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Going to buy a 128 mb or 256 mb video card. Any Suggestions?

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Deluxe2481

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Mar 13, 2005
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I got a intel celeron 2.6 Ghz and 512 mb of ram. My video card right now is a 32 or 64 not sure. Just wanting on some advice on which video card I should get. Any help is appreciated.
 
Deluxe2481
Don't get to hung up on the amount of ram, it's the graphics processor thats important.

A weak graphics processor with a large amount of ram does not make a good graphics card.

Example:
A Geforce FX5200 with 256mb of ram has very poor performance despite having a massive amount of memory and is easily outperformed by a much older ATI Radeon 9500 with only 64mb of onboard memory.

You need to determine wether you have an AGP slot (a dedicated slot for graphics cards) if it has it will almost certainly be either 4X or 8X AGP.

Then what you choose is down to budget.

An ATI Radeon 9600pro or XT would be a good choice, as would a Nvidia FX5700ultra
If you can spend a little more then I would recommend ATI's 9800pro or Nvidia's 6600GT all depends on your budget.

Note* the actual versions I suggest
Martin

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Participate and help others.
 
I have a PCI Slot and around $120 to buy a video card. The ones above looked like they were only AGP.
 
If you are talking about a regular PCI slot (not PCI-Express), then you'll likely want a GeForce4 MX 440. I believe they are the fastest ones available for regular PCI.

Don't expect to be able to do much with the latest 3D apps/games, however.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
 
I saw a The GeForce MX 4000 and I wanted to know if it would be worth it at $65 to play games such as unreal tournament. If not how do you tell how good a video card is? Like the numbers at the end or what?
 
I agree with Dakota on that. I forgot they released some of the newer FX cards in PCI.

Deluxe,
Know that I wouldn't spend too much more than what this FX5700LE card is going for. If you really care about 3D performance in games from the last 2 years, you should consider upgrading your motherboard (and possibly CPU and RAM) to one that supports either AGP 8x or PCI-Express.

Standard PCI is limited in bandwidth. You might still be able to run some of the more recent stuff, but only with detail turned way down.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
 
I agree with cdogg. You might want to consider saving your cash and upgrading your motherboard and then get a better video card.
 
The GeForce MX 4000 really isn't a very strong card if you are looking to play the newest games around. Personally speaking I would look at updating your motherboard before you update your video card. Spending $65 on on of those is a waste IMO.
Also, further to the earlier post about not gettig hung up on the amount of RAM as it is the video processor that is important, this is very true to a point but the other thing to consider is the memory controller on the video card. Cheaper graphics cards generally only have a 128-bit memory interface (some are only 64-bit) which means even if they have 256MB of RAM, the bandwidth simply isn;t there to utilise it properly. You are better saving up for a card with a 256-bit interface such as the 9700 / 9800 range of cards from ATi or the neweer X800's / 6600's / 6800's.
A card with 256-bit memory interface and 128Mb of RAM will give better performance that a 128-bit interface and 256MB of ram.
 
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