Stealth III S540 32mb PCI - any good?

[deejaycee]

these seem like an alternatve to my recent V3 2000 escapade.

Are they good?
Best price?
Where to buy?

:)

[CDBlue]

I was not impressed at all with that card (a friend of mine had one). If you're looking for a low-end budget card, you should look at the Geforce2 MX. It's fairly cheap compared to other new cards, and it gives quite a bang for the buck. However, if you are limited to getting a card in the PCI format (due to no AGP slot) then I would still go with any 3dfx pci card (Voodoo3-3000 is about the best in the budget card, Vooodoo5-5500 PCI is the best).

-CDBlue

[deejaycee]

Lo m8,
Cheers for your input :)
I can get the V3 3000 for £60 new, can get this one wads cheaper and will end up buying two. Budgets are stretched what with xmas etc (and my m8tys car blowing up on sunday :laugh: ), so really need to know how this card performs in AMD 400-500 proccies with 128meg ram.

Is Counterstrike playable?
:)

[Randell]

I had a Stealth III. I dumped it for a V3 though, and didn't regret it (other than in Unreal Tournament). Drivers had big issues online, They would randomnly lock-up, especially if you had a Via chipset, whick I guess you have as you have a K6. They tried all sorts of driver fixes, bios releases to solve it. It may have been fixed now 'coz I dumped the card in July.

Speed wise they are fast enough at 800*600. 1024*768 and above they are crippled because they have a 64 bit memory bus, not 128 bit.

The one big plus for them is that they are untouchable in Unreal Tournament as they run it in Metal (S3's API) and use the 2nd cd of uncompressed textures. The best UT quality. I know, I have seen UT on my old SIII, my old V3, my new V5 and my friends TNT2 Ultra.

I assume they run Counterstrike OK, QIIA and UT ran fine at 800*600 as I said above.

Its a tough call, I've scoured the web and I can't find a V3 2000 PCI anywhere. Looks like the £50 offer was to clear stocks.

Out of the TNT2 Vanta/M64 or the Diamond Stealth, I would choose the Diamond card. You might want to check driver issues at http://www.savagenews.com forums.

[deejaycee]

Cheers m8, good post :)

I have a TNT2 M64 AGP, and not impressed. Had UT running on an old voodooo 4mb which looked better!!! (didn't run quite as fast though).

Just got off the phone to my local puter dealer and he is picking me up two V3 3000 PCI for £60 each (+VAT). Bit over my original budget, but have been convinced it's worth spending a little more on these things ;)

He tried offering me Hercules Prophet 3D for £80 + VAT, didn't know if this was a good deal and was also well over budget so went for the V3.

They are only going in spare workstations that We've built just for LAN games (one this weekend :) ).

Thanks for all the input and I'll prob see you's in another post about which driver's are best for the V3 3000 PCI
:)

[Randell]

Re: Drivers, go to http://www.techextreme.com/3dXtreme/index.shtml for help advice. Personally I used the latest V4/5 drivers (Honest they work well) and the WickedGL for Half-Life.

Cheers

[Edited by Randell on 23-11-2000 at 01:15 PM]

[CDBlue]

Yep, for drivers I would go get the official WHQL drivers from http://www.3dfxgamers.com They are super stable, and they have tons of settings that you can play with to tweak the performance even more :D Also, as mentioned above, get the latest WickedGL minigl for your Voodoo3. The WickedGL is a minigl, similar to 3dfx's minigl, however is much more efficient than 3dfx's minigl. Plus, it's so easy to install and uninstall for any particular game, so you can compare the results of a game while using the WickedGL and 3dfx OpenGL ICD, then simply use the one that you find looks/performs the best. http://www.wicked3d.com in case you are wondering ;)

Later,
CDBlue

[Edited by CDBlue on 23-11-2000 at 01:57 PM]

[deejaycee]

cheers peeps,
off to get those now.
Looks like I'll be sorted for this weekend :E
cya
:)