Its time to upgrade

susswald

I'm gonna throw out some specs first before I get into specifics

FUJITSU SIEMENS SCENIC P / SCENICO P
System Serial Number: YBCM063682
Chassis Serial Number: YBCM063682
Enclosure Type: Mini-Tower
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.93 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: FUJITSU SIEMENS D2140 S26361-D2140
Bus Clock: 533 megahertz
BIOS: FUJITSU SIEMENS // Phoenix Technologies Ltd. 5.00 R1.03.2140 01/21/2005
Drives Memory Modules c,d
40.02 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
16.52 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8526B [CD-ROM drive]
IDE-DVD ROM 6116 [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

WDC WD400BB-55JKA0 [Hard drive] (40.02 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WCAME1380805, rev 05.01C05, SMART Status: Healthy 736 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM-1' has 256 MB
Slot 'DIMM-2' has 512 MB

I don't really PC game as much as I used to, the computer is really for my dads home office work but it runs my old games with my crappy old Gforce2 pretty well, it also runs far cry pretty nicely too.
I picked up a few bargain games the other day and felt it wa time to up my graphics a bit, I'm on a budget though, about 100e or over, don't mind second hand cards, I can usually get some good deals from people I know in the UK too so I'm just looking for something affordable and competant, I especially wanna play brothers in arms.

Any suggestions is much appreciated.

TerrorFirmer

Well if you're actually reasonably happy with a Geforce 2 the good news is that an upgrade to fit your bill be cheap. Your base machine, 3Ghz and 768Mb Ram is decent enough although I would suggest another 512mb of ram really to replace that 256 to give you a total of 1gb, even if you don't plan playing newer titles it wouldn't hurt.

If you plan playing new-ish games, this 7600GS is a good option, although a bit above your budget it will handle even new releases like BF2, FEAR and Oblivion reasonably well.

If you plan however sticking with the likes of Far Cry, BIA and similar 2003/2004 titles, something cheap like this will still do an ok job, far better then your Geforce 2 in any case and won't break the bank, but it will be quite weak at the latest games.

The best advice I'd give though is to hit www.adverts.ie for a second hand card - you'd easily get the likes of a 9600XT for 50-60 euro, which again would be more powerful then the regular 9600 linked to above and light years better then a Geforce 2.

susswald

Hey man thanks for the quick reply!
JUst opened my case to find only PCI slots so I'm pretty limited in choice, my old geforce is a PCI card to and it worked pretty well, so I know they can cut it when they need to.
This http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304713 seems to be pretty decent, no?

TerrorFirmer

Not really - the Fx5200 is a terrible card for anything remotely modern although it is fine on titles like Far Cry and BIA.

To be honest though it's definately not worth it for 96 euro, by any stretch. Check adverts, a user called 'kmb' was selling a pci Fx5200 for 30 euro awhile back, so at that price it'd be an acceptable upgrade.

Failing that, PC World sell, or at least, used to sell PCI 6200's for a decent 49.99 - although comparably weak to regular cards, they are the best bet for pci and much better then the Fx5200.