I've got the Radeon 32DDR and it works very well, particularly with games
that use 32 bit color.  But the GeForce GTS is definitely a huge step up in
performance.   It should be because it costs about twice as much as the
Radeon.  I suspect that in your case, you'll find that either card's
performance will be limited by your processor's and memory's bandwidth.  But
you'll still get a huge improvement from either over the Number Nine card.

I would say that if you are planning on upgrading your system's motherboard,
memory and processor within a year or so that the GTS card would be a good
choice.  If not, I'd go with the Radeon since with the GeForce card you'll
be buying performance that you'll never use.  You also might want to take a
look at the GeForce MX card.  It's priced in line with the Radeon and I hear
that it performs quite well for a "budget" 3D accelerator.

As far as the driver issue goes, Nvidia definitely gets the nod for keeping
on top of things.  I've noticed that ATI has done a much better job lately
with the Radeon drivers.  I suppose that after being bitten by their poor
performance on the Rage chipset they're giving driver support more
attention.

I reviewed the Radeon at http://www.nospin.com/2000_02/014.html and compared
it to a GeForce GTS so perhaps that will help you.

Drew Dunn
The NOSPIN Group

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Craven" <[log in to unmask]>

My daughters gave me a great game for Christmas - B-17 Flying Fortress II.
The graphics are crapola because of my antiquated system, which is as
follows.
Micron Millennia XKU Tower
300 Mhz Pentium II
WD 4.2 UW SCSI HDD
128 RAM Memory
Number Nine Revolution 3-D Video Card w/8MB
2940 UW SCSI Host
20x Plextor SCSI CD-ROM
Hitachi 21' Monitor
SB AWE 64 Sound Card

Is it possible to just change out my current video card with a new Radeon
32DDR or a NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR (like Leadtek) and realize most of
the potential of this game or must I completely rebuild the system with new
MB, CPU, memory and so on? Would the ATI driver problems be a factor here?
What might be the best video card for my limited system if I wanted to stay
under $200? I appreciate anyone taking a moment to ponder this
not-too-important
problem, since my ignorance factor is higher than most.

                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>