Okay.. I'm fed up with not being able to play games like Gunz without lagging to death. I'm not a huge gamer, I just need something that is better than what I have now (64mb Intel Integrated -.- lol) http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...&Tab=1&NoMapp=0 I'm on a very strict budget as my parents coulden't care less how my computer functions so they won't pay help me, etc. What I want to know is is the gfx card named linked above a rip off? If it is, could you direct me to another one which is equal or better, for around the same price or cheaper? I cannot go above $70, and it must be able to ship to Canada. Yes, I know it is a crappy GFX card so you can spare me the speech, but anything is better than what I have now, lol.
do you need PCI, or AGP? I won't even ask on PCI-E... if you have a PCI-e and AGP slot, Id rather trying for an AGP..
Why would the RAM matter? I had an article with links to recommended video cards for different price ranges, but I seem to have misplaced it. Instead, here's the best AGP card available on Newegg: Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256MB I'm just assuming you have AGP, but if you have PCIe, and you want to use it, let us know, and we can find you one for it.
7300 is indeed crap. it doesn't have it's own ram it uses your computers ram, which is slow and innefficien, how muh ram do you havem if you have under 1GB it will hurt more than it helps... my advice is to try for a 9550 or a 9600, they're cheap and get the job done.
I have 768mb of ram. Xelink, I'll look at the 9550 and 9600. I don't have any AGP slots, only PCI :'( What can I say.. my computer was cheap-ass. Lol
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...2227160&CatId=0 http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...1069667&CatId=0
your only choices are the radeon 9250 and the GeForce 5500... while they are similar in performance, the 9250 has an edge in direct X and the 5500 has an edge in open GL. Most people say the 9250 is slightly ahead but your game selection would truly matter more. As far as I know all steam games offer for both Open GL and DX, doomIII and WoW use open GL quite well as does UT04. I beleive Aoe uses DX best as does FEAR(though i never played it) with either card expect medium-low settings at best, low in most situations. There is a 5700, BUT, it's crippled by having 64 bit memory, essentially cuting it's performance almost in half. Don't fvck with it.
Okay, I think I am going to go with this one http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...2227160&CatId=0, because it has 256mb of vRAM compared to the 64mb that the Radeon gives me, unless you believe that 64mb of RAM would do me just as good, although I already have 64mb of RAM in my integrated Intel thing (<.<), and from what I read most games require about 128mb of RAM to run :S I'm so dumb lol. Merged Post: Also, if I buy a card with only one monitor port, will I still be able to use my existing monitor port, plus use the one on the gfx card, so I can use 2 monitors at once? Or will it not let me do that? =S If it won't let me, thats fine, I can live without dual monitors.
Meh, I'm more of an ATI fanboy, but it really doesn't matter. You'll need to purchase a dual-monitor adaptor, unless you buy a card with two monitor outputs.
cheap as hell, yes decent fps... you're a lying SOB geforce 5500 costs like 5-10% more(or less depending) and performs a fair amount better... it's crap, doesn't get that good of FPS, but it sure the hell is better that a GeForce 4, those are al garbage. EDIT: going from 128mb to 256 won't do anything. vRAM stores textures and other info for fast access, in order to be fully utilized, there needs to be a lot of data being put out, the 5500 or the 9250 have a hard time saturating the 128mb. 6 canadian dollars isn't a huge diference though, so if you want to boost your ego(performance increase is negligeable) go for what you chose, if you wan to save 6 bucks go for this http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...1641739&CatId=0