25 replies to this topic

[waubamik]

Ok, what is the deal with video and grphic cards? What do they do that can enahance gameplayplay and wat sohuld i pay fo one? Currently my graphics cards is a Ge Force FX 5200 wat should i get to upgrade it looking to spend no more than 125$ and i am not sure about my videocard but same price range

[adinar]

Video & graphics cards refer to the same thing - they are basically synonymous terms. The better the graphics card that you have, the better the graphics you can display without lagging down your computer. For example, I'm running a Geforce2 Ultra (it's about a 3-yr old card). I have to play BF1942 at 800x600 with low detail, minimum effects or else the game becomes too choppy for me to even have a chance to play. The people look kinda blocky to me, and everything in the distance in the game is foggy. In fact, when there is A LOT going on in the game (lots of ppl spawning, lots of action), the graphics start to become really choppy.

However, if you have a high-end video card, then you can probably play the game at 1024x768 resolution or maybe even 1280x1024, with all the effects/details turned all the way up. And the graphics will be a lot smoother as well.

It really depends on the game...some games are REALLY graphics intensive (i.e. Doom3), and the better the card you have, the smoother & better looking the game will be.

In a nutshell, it comes down to how much detail you want on your screen. The better & higher quality detail you want, the more difficult it is for the video card to process & display everything. The quality of the video card determines just HOW fast it can process & display the images.

So it sounds to me that you have possibly $250 to upgrade your video card (since you were thinking you had to upgrade two different things initially)? I'm thinking you have an AGP video card currently? That'll get you either a Radeon 9800 Pro, Geforce 6800, or Geforce 6600GT.

[waubamik]

sweet thx ill look into buying one for sure now

[Enforcer]

I run the 128mb ATI 9800 pro at 1152 x 968 I think, with all settings maxed on a 2.8ghz processor. No chop except in DC occasionally with many explosions all at once.

[DeadlyDon]

Probably the best you can get in that price range is the ATI Radeon 9600XT w/256MB. I'd recommand buying from www.newegg.com.www.newegg.com

Radeon 9600XT w/256MB $110

[Capt. Conair]

Ive always wondered what the 128, 256, etc. MB has to do with the quality of the card.

Like ive got a NVidia Geforce FX 5500 128MB... what would be enhanced if i had a 5500 with 256MB?

[Ster]

That's texture memory. An FX5500 with 256 megs (my card, heh) can load more textures without having to compress them.

[DeadlyDon]

Well, it's possible for the extra memory to hurt you in some cases and help you in others. I've seen many benchmarks on Tom's Hardware Page that show two versions of the same video card. One with 128MB and the other with 256MB. In some tests the card with less memory performs better. Its really depends on the application. I'd go for the card with more memory if you can afford it. Many games are now taking advantage of the extra video memory and you will see severe performance degradation without the extra memory. Doom3 for instance would take advantage of a 512MB video card. So, even cards with 256MB are impacted.

[Van Halen]

I use a 6800gt on my 2.666 intel, with 256mb ram on card and 1gb on the mobol. I can run bf at full no lag whatsoever. I would advise you to stay away from ATI since i have 4 of them and ive had some serious issues with there drivers, but i might just have really bad luck . This (click here) is pretty sweet. im gonna buy that for my bro's computer and try it out on his, ill tell you how it runs

[The_Curley]

I use a 6800gt on my 2.666 intel, with 256mb ram on card and 1gb on the mobol. I can run bf at full no lag whatsoever. I would advise you to stay away from ATI since i have 4 of them and ive had some serious issues with there drivers, but i might just have really bad luck . This (click here) is pretty sweet. im gonna buy that for my bro's computer and try it out on his, ill tell you how it runs

whoa whoa I have had nothing but ATI cards and had no problems.

[Spastic Colon]

Don't forget: www.PriceWatch.com

[pest control]

chcek out new AMD dual cores/opterons, you might wanna wait upgrading now, theres a full 64 bit revolution coming up, an 256 MB grafic card will be obsolete on Windows Longhorn next year

[Housen]

I currently have the card that Dons speaking of. For BF it will run it at max everything with no lag nothing no matter what happens. Thats the good news.

The bad news. CS runs horribly with it. I get around 15 to 25 fps if I'm lucky during a firefight. I would highly suggest if your only playing BF and don't plan on playing a new game soon then stick with whatever is cheapest.

You can get something below the 9600xt and still get great performance for alot cheaper. The new games are very, very demanding so I would suggest saving up to get a damned good card otherwise if you MUST have one now then look for the best bang for your buck.

[The_Curley]

I currently have the card that Dons speaking of. For BF it will run it at max everything with no lag nothing no matter what happens. Thats the good news.

The bad news. CS runs horribly with it. I get around 15 to 25 fps if I'm lucky during a firefight. I would highly suggest if your only playing BF and don't plan on playing a new game soon then stick with whatever is cheapest.

You can get something below the 9600xt and still get great performance for alot cheaper. The new games are very, very demanding so I would suggest saving up to get a damned good card otherwise if you MUST have one now then look for the best bang for your buck.

I would personally go with a 9600xt best bang for the buck. And check it out at newegg.com. Sapphire has a good 256mb 9600, my last card, worked like a champ

[Ryu-XD]

I wouldn't think about upgrading during these times. This summer a new generation of cards will be released (r520, and many other Shader v3.0 supported cards).

Till those cards come out, I suggest not buying any video cards. But once the new generation cards come out, be sure to hit your stores because most prices drop 25-40% like every other piece of obsolete computer hardware.

Can't wait till I get my hands on an r520 chip... I'm gonna go nuts. (Hoping for 512mb versions, woohoo...)

[The_Curley]

this is true enough big things are goin on this summer. CPU's have already taken a huge drop in prive to sucker people in to get those.(ex 2.6 P4 with 2mb L2 cache $220) But judging buy the video card price trend, you will see 9600 drop to 80-90 9800 drop to 140-160 x800 and up go for 220-320 and the new gen for 450+. Cant tell ya nvidea they dont exist to me muhwahaha. Also looks like DDR is gonna be very sub stardard becuase I'm watching most PC 3200 (1gb 2x512) goin from 83 to 220. mos ago that would had been insane. Lookin like things did when P3 went to P4 and Amd went Xp'eleron.

[Enforcer]

Van Halen, must be you. I have been running the ATI 9800 pro for the last couple of years, and have had no problems specifically attributed to the video card. Runs both BF and CS with no problems that I can see.

Housen, you want a video card tester...go and run Flightsim 2004 with AI Traffic bumped up to 100% along with the real weather and dynamic clouds..whoo, now that is a test for any video card.

[Wasabi®]

$125...that's a really inbetween price. You're right above the midrange ones, and you're just below the high-endish ones. But despite what many people think, you don't need super-uber-leet video cards to run BF or even CS:S. A decent nVIDIA or ATI (around fx 5600 or above, ATI 9000 <--maybe a bit higher or above will work fine for both games if you have a good CPU (over 2 gigahertz or an Athlon 64 doesnt matter which socket.)

I run a dual-xeon system with a gig of ram and a 6600 (This is the workstation 2 which I do not game with) , but even with that I occassionally get problems with triangular texture bugs and whatnot. I believe I might have bought a cheap-a$$ manufacturer board. And what's surprising is that on my other comp (which I normally use) which has a 1.7-GHz Pen4 and a Ti 4600, there are absolutely no problems with graphics. Same thing on my Mac G4 Cube (1.4Ghz, nVIDIA Geforce 3 ) BF1942 has no problems.

I recommend you buy a card from a good maker, for example, Sapphire as someone already said or if you can afford it the pure ATI manufactured ones. (nVIDIA, most of them are OK, some such as Sparkle you should avoid, just because theyre cheap doesn't mean they're good.)

It's hard to calculate the balance between the CPU and the video card. For example, a 3GHz Pentium 4 with onboard 3D (such as Sis 661 FX) will fare on average about the same as a 2 GHz with a Geforce 4 MX. I hate to say this, but the card you have currently (FX 5200) was not designed for gaming, it is the mainstream card. If you plan to use nVIDIA I would recommend either the FX 5600/5700 Ultra (NEVER get the LE for any nVIDIA cards, they're not worth it.) or the FX 5900. Both are usually available for below $125. As for 128MB/256MB, 256MB is the better choice. Also, try to get the DDR2 version if it's in your price range--they're a bit faster.

If you don't want to keep upgrading your card every few years, though I would get the top-of-the line ones such as Radeon X700/X800 or Geforce 6600/6800. (Of course it depends, I am graduating high school soon so I probably will get my computer much later, so I won't buy a high-end one for the moment. I'll wait until I have the money and time.)

And as Ryu-XD said, technology is advancing exponentially at the moment. As soon as you got the new best top-of-the-line card in several months there's a new one. It's up to you to decide if you want to wait some more for prices to go down or just get it now.

Sorry for the super-long post. Hope it gave you some advice.

[Van Halen]

Lol enforcer i dont know why mine sucked so bad, i had massive amounts of lag, the AntiA lines were FUBARed, and overall the card didnt seem to shine for the $150 i paid for it. But knowing me, i missed some critical Direction or something, or i had a bad card. I gave it to my brother for free since i had problems with it

I have a 6800gt by PNY, and im loving it. Never get lag, i run CS at full. My bro said hed
buy it from me this fall, some hopefully new cards by nvidia will be out

[pr0nasaurus rex]

Save your money a little longer and get a card in the $150-200 range. You will see an immeasurable performance increase.

My personal recommendation would be an AGP 6600GT for a little less than $200 if you can afford it.

If you can't, try to land a 9600XT or a 9500Pro, preferably the latter, as I'm pretty sure it has 8 pixel pipes.