I am going to buy a new graphics card. Which do I go for? I mainly use
DOS games and gentle windows use.
Which of the new 3D cards does anyone think is best - Matrox Mystique,
Diamond Stealth 3D, Diamond Edge, S3 ViRGE or anything else?
Best Regards,
Andrew Cliffe
Frankly, stay away from all of them. Each is lacking in a major feature or
two making them useless for Direct3D acceleration. The S3 ViRGE is a
decent 2D card, and could effectively be used in conjunction with a fast 3D
only card like a Voodoo card.
You might want to look at the Rendition based boards by Creative Labs (3D
Blaster PCI), Intergraph (Reactor3D), Sierra (Screamin3D). From reports
I've heard they are fast DOS SVGA cards, moderate 2D Windows performers,
with good Direct3D support. For under $200 for a 4meg board (one meg
reserved for textures) they are a pretty good buy.
--
Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/
Andrew, I would recommend the Videologic Grafixstar 600. This uses the
new ET6000 chipset. It is very very fast in DOS.
I have an Edge, its good for Windows Stuff, if you dont have a wave table
sound card, then consider it. But you find DOS performance very poor.
I must add, that if you do buy the Edge3D, get the 4MB version. Because if
you buy the 2MB Vram version like I have, you find that the Midi side of
it nicks all the VRAM. At the moment, UVIBE reports just 796K free !! This
causes all sorts of problems out side windows.
On the plus side, Diamond have just released new drivers which support
DirectX including Direct3D, something which I know Matrox dont yet offer.
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Southend, Essex. UK
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I recommend keep your card now assuming PCI based and buy the Vodoo.
Secondly the Verite
Thirdly wait.
You'll be dissapointed to find out how little gain you get from
swapping out your SVGA board for another no matter who's or what it is.
Soon you'll be playing 3D acceled games. Dos or Windows will become
second fiddle.
Q.B.M.
