[CUBE] Is it worth the upgrade: ATI 128 Rage -> ATI Radeon or GF2MX?

[Hal]

In my opinion, upgrading from the stock video card to the GF2MX or 
Radeon is worth it. This was the first upgrade I did to my machine 
(GF2MX) and it was definitely worth it. You get to take advantage of 
quartz extreme and better framerates in games and the excess heat is 
not that big a deal. I didn't add a fan to my machine until I upgraded 
again to the GF3.

The upgrade takes a few minutes and it's dead simple to do. No matter 
which card you upgrade to (assuming it's a OEM GF2MX, Radeon or GF3), 
you'll just swap the bracket from your existing video card over to the 
new one. That adds maybe 5 minutes to the process, if you're slow with 
a screwdriver.

I've tried all 3 of the OEM cards, and they're all great and easy to 
install. It's only when you get to the "unsupported" cards that things 
get a little (or a lot) more complicated.

good luck!
-Hal

On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 03:39 PM, J.C. Webber III wrote:

> It looks like just a simple swap to put a BTO ADC ATI Radeon or a
> BTO ADC GF2MX in place of an existing ADC ATI 128 Rage card.
>
> But is it worth the effort?  I know it's easy, my question is
> does it bring you enough performance improvement to justify the
> $150 and the time to do it?  I've seen benchmarks comparing these
> cards amongst themselves, but never against the 128 Rage.
>
> It looks like all the other options are either much more costly,
> and/or much more involved to install, mostly due to the heat
> or mounting bracket issues.
>
> Right?