Graphics Card Upgrade

darthdublin

Hey Guys,

Can anyone advise me about this.
I have a ok-ish PC, but I'm only starting to play games on it. I have mostly used my PS2 and XBox. Anyway, my PC has Windows Me, 700mhz AMD Chip and a ProSavage km133 Graphics Card (I know its a s**t card).
Can anyone recommend a decent Grpahics Card to get for my PC. I'm not really "in the know" about PC's etc, but would like some advice.
Im not looking for the top of the range Card, just one that will make the likes of Jedi Outcast and Medal of Honor work without crashing and the graphics look decent.

Cheers guys.

KdjaCL

How much you got to spend?

Tho your PC will struggle with the new UNreal engine due to the massive CPU usage.

Spend your cash on a Radeon 9100 for $100 and buy as much RAM as you can afford.

If you do upgrade CPU etc: you will have the makins of a good system.

But i have a 2nd system at home 800 Duron oced to 1000 with 640 pc 100 Ram and a ATI 7500 VE card and it runs most games ,BF1942 wont run on it UNreal will but its fairly choppy.

kdjac

SouperComputer

personally, if possible, id scrap ME 1st!!!

I agree to Kdjac, but youll have to decide on a budget 1st and also consider the best CPU your board and also, PSU can take

darthdublin

Cheers Guys,

Is Windows Me that bad??.
To be honest, I did prefere Windows 98.
What would you suggest I get instead of Win Me??.

Cheers.

TacT

anything but ME

KdjaCL

Win 98 for casual gaming usage or if you would rather an OS that gives you massive headaches with its not-working-with-anything-ness get W2k.

And spend rest of your life looking for drivers and patches and returning software and then post here about how its the best OS ever.

XP is a hog and needs a lot of RAm and a good CPU so for performance your best off with Win 98 SE.

kdjac

SouperComputer

if youve got 98, go back to it!

a stitch in time.........

I personally prefer 2k overall, but it is a bit more resource intensive than 98. Im not a heavy gamer though.

BKtje

Originally posted by KdjaC
Win 98 for casual gaming usage or if you would rather an OS that gives you massive headaches with its not-working-with-anything-ness get W2k.

Not working with what exactly? Ive got W2k and its the best move i ever made to dump 98se. Explorer kept crashing, windows kept crashing, took ages to do nething....changed to w2k and after a few initial hitches its been smooooooth sailing.

Havent found anything that it hasnt worked with yet and is overall much more stable. I've crashed twice in last week and both times it was a gfx issue which i corrected. (overclocked too much ). Before that id gone about 5 months without a crash.

(win98se is prob fine for you if you dont encounter problems i did. Stay clear of XP with your setup imo. Defoo ditch ME )

Ryo Hazuki

Speaking of Graphics Cards....

Is there a 64mb Version of the GF4 ti 4400?

Ive been offered one for dirt cheap, from what I hear its quite easy to narrow the gap between it and the 4600
(which is a pretty small performance difference anyway!) with some overclocking.

100 Euro is a pretty good deal

Bosco

I experienced a noticable drop in games performance when I moved from ME to 2k on a Celeron 1.3 Ghz machine. Medieval Total War in particular ran absolutely terribly for me under windows 2k. I ended up setting up an ME/2k dual boot.

Dr Bolouswki

Here's my spec

800mhz P3
512mb Ram
Win XP

I use a (just purchased) Geforce 3 Ti/200 128mb - it runs B1942 ( slightly choppy) Medal of Honour, Soldier of Fortune blah blah perfectly - can't find a game that won't run on it... though I'd say it will definitely struggle in the next 6 months...

Personally, I think you should definitely go for a value card - avoid the GF4 MX cards like the plague - either go second hand or visit www.komplett.ie for some cheap stuff, and defionitely get 128mb of onboard mem if possible - ur processors not too hot...

You can definitely get your games working for under €100 - but you will have to upgrade your CPU and maybe mobo in the next 6 months or so...

BKtje

You'll need a faster spec machine very shortly or you wont be able for any opf the modern games. Thinking of Doom first, your gonna have a large problem id imagine.

Best budget atm prob ti4200 or one of the 9500 non pro.
Depends on your budget and what you gonna do with your cpu etc later. Some gfx cards work better with slow cpus than others.

(ie worthless to get the 9700 pro with a cpu lower than a 1.2/1.3 as a ti4600 would be faster. )

Quigs Snr

The 64MB Radeon 9100 is probably the best bag per buck for your machine at 80 Euro. It should slightly beat a GF3 Ti200 and will spank any of the GF4MX cards.

Your CPU etc... is old, but if you can't upgrade the whole lot, thats what I would go for. For 80 Euro your machine would be transformed.

A guy I know has the AMD Athlon 800 192MB RAM and a GF3 Ti200 he is playing Unreal Tournament without a glitch at 800*600 resolution with reasonable detail settings. Put it this way, it looks bloody fantastic.

TacT

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
Thinking of Doom first, your gonna have a large problem id imagine.

bleedin software companies forcing us to upgrade our hardware

SouperComputer

I experienced a noticable drop in games performance when I moved from ME to 2k on a Celeron 1.3 Ghz machine. Medieval Total War in particular ran absolutely terribly for me under windows 2k. I ended up setting up an ME/2k dual boot

Celeron 1.3 Ghz

^^^^SUCKZ

Woden

eh dispite much suggestions to purchase a radeon 9100 don't find someone selling an 8500 (not the crucial one on komplett) it should be faster then almost every 9100 out there just make sure you check the clock speed of the core and the memory

heres just a sample benchmark from tomshardware showing graphics cards on a slower processor 1ghz athlon (which incidentally is faster then yours and mine)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-05.html

anywho check out the 8500 128mb NON LE version its well up there with a with a ti500

and beats a radeon 9000 pro and it will beat the 9100's not sure about the 9200's which are being released (but i think they are just 9100's with 8x agp support)

Data

Lord NEO

I just got the ATI Radeon 128 MB PCI card, but now windows encounters a problem at the little green console window after initializing and has to close. I need some advice as to what i should do. Im I the only one with this problem?

astrofool

Me is far better than 98se.

XP is better than the lot of them.

does the km133 have a spare agp slot ? i have the feeling that it didn't.

Open up the case and check first maybe, or tell us what motherboard u have.

mayto

i got mobo with ProSavage km133 integrated Graphics chipset, which means graphics are crap .the mobo (gigabyte ga7zmmh) has a spare agp slot. i have xp1600 cpu and 256 mb(133) ram. should i get sapphire 9600 pro off komplett (e200) or 9000 type card for bout 100 euro with 512 mb ram . i think spending over e200 would be a bit too much.
does anybody know if the 9600 pro on komplett with vivo has the same board specs (clock speed etc.) as other 9600 pro boards as i cant find info on net or an idea how good or bad the sapphire 9200 with 256mb ram would be for its e95 price.
any opinions
cheers dc