I have a 64 mb GeForce4 MX Graphics card in a dell 2.0GB computer with 512 RAM. The Flight Sim game that I would like to buy (IL-2 Sturmovik) states that a "3d graphics card" with 32mb ram is required. My question: is my card considered a "3d" card, and should I anticipate any problems running the game. Many thanks.
Yes it is a 3d card. However, it's a low-end one and basically a higher clocked GeForce 2 MX. The GF4 MX's lack features of the GF4 Ti4x00 cards, including Direct X 8 support. It will work with DX8 , but you'll take a hit.
And MX cards offer no pixel-shaders either, be they DX8.1 or DX9... :sad: If you want a good budget video card, look to ATI's Radeon 9600 series, or an older version of the 9500s. Older 9500s are super-simple to convert to 9700's, but the newer versions of the 9500 are locked-down so as not to be upgradable. I've got an older 9500 (non-pro) in my wife's system right now that is converted to a 9700 *PRO*, and actually outperforms a retail 9700 Pro. Not bad for a little over $100, eh?
Actually they're not locked down. What happens is they built a bunch of 9500s on 9700 pcbs. Some of them could be genuine 9700, and others are simply 9700s with broken pipelines. If you have the first, it's great because you just have to hard/soft6 mod it and you get a nice 9700 for free. However, if you get the latter, you'll get the "checkerboard" artifacts because one or more of the now enabled pipelines were broken. (a 9500 has 4 pipelines, a 9700 has 8). So even if you found a 9500 built on a 9700 pcb, you still had to have a card with no broken pipelines. The 9700 pcbs are recognizable with their memory being in an L-shaped form (2 chips on the top and two on the right-hand side). We're seeing the same exact story today regarding the 9800SE ---> 9800 Pro mod.
Exactly, harrack52. But mine's not an ATI-built R9500, it's a cheap-ass PowerColor, so the memory layout is different than it would be on an ATI card ('L' shaped). But the principle is the same. The 9500 and 9700 are the same core, except the 9500 has half of its rendering pipes disabled in its BIOS. The real kicker is whether the pipes were disabled simply to make it a budget card, or if one or more pipes (above 4) are bad and therefore it couldn't meet 9700's par for course. This is not unlike many AMD Durons. Many of these are simply Athlons with a portion of bad L2 cache, so part [half] of it is disabled. OK, so here's the point I was originally trying at. If you can get a first or second generation 9500, you're more likely to get one that is simply a toned-down and conservatively-clocked 9700 (which is good!). If you can't get an early 9500, or if you don't want to risk it, you can get a 9600, which is basically the same as the 9500 (4 pipes) except that it's based off the 9800's core rather than the 9700. Since the 9800 has some pretty cool optimizations that the 9700 doesn't have, this is the preferable second (even though it can't be modded to a 9800).
