ATI Video Card Discussion (November 2008)

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by Wreford-Brown

I'm also in the market for a new graphics card (SH4 gives me 5 to 7 FPS ) so thank you for starting this thread.
The advice I got from DivingDuck is: 'a new gc will definitely do the job. I assume you need an AGP card, don´t you? The fastest AGP I know is an ATI X1950 Pro @512MB DDR3. Should be a available for less than 150,-EUR'

Well if using AGP I say go cheap and powerful if you can because if I remember right you are going to be seeing big performance drops regardless.

This one caught my eye because you get free World of Warcraft. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121273 I am not saying it's the best but you get that WoW that you can use or give to somebody which is like 20 bucks.

Edit: You know.. Looking at that card it really seems to be quite nice for 44 bucks. DirectX 10.1? Hell ya when you get WoW with it!

[CaptainHaplo]

Anytime you talk video cards, there are certain specifics you have to share when asking "whats good". First is how the card plugs in - PCIe or AGP - though your only going to see AGP in older motherboards (aka existing machines). Second is the power supply your going to use. Often people miss the mark on power and have all kinds of problems. Third is use - obviously gaming for most here - but are you wanting to push the envelope on the newest games? If so - share the CPU speed and memory you have in your box, as well as the planned OS. The reason for this is simple - if your running XP and not planning on moving to Vista (or 7 "when" its here) then spending extra bucks for dx10 compatibility is a waste unless you also get more performance in dx9. If your running a bottleneck at the cpu or system memory - the most expensive card isnt going to help you alot. Lastly, you have to have a price idea that you want to hit.

With all that said, I have to refer you to toms hardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...Card,2033.html
Every month they do a roundup of cards in various price categories by both Nvidia and ATI.

Take what you know about your machine - the need you have - and the money you have to spend - and see where the list points you. You wont be unhappy with the results if you put in the time and effort.

[Wreford-Brown]

I've checked my system and am on PCI rather than AGP.
I'm running MS Windows XP SP3
Pentium 4 3.06 GHz
3.0 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 LE

I'm also in the UK so any stores this side of the Atlantic would also be appreciated.

@Zachstar - I'm in danger of hijacking this thread. Would you prefer me to start a new one?

[Zachstar]

If it is that modern it ought to have atleast a PCI express port on it.

[Wreford-Brown]

How do I find out if it's PCI or PCIe?

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Wreford-Brown

How do I find out if it's PCI or PCIe?

Here, take a look:



You can see that the PCIex16 slot is somewhat larger than the PCIs at the bottom and has more pins. Usually has that clamp on the side for the video card. Unless you have a high-end motherboard with something like SLI, you also would normally only have one PCIe slot vs. several PCIs.

You also should normally have at least one PCIe slot, although some budget computers may come with onboard video only.

[Wreford-Brown]

Thank you, CCIP.

I've definitely got a PCIe x 16 slot and two PCI slots, one of which has a sound card in it.