Best PCI card for a sub-400Mhz PC?

[vvolkman]

I have a friend who is going to use a sub-400Mhz PC for Neverwinter Nights. Would the Radeon 9000 PCI cut the mustard here or is there no hope and they should get a $50 Radeon 7xxxx.

[Gator]

Originally posted by vvolkman
I have a friend who is going to use a sub-400Mhz PC for Neverwinter Nights. Would the Radeon 9000 PCI cut the mustard here or is there no hope and they should get a $50 Radeon 7xxxx.

A Radeon9000 PCI is the best card available for PCI. But be warned, sub-400mhz will not likely handle Neverwinter Nights. The CPU would be more of a bottleneck to the game than the video card in this case.

[Megatron]

Honestly,
On a sub 400 MHz machine Im not sure the game will be enjoyable for him no matter what Vid Card is in it.

[saturnotaku]

There is no hope and he should just upgrade his PC. ECS K7S5A, AthlonXP 1700+, 256 mb PC2100 DDR, GeForce4 Ti4200 (or Radeon 9500), Antec case with power supply and he'll have a solid system for $500 or less.

[ragejg]

That class of system fits well with TNT2 PCI (not M64) and GF2MX PCI... Anything more and you'd be wasting bandwidth capability...

From what I've seen in some scaling tests, a card like a GF1 SDR performs within 5-10% of a GF3 when saddled with a 350-450mhz system... there's one example. Another one would be to look on ORB @ 3dmark scores for GF3's on Pentium II's and K6-2/III's...

A balance can be struck...

That speed class would make a great GLide machine...

[Gator]

that being said, i guess it makes mroe sense for older machines to have no more than a Voodoo5 PCI, since they really can't take much advantage of a R9000 PCI