I'm looking to buy bioshock but my graphics card is outdated. What pci-e graphics card could run it as well as other pc games easily. Also, what do i need to know to determine if a graphics card is compatible.
An 8800GTX will run it on high, but it is fairly expensive ($550-600USD). It is also very power hungry. You would need to buy a new PSU if you are buying this for a dell, compac etc. What kind of PC do you have, and what are your other specs? If you have a pentium 4, an 8800 would be waste, because you would bottleneck it. A x1950xtx is pretty good...
My Card (an X1900XT) can run Bioshock on maximum settings at 1920x1200. The X1950 Pro performs similarly, and is available from here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102075 for $159. You will want at least a 400W Power supply by a well known brand. I DO NOT recommend buying that card until we know what power supply you have, cheap power supplies often combust when you add more powerful hardware.
The X1900XT or X1950XT are excellent choices and are easily able to run bioshock at full settings, however, if you want to future proof your computer some go for the 8800GTS 320MB or better. by the way the X1950XT and X1950XTX are NOT the same thing. The X1950XTX is significantly more expensive and at this point not worth spending money on it since the HD2900XT and 8800 cards perform better. A Pentium 4 will bottleneck every one of these cards mentioned above. Also a dual core is recommended for playing bioshock and at least 2GB of ram.
I don't really recommend the 320MB 8800GTS to anyone, in quite a few games I've had issues with the top texture quality because I run out of video RAM, and I've got 512MB. 320MB just isn't enough when you consider how fast the rest of the 8800GTS is.
