Im thinking about getting one, spending limit $100 (hoping not to go there). The guy also asked what slot I had open and he listed a them: AGP PCI PCIe x1 x4 x8 x16. Now, I know nothing about that and I have a dell dimension 4600c desktop (a dell, get the hell over it, runs fine) and said I have the AGP slot open....yet, I have no idea what that means. I was talking to this guy and he said this was good for my price range for $49.99 open boxed: SAPPHIRE 100575L-RD Radeon 9600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card I dont really no ATI or NVidia so I dont really care I guess. Also, what's the difference between open boxed and not, quality wise. Pretend im stupid
save up for another month or two and throw in some more money. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102002 Trust me, its worth it. Lets just look at all the things that are bad on the 9600, and good on the x800gto. 9600 memory clock: doesnt even say. bad indacation. x800gto: 980 Mhz 9' core clock: 500 mhz x800: 400 mhz 9' pipelines: 4 x800: 12 9' memory interface: 128bit x800: 256bit 9' memory type: gddr2 x800: gddr3 only thing that wins for the 9600 is the core clock, but the x800gto can be easily overclocked. But i guess for the money, the 9600 is good.. just no point in wasting it on something that is so far from good. It's like spending $40 on a laptop with a pentium pro, it might be a good deal, but wtf is the point, it can't do anything.
at that budget the 9600 is more or less the perfrect card. Performance should be compareable to the 6600 vanilla(9600 is slightly slower though and lacks recent pixel shader support) for a fraction of the cost. don't expect oblivion to like it though... and are you sure it has an AGP slot, that is rare on Dells, they normally don't leave you with a dedicated GFX slot... and for the record, the x800GTO is about 2.5 times as powerful at 2.8 times the cost(a good ratio in the computer industry) it plays games at fairly decent settings. Though it seems you just care about playability moreso than having acceptable graphics.
Im not sure about 'Pixel Shader2' but it has 'SMARTSHADER2.0'... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102600
I have the dough for the x800, but I just dunno if I wanna shell out that kinda money for a graphics card. also, is there a difference in quality with open boxed?
if it is open box, it means that someoen bought it and had a good enough reason to return it. it could be a fairly large problem, or it could be they were a dumbass and their 1337 PC doesn't have an AGP port... I'm sure newegg tests the part though, and worst case scenario you can always return it. Also, I don't beleive you get all the manuals and ----, though not sure. and again, x800GTO gets nearly threefold the performance... but in the price range the 9600XT is nto bad.
The type of graphics card you should get depends on what you are going to be doing with it, Example, just browsing the internet you won't need anything grand, but playing the latest game at high spec and it would be worth your while considering a nice juicy expensive one.
I'd still suggest getting a x800GTO, and when you unlock the pipelines you have the same performance as a x850....
well my fps in counter strike 1.6 jumps around 30 - 60 on almost all default settings. I have fine gameplay in that, the problem is when I play Age of Empires 3. It is impossible for me to fight on the water cuz I lag so bad, and land battles are sometimes a hassle as well. I dont think it's my computer because I have 1gb of RAM and 3.00 Ghz and this computer is only 2 years old. The gfx card is the default intel one that came with the comp, which means I probably dont even have one. if you were in my position and had the money for the x800, but didnt necessarily want to buy it, would you?
'default intel one that came with the comp, which means i probably dont even have one.' that is why you lag in AoE, and yes, that owuld be considered as being your computers fault.. If you buy the 9700, you can't expect anything great in AoE. you'd probably get away with like 30-60 fps on low-mid settings. with the x800gto, you get almost all those settings on high.
alright, I havnt bought it yet, but I need to know how to install it first. how do? or do they give instructions?