so i'm looking to buy a video card, my bidget is around $100-$150 (I am willing to spend up to $200 but only if i really need to). I basicly want to play games like doom 3, far cry, and HL2 at medium to high resolution, at about mid level settings, nothing amazing or anything just enough to offer a good, smooth gaming expieriance with nice looking, clean graphics. I figure 256mb is about the standard now-a-days and 128mb is pushing it, so if i have to spend more to get 256 i will. I was looking in to getting a generic manufactured card like asus, pny, ect. inorder to save a lil cash. and i was wondering if anyone had any reconmendations or advice for me as far as manufacturers (good/bad) or particular cards that offer a good bang for your buck.
Give me some more info,(cpu speed, ram, mobo ports,) and ill tell you what is best for you're money, for budget, i would get the Msi 6600gt 256mb version. Just a thought, tell me the specs of ur comp, and ill think of more cards.
my pc: CPU: Intel p4 2.4ghz 533fsb MOBO: Intel D845GRG that supports agp 1x-4x (1.5v only) RAM: 512MB of i think ddr 266, but im not sure about that. and i am planning to upgrade my RAM to 1gb sometime in the near future.
Check this out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127186 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102290 This card will maybe be pushing it at 169 dollars, but, i would think about upgrading youre system in the future as well, with 1 gig of ram, and a 533fsb, i think you will be bottlenecking the cpu, maybe, getting a p4 2.8ghz socket 478 mobo/cpu combo,(or what ever speed suits youre wallet) and 512 of ram, and you can push that card to its full potential. btw read my comp sig, and i can get maybe 20 fps or so in farcry with everything in low-medium, at 800x600, it sucks.
Personally i would still go for the 6600GT for $154.00 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150089 as it will play the games you listed very well i.e farcry aircraft carrier level 130+fps, HL2 60-80 fps all @ 1024*768 with high details = very playable...the 6200 is half a 6600 4 pixel pipes s Vs 8 pixel pipes , the 9800pro is a good card but the 6600GT has the advantage over it, here's a side by side comparison of the two http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=3 , also Nvidia has better driver surport over ATi ... i know it's 128mb but don't let that put you off for the price it's 1 hell of a card, if you had a 8x AGP board i would have suggested a 6800le which you could have soft modded to almost 6800GT specs for about the same price .....
i would also go with the nvidia geforce 6600gt 128mb because you can get the 256mb version but it doesnt have ddr3 memory, and with that memory the 128mb version will outperform the 256 card.. go with that card it will run you about 150-180 dolars but great card. will play any of the newest games out there including battelfield 2 which is a very demanding game.
look to the 9600xt agp 8x by ati they are a good card and not that bad on the budget go to frys or some sort of a discount place tigerdirect cdw and youll ant to bump that ram up to a gig I found that doom 3 likesegs!
I got a gigabyte nvidia 6600GT DDR3 at www.pcclub.com.It's 150 dollars right now and comes with power dvd and joint operations.This card is as fast or better than an nividia 6800 or an ati 9800.
well i think im going to go with the XFX 6600gt cause it a good price and from what i've read it seems to be a good product. but before i do anything, i have desided to upgrade to 1gb of RAM and get a new thermeltake 420W PS, because i figure if im going to get sucked back in to upgrading my PC, RAM and power is where i should start. i'll be replacing my 2 256mb sticks with 2 samsung 512mb sticks that are $93 including S&H, and i figure 420W for $36 at newegg is pretty good for a decent brand (or so i think). thanks for the help, i'll post what card i end up buying and what i think of it.
Drivers make a real difference with this card, i've tried about 12 different ones on my 6600GT and found that the 80.40 from http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=127&Itemid=41 are very good, as are the 77.77 Nvidia driver ..... it's best to try a few different drivers and see which one suits you ..... uninstall your current driver by : control panel > system > device manager > hardware > display adapter > driver > uninstall , then with a program called driver cleaner pro from www.driverheaven.net restart in safe mode select clean Nvidia driver & click start, restart in to windows install new driver restart again & all is good
