Recommend me a graphics card

[crazymotorbik...]

Hey,

Im after a new graphics card and was wondering what you would recommend.

Im after a geforce with 512Mb memory, i have around £80 to spend.

I currently have the Geforce FX5500 with 256MB. Its ok but starting to show its age.

Cheers,
Shaun.

[Seb]

The amount of memory on a low to mid end video card is absolutely irrelevant to its performance unless your running games at 1920x1200 (And coincidently, budget cards won't run games at that sort of resolution well anyway, cheap cards with massive amounts of cheap ram are a waste of money), its the speed of the GPU and memory that counts

Theres a recent thread with a bunch of good PCI-E suggestions, but I'm assuming that since you have an FX5500 that you are using an AGP system?

Whats your CPU?

If you want nVidia, your pretty much limited to getting something like a 7600GS DDR2, not the most inspiring of cards but its a massive massive leap over a crummy FX series card. If you can find a 7800GS within budget, get that as it has as fair bit more oomph. Something like a 6600GT is another decent cheap option, but it'll be struggling with top titles in the very near future.

Going ATI gives you a few more options, if you can find a DDR3 X1650 pro get it as its a fairly good card, avoid the DDR2 based version as it really is a steaming pile in comparison though. X1950pro is the best AGP card you can get, but they tend to weigh in around the 120 quid mark.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[california_rookie]

https://www.google.co.uk/products?q=8600gt

Don't let the lack of RAM put you off. It's quality you want, not quantity.
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[Seb]

Keep in mind that the guy likely has an AGP system, a PCI-E card literally won't fit in the slot (Or work at all if you push it hard enough ).
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[crazymotorbik...]

Hey,

Thanks for all the info.

Unfortunatley i have a fairly old motherboard that lacks PCI-E. Im currently running P4 2.4GHZ with 1.5GB RAM. It all works fairly nicely but i was looking at Bioshock which wont run to nice on my graphics card (Prehaps even my system)

I'm not a massive games fan so building a whole new PC is way out of the question. If it wont run on my system i wont buy it. Simple as.

Cheers,
Shaun.

[Misc]

I've just got a new Nvidia 7600GT for £50. They're really good cards for the price, can play most games on med/high, even the resource hungry ones like Bioshock it plays mostly on high. Get this & save a few quid.

[Seb]

To behonest, your CPU is going to bottleneck you something cronic, even with a flashy card your average frame rate isn't going to be great. Upgrading from a 3.6ghz P4 to a Core 2 Q6600 made a very noticeable difference when I was running with an X1950pro, so you'd likely be better off just getting a 7600GS or 7800GS and put the change towards a proper system upgrade down the line.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[california_rookie]

I have a Core 2 Duo 2.13 w/ 4GB of 800mhz DDR2 on an EVGA 680i motherboard and a 7900GS Extreme graphics card. And I'd need to upgrade to run Bioshock smoothly, even at medium detail.

My advice is to not waste your time, not to mention money, unless you know someone with a comparable system and can live with the way it runs the game.

If you absolutely must buy a new AGP-based card, I agree with Misc, go with the 7600GT. It's performance is comparable to the 7800GS at a much more reasonable price. And, yes, XFX make one in the all-but-forgotten AGP format.
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