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I just bought my new PC. My specs are:

Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 Ghz)
ECS P4VMM2 Motherboard
512 MB sdRAM
20 Gig Seagate Harddisk (5200 rpm)
onboard sound

but, I can't decide which video card to buy. I'm here in the Philippines and I narrowed down my choices to 4 cards listed below with their current market price here. Im on a $100 budget on this, but if the card is worth it, I can go as high as $125 tops. But if I can maintain going within the budget, that would be better. If you were me and you have the specs that I have, which one would you choose? Please name just one, no "if you are this then get this, but if you are this then get this instead". I just need to know if you were me, which would you buy?

1. Geforce 3 ti 200 64mb DDR = $85
2. Geforce 3 ti 500 64mb DDR = $109
3. Geforce 4 ti 4200 64mb DDR = $112
4. Geforce 4 ti 4200 64mb DDR w/ tv-dvi = $124

Thanks for the help

absolutely go for the GF4 Ti4200 if you can. i see that u list the Ti500 only 3 dollars cheaper. with three more bucks you spend you get so much more out of the Ti4200.

128 Meg Radeon 9000 Pro?

otherwise, the 4200 without the DVI and TV, unless you're going to use either one of them. save the extra money or use it to bump up to 128 megs.

ti4200, like farfolen said, don't bother with the dvi and tv unless your going to use them. And also like he said, if you can stretch your budget to 128 mb, you will be a little more future proof.

"Geforce 4 ti 4200 64mb DDR = $112"

Unless you can find the 128mb version close to it in price

Hi. Well, out of thoes I'd go for the $112 GF4 Ti4200 (damn you yankies get stuff cheap, we have to pay £110 for one of thoes here, that's $150 to you!). Unless your gonna be using a TV or Digital monitor, then TV/DVI out is not essensial, so you may aswell save thoes extra few dollers. The GF4 Ti4200 64mb is around 10-20% faster than the typical GF3 Ti500, and around 20-40% faster than the typical GF3 Ti200. If you can, try go for a 128mb GF4 Ti4200 for an extra $20 over the $112 GF4 Ti4200 64mb (that's $132), as the performance benefits in the later games with 128mb is nigh on 50-60% than 64mb varients of the card, check out the graph below showing the difference in performance between a 64mb and 128mb Ti4200.....



.....if you can it'll be well worth that extra $20, which is about a 5% increase in price for that extra 50-60% increase in performance in the later games which are/will be hitting the shelves. The likes of Doom ]l[, etc will certainly benefit from 128mb as that game in particular uses around 70-100mb of textures, which already exceeds a 64mb card, as textures are buffered in the graphics memory. Also this is before you take into account the memory that running in certain resolutions and Anti-Aliaising modes will take up e.g, if your running that game at 1024x768x32 in 4x AA mode, thats another 25.2mb (1024x768x32/4x4) of graphics memory required on top of the 70-100mb that the textures have already taken up! The reason system performance is crippled when the graphics memory is taken up, is because the game/application then resorts to using the much slower main system RAM to store the textures, and resolutions buffering, etc, and because the system RAM runs much slower (around 100-150% slower), then that is why FPS performance is crippled. Anyway, out of thoes 4 choices of graphics cards, I'd go for number 3.

yeah i would also agree with the rest of the guys, go with the GeForce 4 Ti4200 with out tv out.

geforce4 ti 4200

Thank you guys! I appreciate the help. Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb DDR here is tagged at $131, but since you guys recommend a Geforce 4 ti regardless, then I think I won't be going out weekends to save up. Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb DDR it is then.

Thanks you all, happy holidays!

those benchmarks are against a radeon 8500le tho not a radeon 9000