Need help choosing a video card!!

[Que Chin Gon]

Hello everyone!
I was hoping someone could tell me which graphics card would be te best to play most Star Wars games and/or the most popular first person shooters(especially te upcoming DoomIII and Homeworld 2). The choices I have are:
A GeForce 3, a GeForce 4 TI, or a Radeon 9700 combined with an AMD 2100 XP processor. If you want to recomend something that better suits my needs, go ahead, I´m all ears. Oh, and somebody could tell me if a 266 local bus on my motherboard is enough?. Thanks to everyone in advance!!!

[Emon]

You definatly want more than a GF3, those are like two years old now. I would actually wait a few months, since nVidia is coming out with it's GeForce FX card, which is much faster than the Radeon 9700 Pro, not to mention has better drivers (updated more, great Linux drivers). But if you can't wait for some reason, get the Radeon 9700 Pro. Or perhaps you may want to get the 9700 Pro once the GeForce FX comes out, since the prices will drop.

[KOP_AoEJedi]

Yea right now that choice is a little hard to judge, the 9700 pro is a good card but pricy, and the GF-FX is coming out soon and thats gonna spank the 9700 but the price will be just as high or more, then the 9700 will drop proly 50 bucks or so.

[Que Chin Gon]

O.K Here´s the deal, I don´t know if I can wait a few more months because my computer is really useless right now ,it has a 450Mhz procesor and a video card with 8 MB, it´s so pathetic it can´t even run JK II in the lowest settings (in windowed mode) above 20 fps and that is when its running fast. So far I think I´ve already played every game that can run on this computer, so I´m bored out of my mind, and my friends laugh at me when they see my computer. I think I would be satisfied with the best video card I can find at this moment, so which do you think is the best video card right now?, price is not much of a problem.

[Emon]

Getting a better video card with that kind of system isn't going to make things run faster. Maybe a few FPS at the most.

[Que Chin Gon]

Oh no, I mean I want to buy a totally new computer, not only the video card. I´m planning on equiping it with an AMD 2100 XP, 256 RAM and a BioStar or MSI motherboard.
In this moment there is no processor that is more advanced than the 2100 XP here on Guatemala, if not i´d get a 2800 XP.

[Emon]

Alright, then. First off, you definatly want to get at least 512 MB of ram. I used to have 256, but doubling to 512 vastly improved performance all around. Second, only get a motherboard, if possible, that is approved/recommended by AMD. All those boards are on their site. I would recommend getting MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, or Abit over BioStar if that's possible in your area.

[JDKNITE188]

I am not very knowledgeable on video cards, but will Radeon 9700 be AGP only or PCI only?

[Emon]

AGP

[Que Chin Gon]

Well, I searched the BioStar motherboard in the AMD website "recommended motherboards" area, and it was there, but my brother also told me the MSI motherboard would be a better choice, and I think the company sells those. I think I´ll buy the Radeon 9700 pro, but do you know if one can increase the memory by bypassing some RAM to the videocard´s and if it would increase overall performance?, i,e: passing 64 meg´s of RAM to the video card memory. This is if I have at least 512 megs of RAM. My problem is that I have a maximum of about $1,100 to equip my computer. With 256 Ram, the procesor, the GF4, the hard disk (30 GB), the CD-Rom, and the motherboard the price is already $725(monitor, keyboard and mouse already included).

[Emon]

1. No, you can't combine your system memory to video like that. Even if you would, it would be pointless, since your video card's RAM and GPU are much more powerful for graphics than your system CPU and RAM.

2. If you're at $725 with a GF4 and 256 MB of RAM, and your max is $1,100, go the extra mile and double your RAM and get a Radeon 9700 Pro. Trust me, it's worth it. The general rule when building a gaming system like that is to buy the absolute best you can afford. That's what I did. I was originally, like a year ago, just going to get a Duron, but I changed my mind, and instead I got an Athlon 1.4 GHz (later replaced with my 1800+ because of a mishap). I got 512 MB of RAM and a GeForce 3 Ti 200, the best I could buy, and I love it almost a year later.

Oh, also, when you buy your CPU, if possible, but the retail version. OEM on CPUs come without a warrenty, which I learned the hard way. Get retail only if you will benefit from warrenty, accessories (video cards that are OEM usually come without extra cables, you would have to buy them seperatly), and in the case of ATI, OEM is a tad slower than retail, but not that much cheaper.

[Que Chin Gon]

Thanks Emon, I think I´ll do that.

[Que Chin Gon]

Also, what do you mean by OEM?

[Aglar]

OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer
In some cases it's a good thing (like CD/DVD ROMs/Writers or HDDs), in other cases it's best to go with retail.

[Que Chin Gon]

Thanks to all who helped!, I´ve finally made out my mind.

[Emon]

Well...what are you getting?