Cheap 256 graphics card???

slave1

Hi,

Upgrading my graphics card ( 64mg ) to allow me to play SW Battlefront in particular.

128/256 cards are quite expensive, so I can't understand the price of this gut at komplett

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=301870&cks=PLS

How come this is so much cheaper than the rest?
Will it help graphic demanding games? Battlefront in particular

If this is a waste of space, can you please recommend a decent card
AMD2.2, 512RAM, currently runnig ME but more than likely moving to XP Pro

Tks

koneko

It's cheaper because it's not very good. The pic alone, without looking at the specs, says a lot. If a card doesn't need a fan, it usually isn't very good.

How much money do you have to spend on a card? That would really be the best starting point. Geforce FX 6600/6800 cards are good.

Definitely move to XP, WinME is woeful.

Gilgamesh

if you can afford a bit more I would recommend to go for the X600 or the 9600XT, you will have more fun with them
the 9250 is a moreless desktop workstation card.
it wasn't really designed for gaming and has pretty crap performance.
it is so much cheaper because it firstly only has one GPU, only 1 VGA port. and nor very much performance.
don't even know why they put so much memory on it tbh

Thordon

Its a common misconception that the ammount of memory on a card is a measure of how good it is, the card in the link is a very bog standard card, in most cases a card with 256mb of memory only has it to appear good, as a marketing stunt. The best way that I have found to guage how good a card is, is to look at benchmarks, heres a link to an example: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-08.html

If you look at the first chart there, you will see the Radeon 9800 Pro 256 and the Radeon 9800 Pro (standard version with 128mb), look how close they are, and how little the extra memory affects the framerate.

RicardoSmith

A 9700 pro is faster than a 9600xt and a 9600xt is about the same as a x600

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=4

If you can't stretch to a 6600GT (which is better than a 9800pro) I'd go for a 9700Pro. The 9700pro is a good bit cheaper. OcUK does a decent priced 9700pro

RicardoSmith

Thordon wrote:

Its a common misconception that the ammount of memory on a card is a measure of how good it is, ....

So is the size of the fan....

Wertz

I run SWBF no problems on a crappy fx5200 128mb. Settings all medium to high. Never counted my fps but there is little or no slowdown even in the busiest of battles.
Running on P4 2.4 and 768RAM.

Sidenote: SWBF is pretty and fun for a while but it gets old fast, even with the online thing...

koneko

RicardoSmith wrote:

So is the size of the fan....

Name me one half-way decent card that doesn't have a fan. All the cards I've used in recent years with no fans (and just heatsinks) have been MX-style cards (which I personally wouldn't use).

Agree on that Wertz, it gets old pretty quickly It has so many niggly things I'd change it just annoys me to play it now. Good fun at a LAN though.

Thordon

Up until recently I was using a 9600 non pro, it has no fan, just a heatsink, I would classify it as half-way decent.

RicardoSmith

koneko wrote:

Name me one half-way decent card that doesn't have a fan. ..

Gigabyte Radeon X700 Pro
http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=361

marco murphy

What about a 5700?geforce

RicardoSmith

Poblachtach wrote:

What about a 5700?geforce

What about it?

marco murphy

Is it good???

RicardoSmith

Poblachtach wrote:

Is it good???

Compared to what and in what game or benchmark?

marco murphy

Well i wanna play far cry and i wanna see good details.Iam getting one on....monday,i just hope its good,il be pissed off if its not.I have an mx440

koneko

RicardoSmith wrote:

Gigabyte Radeon X700 Pro

Shush you, that doesn't count!

Ponster

I guess some people will recommend a GeForce and others an ATI.

I'm in the ATI camp. I have a 9600 256Mb and now have a 9800 128Mb Pro and I think I'll be sticking to this one for a while. I think once you invest 190+euro in a card you can be pretty sure that it'll take anything on the market at the moment and for a while to come.

Look at your motherboard first to see if it's an AGP or a PCI-Express. If it's more than a few months old I'd say it's prob an AGP.

RicardoSmith

Poblachtach wrote:

Well i wanna play far cry and i wanna see good details.Iam getting one on....monday,i just hope its good,il be pissed off if its not.I have an mx440

Well it light years better than a mx440 though not a smart buy at the moment. Why did you buy it? (based on what review etc) and for how much?

koneko wrote:

Shush you, that doesn't count!

How about this one then a fanless 6800?
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/gigabyte6800passive/index.html

marco murphy

RS,iam getting it for 180 p+p,hows that

slave1

Well, I was looking around at the prices of decent cards and the 6600gt 128 seems a good buy and was recommended by some friends.
However it costs 265 so I may as well be hung for a sheep so I went out amd bought a complete PC, the Aldi Medion - down from 1100 to 1000 -.
THis contains the above card - repackaged as a 6610 XL.

So for 735 yo yos I got a p4 3.4, quality pc, fook it, happy new year to me

fantasic build pc, whisper quiet, great specs

marco murphy

Very good nice buy

Patrick

I'm looking for a cheap graphics card to run hl2 smoothly. I have the geforce3fx 128mb atm and it's pretty slow.

I was thinking about this:

Sapphire Radeon 9800SE Advantage 256MB AGP, ATI9800SE,DVI-I,TV-Out,Lite-Retail 137euro
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305188&cks=SER

Any thots?

marco murphy

Dont ge an SE,iam going by what 3 freinds told me...

Patrick

ok, what would u recommend? my budget is 150

marco murphy

150 hmmm,well iam getting a card off a freind for 180.Just....wait for the lads here,theyll tell you.

RicardoSmith

Going on memory a 9800se is slower than 9800 which is slower than a 9800pro. A 9700pro is about the same as 9800. A 5700 is a lot slower than all these cards in Dx9 but only a bit slower in Dx8.

The OcUK 9700Pro is €130 + delivery so that would seem to be the best bang for buck at the moment.