Need advice...Radeon or Radeon VE with 1.6GHz P4?

[PC-Engine]

Hey guys, I need some advice. I'm building a PC for a friend and I need a budget 3D gaming card that's around $50. I've narrowed the choices down to the Radeon DDR 32MB and the Radeon VE/7000 DDR 32MB. If I understand correctly the VE/7000 has HyperZ but not T&L while the Radeon has T&L and no HyperZ. They both have TV/OUT btw. The PC will be equiped with the SiS 645/961 chipset powered Abit SD7-533 mobo with 256MB of 166MHz PC2700 DDR333 RAM. Also are these the best 3D cards for around $50? I've considered the Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT with TV/OUT but the place I'll be ordering from doesn't carry them. How does the Radeons compare to the Kyro? The hard drive will be a 40GB Maxtor 7200 rpm ATA133 unit and the DVD drive will be an NEC 16X unit. Thank you tech gurus in advance

 

[EvilTwin]

The regular radeon also has hyperz , just retail flash it or change some registry keys , in any case it should far outperform the VE .

 

[Tygrus_Artesiaoa]

Get the radeon ddr 32 mb

The Radeon 32mb ddr is compatible with the newer drivers...has dx7 tnl and hyperZ and bandwidth saving features...it has 2 graphics pipes capable of outputting 3 textures each for 6 textures in one pass ( optimally- we're not talking anything more than bilinear or FSAA, etc )
The radeon VE is a bastardized radeon with only 1 graphic pipe, no TnL, hyperZ and bandwidth saving features disabled AND a 64 bit memory bus that uses DDR.
Unfortunately 128bit sdr beats 64 bit ddr usually when clocked at similar speeds...
Radeon VE or 7000 can do dual display with ati's hydravision but if ya don't need dual display and want performance go with the original Radeon.
Kyro's are a bit slower than original Radeon's methinks. Kinda equal to a voodoo 5500 or geoforce sdr/ddr...depends on the res, texture depth etc.
Both have very similar feature sets minus TnL on kyro side of course.

 

[PC-Engine]

What about the KyroII based 3D Prophet 4500? Will the 1.6GHz P4 be enough to handle tnl chores when using the KyroII board? Overall, how does the KyroII board compare to the Radeon if the game doesn't support DX7 TnL?

I've heard that KyroII is better than Radeon if the CPU is fast enough. Is the P4 fast enough to compete with the Radeon's hardware tnl? I'm just looking for best overal performance for present and near future games.

 

[Tygrus_Artesiaoa]

According to this...

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d

take a looksee through

kyro2 which might be a tad more than kyro 4000

kyro2 wins in 3dmark2001 fps in game scenes and return to castle wolfenstein

loses big time to giants to radeon 32mb ddr ( make sure its the original 32mb ddr radeon! )

in serious sam they come about even...both very interesting cards and feature sets

known though in potential...ati's card have much faster 2d

kyros 2d is pretty but not really fast at all

but ati had some driver bugs with its 2d in xp awhile back i remember thats hopefully mixed

 

[PC-Engine]

Thanks Tygrus for the valuble info.