Computer WITHOUT a Graphics Card - Terrible Idea?

ixoy

Right, I'm in a position now to get a new PC for around the €700 mark. For my mind, I'm thinking of an Athlon X2 4200+ with a Gig of RAM.

Now trouble is I'm not realllly going to have enough money left over for a GFX card. Instead that money will come about in September. I have a Ti4200 alright, but that's an AGP card and I'm under the impression that most new 939 mainboards are equipped primarily for PCI and the new faster PCI range (which I plan to upgrade to).

Am I going to be somewhat crippled if I don't have a graphics card or should I look for a mainboard which supports both?

RuggieBear

Pick up the cheapest gfx card you can...you might get 30+ for the ti4200

Nukem

If its got built in VGA you'll have no worries but gaming will probably be a no no - just check the spec on the board

christophicus

yeah im quite sure that htere are no socket 939 boards with onboard graphics,which means that without a graphics card you will not be able to use your computer.And no you agp card will not work with that setup.

TerrorFirmer

Sell the geforce for about 30, and for about 60 you can pick up the cheapest pci-e card on komplett. Its either an x550 or x300, can't remember.

either way its a good temp measure and will run battlefield 2 or fear smoothly at 800x600 until you get your new card.

Nukem

Ya just went googling and having trouble finding one - it was only 478 boards that had that or 754

Alkers

Someone buying a cheap Dell might even have an x300 or similar lying around.
Put up a post in wanted, it would be fairly sill to build a new rig now without PCI-E.

K.O.Kiki

There are a decent amount of mobos with onboard VGA -- anything with either a Radeon Xpress 200 (X300 on-board) or nVidia GeForce 6150 built-in would do for the mo.
Better bet would be to sell the Ti & get a cheap PCI-e (PCI-Express) card tho. Or wait a bit longer :rolleyes:

You could also look for a mobo with both PCI-e & AGP slots (beware that there's also mobos with PCI-e & AGR which looks similar, but is very different!)

astrofool

the problem is that motherboards with built in vga are usually sh*te.

Get a proper motherboard and the cheapest pci-e card you can find till september.

ixoy

Rightio, that's a pretty conclusive answer there. Komplett's site has PCI-Es starting off at around the 50-60 mark. Reckon I'll chuck in one of those too rather than have a brand new PC that's half crippled at birth.

Out of curiosity, how would - for example - the XFX GeForce 6200 compare against my old Ti4200?

astrofool

probs about the same tbh, half the shaders, but higher clock, and probably more memory bandwidth, + supports newer features, wikipedia has more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units

uberpixie

ixoy wrote:

Rightio, that's a pretty conclusive answer there. Komplett's site has PCI-Es starting off at around the 50-60 mark. Reckon I'll chuck in one of those too rather than have a brand new PC that's half crippled at birth.

Out of curiosity, how would - for example - the XFX GeForce 6200 compare against my old Ti4200?

Stick to a radeon 550 or get an nvidia 6600(best of the cheap cards).

6200 is pretty much the slowest you can get, usually comes as "turbo cache" which means it comes with sod all of its own ram and steals a lot of yours :-)

KdjaCL

Theres a Sapphire Pure board with built in VGA (x300 gpu not too shabby) but its PCI and a Crossfire version.
So fairly future proof along with supporting 939s.


kdjac

TerrorFirmer

ixoy wrote:

Rightio, that's a pretty conclusive answer there. Komplett's site has PCI-Es starting off at around the 50-60 mark. Reckon I'll chuck in one of those too rather than have a brand new PC that's half crippled at birth.

Out of curiosity, how would - for example - the XFX GeForce 6200 compare against my old Ti4200?

Crap card. But - It will do the job perfectly fine until you get the money together for a good card to match the system.

Here are some of the cheapest pci-cards you can get. If you plan playing any games in the meantime, but want to save money, I'd suggest:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=312429&cks=PRL

Not a terrible card, runs bf2 at medium-ish settings. Good compromise considering you don't want spend alot of money.

If you want to go dirt cheap, go for:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=308908&cks=PRL

128 onboard ram, steals the other 128mb from your ram. Runs all new games, although on the low-medium settings. Compares to an old 9550 or so.

Obviously enough there's no point going for an expensive card if you plan upgrading in several months time. I'd personally think the x550 if you plan doing any gaming in the gap time - or the x300 if it won't be used for much gaming until then.

Oriel

If you don't get a gfx card, then you won't need 1Gb of RAM, so go for 512 RAM and a cheap gfx card in the mean time.