i am building a rig for a friend who isn't a power gamer. its gonna be a p4 2.2, 512 pc2700 ram, and (as you see in the topic) possibly a ti4200. i have a spare one and am wondering if its good enough for what he is asking. the game he wants to play the most is City of Heros and he also wants to try some HL2. hes never really cared about amazingly awesome FPS and graphics. but is fine with even 800* (of course he would perfer 1024*) with med-high (mostly med) settings with playable frame rates. will the ti4200 be able to do what he is asking for and how well??? -thanks and this card is 128-bit, right?
Seiously, that card is a joke. No ffence but you'll be lucky to play anything more recent than Medal of Honour and American McGee's Alice with it. get a Radeon 9800Pro, anything less just doesnt cut it. re: HL2 Performance: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19405
hmm.. thanks for the link. it just may work as his CPU is way better then the 1.2ghz celeron that got 25FPS. and like i said, hes such a light gamer that he really doesn't realize the FPS difference. We were once playing halo on a cheesy computer and it was horible as hell but he thought it was might fine . So if i turn down shader level and shadow quailty, he should be able to get 30+ FPS with 800* perfect, that saves me a good $140 on the 9600xt i was planning for. (he wouldn't notice the difference anywho)
I have a ti4200 in my brothers PC and it plays HL2 fone @ 1280*1024 on mostly medium settings some high some low (the reccomended ones) with no AA, perfectly playable...
The GF4TI4200 really has held on well, outside of DX9 and AA+AF it can hang in with the previous mid-range cards such as the Radeon9600Pro and GF-FX5600ultra. Also rem the TI4200 often o/c'ed past TI4400 speeds which is none to shabby. AFAIK the only game which really kills the GF4TI is Doom III, I'm sure the likes of Farcry and HL2 will still really tax them but you should get 800 - 1024 playable. I'd say use the TI4200 and if he finds he wants somethig more he can save up. Having said all that you may want to check out prices for 9700 and 9800 cards while they're still available!
my ti4200 plays farcry just fine tho it did totally spack out on doom 3, but im putting that down to its lack of fan
it depends whether you want advanced DirectX 9.0 features, and funky image quality benefits that come with DX9.0.... if image quality doesn't bother you, it will suit you just fine.
currently, i am using a 64mb ti4200 aswell (soon to be 6800 sli ) and i can tell that for it being such an old card, it can still play every new game on 800x600 or 1024x768 with medium or high quality not inc aa/af. i am still happy with the card but it is getting quite old now. Like Bigz said if you dont care about the benefits that Directx 9.0c gives then this card will be just fine. hope that helps
They are great for the price imho. For a comparison, i have my 9800pro running NFS:u2 @ 1024x768 with almost every setting at high (no AA) and get a playable frame rate, usually 30-50fps. On the ti4200, i get around the same framerate with 800x600 with low settings. The ti4200's have great overclocking potential aswell
I have a Ti4200 running hl2 at 1152x864 just fine. I'm not a serious gamer, and don't miss the added extras of a DX9 card - the game plays without lagging, so what's the problem... I'm not sure why Kensei has such a negative opinion of it
I haven't seen or played HL2 but from those that have I have heard that using DX9 really adds another dimension to the visuals, just as DX8 over DX7 does. Although GF4TI will only do DX8 it is worth noting that AFAIK the GF-FX cards have to use a hybrid mode that's much more DX8 than DX9, so again that GF4TI card isn't looking too shabby considering relative age. There's some info HERE. For HL2 graphics guide check THIS out, esp relevant is an XP2000+ with GF4TI4600! For HL2 benchmarks and esp DX8 vs DX9 check THIS out. For further info on GF-FX's DX9 inadequacies look HERE. For benchmarks on the high-end cards (inc 9800Pro) look HERE. For info on upgrading for HL2 look HERE and for HL2 CPU Scaling look HERE and HERE. For good measure HERE's a HL2 tweaking guide. Now go and enjoy the game!
