So, a friend of mine came up with this question:
What is the graphics card that will give me comparable image quality with a PS2?*
*It is actually longer than that, but I need to simplify it.
Now, before we look at card specifications and compare, we need to see what the PS2 has under its hood.
From the very informative Wikipedia page we can see that the PS2 uses “Graphics Synthesizer” as its, uh, graphics processor.
Then we need to find out what the hell that is, since the Graphics Synthesizer isn’t available to pc and there’s no way to compare how it performs against PC video cards.
If it helps, the top-end graphics card released on the same year as PS2 is Geforce 256. But I don’t think they can be compared either.
The only way to compare them is to compare the games. After all, that’s what my friend is looking for. But the same game played on PS2 and PC will look different.
For example, EA released Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the PS2 and PC. When I played it on my PC, the graphics was amazing. Plaing the same game on my cousin’s PS2, my reaction was “huh?”. The graphics in PS2 is less exciting, not to mention frequent loading that annoys you, especially if it comes during a race.
Forget it then, I’ll just dig the system requirements for a soon-to-be-released PS2 game, Tomb Raider Underworld. It says that the minimum requirement cards are Geforce 6800GT/Radeon X1300XT, and the recommended cards are Geforce 9800GTX/Radeon 4800.
Ouch.
I played the previous Tomb Raider Anniversary smoothly with my 8600GT, so I think the card has no problem running it maxed. And I’m right.
Now, the 8600GT seems to be holding itself nicely until now, so I’d recommend it if you are tight on budget. However, shell out a little more cash if you can, and get a 9600GSO or a 4670.
