Political Crossfire Forums

[Nathyn]

My mom just got a shi**y eMachine computer for $200 from Wal-Mart. The machine is horrible -- 1.8 GHz, 256 MB of RAM. I was surprised to find that it had a graphics card.

Anyway, my current PC (use it for gaming) doesn't have a graphics card. I could give my mom an older GPU I have laying around and take hers (wouldn't affect performance as she doesn't play games or use programs which utilize high-end graphics).

Would an Nvidia GEForce 6100 card be better than an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset?

[JoeBen81]

It's really mostly just prefrence. It also depends on which games you plan on playing the most, some work better on some games than others. But odds are, the Geforce is a better buy for the money. Often times you can get a geforce with 256 RAM for about the same price as a 128 ATi. See if you can find out which has more ram and go with that one.

[Kt]

Nathyn wrote: My mom just got a shi**y eMachine computer for $200 from Wal-Mart. The machine is horrible -- 1.8 GHz, 256 MB of RAM. I was surprised to find that it had a graphics card.

Anyway, my current PC (use it for gaming) doesn't have a graphics card. I could give my mom an older GPU I have laying around and take hers (wouldn't affect performance as she doesn't play games or use programs which utilize high-end graphics).

Would an Nvidia GEForce 6100 card be better than an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset?
If it s*cks so much, why don't you buy your OWN GeForce 6100, how does a "gamer" which curses 1.8ghz 256MB of ram, use an ONBOARD graphics card?

Of course the geforce will be better, it's not eating up your memory and tieing up your cpu so much.

[FCTE]

Nathyn wrote: My mom just got a shi**y eMachine computer for $200 from Wal-Mart. The machine is horrible -- 1.8 GHz, 256 MB of RAM. I was surprised to find that it had a graphics card.

Anyway, my current PC (use it for gaming) doesn't have a graphics card. I could give my mom an older GPU I have laying around and take hers (wouldn't affect performance as she doesn't play games or use programs which utilize high-end graphics).

Would an Nvidia GEForce 6100 card be better than an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset?

Those cards blow, go get at least a 6600GT or 6800.

You're not going to have any pixel shading or shadow rendering with those things.

Also, if you change from an ATI card to a Nvidia card you'll need to reload Windows as they are two totally different architectures and just installing the Nvidia driver over the ATI driver won't do it.

[David]

ATI has a tool on their web site that will completely remove everything having to do with their driver.They recommend using it to remove the old driver whenever you update to a newer version so you don't have any problems with the new one.

[Nathyn]

I'm not planning on buying a card. Just asking which of those two specific setups would be best.

I have a gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. It can play 99% of all games. The Nvidia GEForce 6100 might actually be better, except I wasn't sure. Here's Nvidia's info on it:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6100-410_features.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6100-430_features.html

Its bus-speed is mentioned, but there's no mention of any on-board RAM.

Ah, nevermind. I found the info on another site:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2539

And here's the info on the Radeon Xpress 200:
http://www.ati.com/products/radeonxpress200/specs.html

....And, I just looked and the reason why on-board RAM isn't mentioned is because apparently, my mom doesn't have a graphics card. I was wrong (I didn't open it up, but wasn't familiar with the chipset, so assumed it was a card).

[sLiPpY]

Nathyn wrote: I'm not planning on buying a card. Just asking which of those two specific setups would be best.

I have a gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. It can play 99% of all games. The Nvidia GEForce 6100 might actually be better, except I wasn't sure. Here's Nvidia's info on it:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6100-410_features.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6100-430_features.html

Its bus-speed is mentioned, but there's no mention of any on-board RAM.

Ah, nevermind. I found the info on another site:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2539

And here's the info on the Radeon Xpress 200:
http://www.ati.com/products/radeonxpress200/specs.html

....And, I just looked and the reason why on-board RAM isn't mentioned is because apparently, my mom doesn't have a graphics card. I was wrong (I didn't open it up, but wasn't familiar with the chipset, so assumed it was a card).

For onboard GPU's...I think 1 gig of RAM is important, in that the GPU is dependant upon RAM vs. a seperate card which has it's own.

Generally speaking a CPU at a rate of 2.2 ghz will supply all of the gaming processor time needed today.

When you say 6100 for nVidia? I perceive you're speaking of the onboard GPU available for mATX boards that are more "Media Center" oriented.

I think they're both fine chipsets, however the 6100 is more stable with a larger variety of vendor components. The ATI Chipset is pretty picky about what type of RAM and which manufacturer process.

The 6100 onboard seemed adequate for most of my needs, however I added a 7600GS card for around $100 dollars. It uses only a heat synk for cooling and I get around 105 FPS running CS Source. Around 75 FPS, when utilizing Pixel shader 3 for that paticular graphics engine. Which is more than adequate still.

I'd looked at both chipsets prior my most recent build. I liked them equally, but had more flexibility with the 6100 in picking who I wanted to supply the other components.

The advantage with the 6100 and the 6150, is that they support SATAII vs. the possibilities of what the ATI Express chipset can do.