View Full Version : Budget Video card advice sought...
timmcat
22nd Dec 2004, 21:00
Got about £50 in the meagre PC upgrade pot to put to a new vid card.
Current setup is P4 2.53ghz, 512mb ram, XP SP2, and a 32mb MX420 card.
Quite like the look of the PNY VERTO GEFORCE FX 5500 AGP 8X 128MB (http://www.pcwcomponentcentre.co.uk/invt/bgf05500a8d11jpbg&bklist=icat,4,shop,f,fe) card, within budget - any views or advice? (PC only occasionally used for gaming, except for FS2004)
Naples Air Center, Inc.
22nd Dec 2004, 23:01
timmcat,
What do you plan to do with the card?
Knowing that we can say if a Radeon 9500, or GeForce 6600 or Radeon X300, etc. is best for you. ;)
Take Care,
Richard
NB: I 'upgraded' to a cheapo Radeon 7000 series to find it apparently not compatible with AMD Duron and Win MPlayer.
timmcat
23rd Dec 2004, 09:58
Richard..
I suppose primarily to improve performance on FS2004 - also, to ensure that the latest games (should TC jnr persuade me to install any) will run to at least an acceptable degree.
Naples Air Center, Inc.
23rd Dec 2004, 13:40
timmcat,
Here is some food for thought:
NVIDIA's GeForce 6200 & 6600 non-GT: Affordable Gaming (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238)
THG Graphics Card Buyers Guide (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041110/index.html)
VGA Charts IV AGP Video Cards (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-02.html)
This page is specifically for FS2k4:
Flight Simulator 2004 (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-10.html)
Now when it comes to TC jr. you are going to want more horsepower then you are currently planning on. With Doom3 and Halflife2 out there, I would not recommend anything under the Redeon 9800Pro or the GeForce 5900XT.
There are some new choices on the market in the GeForce 6600 and the Radeon X600XT (Just be careful when looking at those cards, since most of them are PCI-E and you need to find one that is AGP 8X.)
Take Care,
Richard