NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti 4200
 

Does anyone know if this card is DirectX9 compatible? If I tried to play a game, like Beyond Good and Evil, which requires DirectX9 what would happen? THanks for any info, help, hints, etc.

It would work, but the DirectX 9 features in the game wouldn't work as well. The TI4200 is an incredibly powerful videocard for its price, it simply suffers from only being DirectX 8.1 compatible and lower.

In other words, yes, the game will work, but the DirectX 9 features won't look very good. Some might not work at all (like water rippling, or sparks, for a generic example), but the game should run. In Max Payne 2, the windows don't reflect very well if you don't have a DX9 card. Everything else is fine though. I imagine Beyond Good and Evil will be basically the same way.

-Lasereth

I've heard of so many people with this problem! Uninstalling DX9 is a pain in the ass too, after you've found out it sucks.

Oh no, you should definitely keep DirectX 9 installed. It makes games that are heavily constructed around it run better, even if your card doesn't support it.

-Lasereth

I have this card, but the most graphics-intensive game I've run on it is Knights of the Old Republic, which ran and looked great.

Newegg has a Chaintech Ti4200 for $143. Is it worth this price, or is there a DX9 card in the same range that would work better?

I wouldn't pay any more than $120 for a TI4200. You can get them at that price from reputable websites. A damn good card, but not worth $143 -- I paid less for it than that a year and a half ago.

If you want to spend $150, I'd try to find a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra or Radeon 9600 XT. If you want to get a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra or Radeon 9600 Pro, you can find them for that price, but in some tests they actually fall behind the TI4200. Overall, they're a good investment, but be prepared to bite the bullet in some factors. Increased resolution, anisotropic filtering, and anti-aliasing all perform better on the TI4200 than on the FX 5600 Ultra and Radeon 9600 Pro in some tests.

Recent information from Tom's Hardware has conflicted with earlier tests, showing that the 9600 Pro series and the FX 5600 series are "better" than first thought. I've read and re-read their articles on videocards, and it simply doesn't make any sense why the TI4200 dominated those two cards, and then all of a sudden it's the other way around.

If you don't have a good videocard right now, the FX 5600 Ultra/5700 Ultra and 9600 Pro/XT would both be a very good investment.

If you can find a Radeon 9500 Pro, that would be even better.

*EDIT* I've looked further into the tests, and it seems that the TI4200 does better than the FX 5600 and Radeon 9600 if it's in an Athlon system. The Pentium systems seem to yield results showing that the FX 5600 and Radeon 9600 are better than the TI4200. Don't ask me why, but that seems to be the correlating theme.

-Lasereth