best graphics card for specific system

[PeterNorth]

What would be the best graphics card to buy for my PII-450 PC?

I've asked around a bit and have my mind set on the hercules 3d prophet II mx, is this the same as the hercules geforce II mx?

I don't know what my motherboard is, but would it support this card?

At the moment most interested in a better performance in QuakeIII, a clearer desktop at 1280-1024 on a 17inch monitor (not very crisp at the moment), and maybe better DVD playback?

ta for anyones help ;)

[Mr_Slidey]

I think those two MX cards are the same thing, made by Guillemot. I think that and the Elsa card are the best ones to buy.
With a PII-450, you're not going to get that big a performance boost. The processor will create a bottleneck on your PC, as it won't be able to keep up with the Geforce.
A Geforce2 MX card is a good buy anyway, but you'll only really see a performance increase with a faster CPU.

And all motherboards with an AGP slot will support a GeForce card. Creative do a PCI card as well though, but if you haven't got an AGP slot, upgrade the motherboard + CPU first, then get the AGP Geforce.
The only real performance boost in DVD will come from an encoder card (only £50). The image quality won't increase with an MX card, although the framerate might.
And you should get a clearer desktop with the Geforce, but i'm no expert in that field, so maybe someone else can answer that one.

[ToXik-yogHurt]

Well if it were me I'd get a radeon 32DDR for a 450.
Built in DVD acceleration, nice crisp desktop, peformance on par with GF2, cost in same region as gf2mx (maybe slightly more)
Can your monitor do 1280 properly? if its not a very good 17inch then it will never do 1280 that well, what refresh rate you using? 72Hz? 75Hz?

[Lusaka]

I have a PIII 450 (plus 128Mb) and upgraded from a TNT2 32Mb AGP card to the Elsa MX2 card. You may get a bottleneck from the CPU but it still made a hell of a difference. Giants was pretty unplayable unless run at the lowest res but runs smooth at 800x600x32 and looks a hell of a lot better.

My 3DMark 2000 went from 2217 at 1024x768x16 with the TNT2 to 3329 at 1024x768x16.

My windows performance seems just the same as with the TNT2 and I have not got a DVD drive so I can't help there, soz.

The only problem with my Elsa is the huge heatsink which overhangs the memory chips as I had hoped to stick heatsinks on them and overclock it.

[PeterNorth]

it just has optimal refresh rate selected when i go to adapter tab of graphics card in display control panel properties.

should i just get any geforce mx2? :smurf: