new graphics card

strangeloop

I'm thinking of getting a new graphics card from komplett to replace my old tnt2. Can anyone recommend a good card for around 100 euros? I was looking at all the radeon's and nvidia cards on komplett and theres so many to choose from.

Cheers

Stephen

well it depends... What hardware have you got? If you were running a TNT2 then its quite likely that you only have a P3-500 or so era machine. What CPU and motherboard have you got? Does the motherboard have an AGP slot or PCI only, etc?

strangeloop

It a pentium 4 with a 1.7ghz processor and 1gb of ram. I'm looking for a budget but very decent card. The radeons look pretty good but there are so many of them.

Thanks

Col_Loki

If you have an AGP slot 4x prob.

Then have a look at a 9550 or 9600 . Dont get a 9600se or Nvidia Fx5200/5600 there pretty bad cards. If you can stretch the 9600pro is a good idea. Other than that mabye have a look at the second hand market there are some good cards there...... 5900/9700/9700pro/9800/9800pro are very strong cards.

strangeloop

Thanks mate,

I've narrowed it down to these two. If it was you which would you get;

PowerColor Radeon 9550 256MB DDR AGP, ATI 9550, DVI-I, TV-Out, Retail
256mb for just over 100 euros, it must be good

or


PowerColor Radeon 9600 PRO EZ 128MB AGP, ATI 9600PRO, DVI-I, TV-Out, Retail


Cheers

Stephen

How much is the 9600 Pro ? The 256MB/128MB memory makes bugger all difference.

theprofessor

lo,

I think you should go with the 9600 pro, the ram means almost nothing.

I had a 9600pro a while back, they are good value for the cash and you can clock them WAY past their standard settings.

I used to run mine a 525MHz core and 660MHz ram and it was ultra stable (the std on my card was 400Mhz and 600Mhz)

Col_Loki

If you can afford the 9600pro then thats definetly the best option.

There will be no difference between 128mb and 256mb cards unless you go to mad resolution and generally mid range cards cant handle this anyway. Over 128mb is a marketing ploy on anything less than a 9800XT IMO.

leeroybrown

Also, sometimes manufacturers use slightly lower spec memory in their lower end 256Mb cards than they use in the equivalent 128Mb cards in order to keep the price down.

Even Doom3 is designed to run perfectly on 128Mb cards.