings on MAX. If you have any further questions for me, please tell me so I can respond right away. I thank you all for the great opinions that I know you guys will give me. Here's to a long, fun stay at the sharky forums!

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I am a proud owner of an Alienware gaming machine!

[This message has been edited by FuzzyNips (edited April 08, 2001).]

[lostboy]

First off, If you decide on a GF3... ^_- You won't be getting it from Hercules, they aren't making them... @o@ I get the impression (from their rebuttal to the NVidia Powerpoint presentation... look down about two pages to find this issue) that they have gotten sick of NVidia... if they have or haven't, they have said they aren't making boards that support it for the time being, going instead with the Kyro 2 chipset. Personally if you are considering a GeForce 3... and are willing to wait until they become available... I'd say hold off until buying until then and see some reviews on the Kyro II and Radeon SE cards... they might be better choices than the Ultra. The Radeon SE is basically ATI's answer to NVidia's ULTRA line... it will have its core and memmory speeds cranked up a bit... and possibly have a few more hardware tweaks and 'should' be out around the time of the GeForce 3 release. The Kyro II boards are an interesting option that has cropped up lately. Do to their much more efficient rending method the prerelease versions were able to get Ultra like performance in most applications... who knows how the final product and finalized drivers will look. It also has a huge advantage over the Ultra (and GeForce 3) in its ability to apply 8 textures per pass... which is 4x as many as the GeForce 2 and twice as many as the GeForce 3. So with those options... I'd say wait one more month and come to a decision.

I hope that helped

-Lostboy

[tu2thepoo]

Originally posted by FuzzyNips:
Also, I do NOT plan on upgrading my graphic card until sometime next year because this fall I have the XBOX and PS2 games to worry about paying for. I have a fetish for playing games in resolutions around 1024x768-1280x1024 with all the detail settings on MAX.

the Geforce3 will help at those high resolutions, but if you're only planning on keeping your card for one year then there's no point in buying the GF3. The GF3 won't show it's full potential for a while - i'm guessing it'll be at least 6 months to a year before you really start pushing the DX8 architecture to where a Geforce2 Ultra can't keep up.

if you're planning to keep it for a while, the Geforce3 obviously will have a longer useful lifespan. But if you're planning to buy a card for a year then upgrade, i'd go for the GF2 Pro, Radeon64 VIVO, or the KyroII. Those cards should do fine at 1024x768 for a good while - there's no point in shelling out 300-500 bucks for a card you'll keep for a year.

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[FuzzyNips]

So based on my cirumstances, I should go with the Elsa ULTRA? I'm a bit greedy so ULTRA is as "bottom of the line" as I'll go, so to speak. Thank you for your replies, you both made some good points.

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I am a proud owner of an Alienware gaming machine!