G3 ti200

[mayabot]

i'm building a budget system and looking to buy a geforce 3 ti200, (the ti500 is a little too$$). Does anyone recomend any particular company do buy? Theres Asus, Gainward, inno3d, visiontek, msi, pny, palit, etc. Last thing, exactly what is the softquadro patch and is it necessary with the a new card?

[jerry-hnk]

Just get one with 3.6 ns DDR ram so you can overclock it back to the original GeForce 3 speed.

[hella356]

SoftQuadro enables the disabled DCC features in the GF3. It is free, easy to do, and easy to remedy if you have problems so I would suggest trying it and seeing how it works for you. It should offer improved performance.

In my experience there isn't much difference between brands when dealing with nVidia based cards.

Whether the GF3 Ti200 @ about $160 is better than a GF2 Ti for around $90 is the bigger question. Both can be hacked to Quadro2/DCC specs but it still isn't really clear which is better for 3D modeling. The GF3 is better for playing games but the GF2 seems to work better in a lower spec-ed PC.

What Apps are you going to use, and what platform will you be putting this all in (AMD, Intel; Win2K, XP, etc.)?

[toasterbaron]

[The GF3 is better for playing games but the GF2 seems to work better in a lower spec-ed PC.

Well, I have tried both (GF3(DCC)/GF2(Q2)) and I'm surprised with LOW performing of DCC in lighting calculations and also with enabled overlays.
W/O overlays GF3/DCC is about x2 faster than GF2/Quadro2 in wireframe/shaded/textured tests of maya test center an it is X2 SLOWER in light test!

With overlays DCC (soft) is about 10-15% faster in same tests.

[mayabot]

All i care about is maya, the other apps would be afterfx, photoshop, etc. My setup will consist most likely of a new AMD xp 1700 and WinXP pro, 512 or 1gb ram, either one big hd(60-80gb) or two hd's on raid. the rest of the specs i'm not sure about yet.

When you say "hacked" to DCC specs, do you mean using the Softquadro patch?
Is the card still reliable after using that?
Where can i find Softquadro?
thanks!

[hella356]

gior, you say that without overlays the DCC is 2x faster in some tests but 2x slower in others than a Q2. Do you also mean that with overlays the DCC is 10-15% faster in BOTH tests? I'm not sure I follow you. It looks like you're saying that WITH OLs you get a big variation, way faster or way slower depending on what you're doing, while WITHOUT OLs you get a general 10-15% improvement. How do you feel about the differences between the cards in real usage as opposed to benchmarks? Thanks for the info.

marksas, yes, that was my meaning.

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

All it does is let the drivers recognize the card as a Quadro/DCC. I've never heard of anyone having any problems with reliability as a result. I've been using it for months with a GF2 MX-->Q2MXR and I have to say it's more stable than before.

[toasterbaron]

Well, WITH OL "SOFT" DCC is about 15% faster in wire/shaded/textured AND x2 slower in light.
W/O OL "SOFT" DCC is x2 FASTER wire/shaded/textured AND x2 SLOWER in light.
I got GF3 only for 2 days so I have no possibility to test it more seriously.
I compared it to my GF2 is hacked by resistor resoldiering and it seems that OL on/off have no or little effect in this test, (not in painteffects)