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Hey, I've been looking around for a decent video card. I don't expect much from one, just that it could play a few games like Halo for the PC. Can you tell me if this would be a good one? I would buy 512mb of more RAM too. And I'm pretty sure my computer has the PCI slots.

Go to newegg.com, they have better deals, you could get a much butter one for a little bit more.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130214
The 512 should be upgraded to 1GB for maximum gaming.

No, that sucks. You can tell from the price alone. First off start out with Newegg:
Newegg
Better prices, better layout, better everything. The card I have is GeForce 6600 I got it for around $100 dollars it plays Halo at almost high settings, and plays Call of Duty 2 on meduim settings. I could suggest that but you can always get something better. Since you seem money preservative you might want this:
Here
Which still is just a decent card to todays standards, but if all you want to do it play Halo then it'll work out. Or you can put in extra 20 bucks and get this: Here which has more RAM which is always good.

LMFAO we said like the same thing..

Your card costs more and has overheating problems ^_^
Plus we posted a minute apart ;o

Hmm, well I don't have too much money to work with. I only have about 70$ and my dad would pay the 30 dollars for the rebate because he'd get his money back. But would I need a card like the ones you've shown? I mean, I really only play Halo and Starcraft.

I just really need to get rid of this Intel Integrated Graphics shiz.

Not on my computer

Hmm, do you guys think you could find a better card on Circuit city thats not too expensive but should work well? I need to buy it at Circuit City because I have a mall gift card.

If you do find a good one then I'd probably wait to save up more money so that I could get the better one.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/ATI-Radeon-...roductDetail.do?

Do you have PCI-E x16?

I'm not sure, how can I check? I downloaded this program called EVEREST and it said that I have PCI but I'm not sure what else. And is there anything cheaper than that? The most I could probably get would be around 120$.

Hell, I use a Ge-Force 4 MX that's got 64 megs of ram, on a pentium 3 1000mhz processor with only 256 megs of ram, and UT:2004 runs perfectly on nearly maxxed settings.

When my system doesn't even meet the minimal requirements..

I got it for like 70 bucks at circuity city or something when it was on sale..and it runs everything except games that say i need 'pixel shading 1.2' or some crap like that, such as dues ex invisible war. =( If you ask me, that video card is teh Über 1337, but im sure other people have other such things to say about it

Hmm, now I'm looking at this one. That one seems a bit better than the previous one I suggested. How can I tell if it would fit my computer though?

Seriously. Circut city sucks, they have loop holes in there system so that you can't acutally return things if they don't work etc. New Egg is a lot better, and the one I suggest is only $20 dollars more, just go mow two lawns. The chances of Circut City even carrying a video card that's under 100$ is very low. They only sell the most recent things, so cheap budget things won't be found in the store. So your gift card is pretty useless. You can try using circut city if you won't but you're only begging to get yourself ripped off for some over priced card.

Wow, I just did an aida32 report and it sais that I have an AGP x4 slot. I've heard the program is out of date though so I'm not sure if I should trust it or not.

Nevermind, I went to the majorgeeks forum and they said that I have only PCI slots.

Um, the 6600GT doesn't have overheating problems. Are you high?

His link is a GT version of what you linked (the vanilla 6600), which is basically an upclocked version of your card. It has no real differences, but both cards, while decent, are fairly low end by today's standards.


The GeForce 4 MX is something that I like to call a "total piece of shit", for lack of a better term. Avoid it at all costs. It strangely doesn't support pixel shading in the light of the fact that its predecessor, the GeForce 3 was the card that pioneered it. If you want a GF4, get the Ti version.

However, you don't want a GF4 at all .


Here's a tip for you: don't get anything below the previous generation of cards from ATI/nvidia, which are the X800 and 6800 series, respectively. You won't get the most out of your money if you do otherwise. Also, don't get cards that can't run today's games, let alone tomorrow's. When upgrading, it's best to get a mid-range to high-end solution that will serve you for a couple of years in the future.

The card you linked, a 5200 FX, was a crappy deal when it came out (it was a low end model of nvidia's poor answer to the 9800 series), and is virtually worthless now. It won't run you any of today's games at decent settings (for example, Doom 3, which came out 1 1/2 years ago).

The 6200 is only slightly faster than the 5200 FX. The main improvement there is multimedia features (like video codec acceleration, etc). I'd advise you not to get it either, since it's not for gaming. While it can run some basic/older games, like the 5200 FX, it probably won't run you the games you will want to either.

The X1300 is ATi's low-end solution of the current-generation cards. Many of the above comments apply here.

The only cards mentioned in this thread worth getting are the 6600 and the 6600GT. Get either if you're low on cash. They can play most (if not all) of today's games on decent settings, and might do so for at least a while in the future. The best time to get this card was in the end of 2004, a few months after it originally came out, but it will still serve you well today.

All of the cards mentioned so far are mid-range or low-end. That means no or little overclocking value. If you're into that, get what I'm about to suggest.

If I were to make a decision on this, I'd say the vanilla 6800 would work best. For the money, you won't find a better deal. It runs all of today's games on decent to high settings. If you can get your dad to fork up just a bit more money (only 100 bucks after $30 mail-in rebate), this should be the choice. It's actually the high-end (though not bleeding-edge like the GT or Ultra versions) of last generation cards. It will serve you well for at least a year more (in terms of decent-to-high settings in games).

The "overclocking value" of this card that I talked about is the fact that you can unlock the 4 extra pixel pipes & a vertex shader pipe. While this might not work for you (it works for most people though), if it does, the card will be brought up almost to the GT level of performance (assuming you bring up the clock too). Of course, just bringing up the clock speed/memory speed settings is fine as well (these cards are also ripe for that).

It should go without saying that you shouldn't attempt any of this with stock cooling.

HOWEVER:
If you have an AGP slot instead of a PCI-Express slot, get this version of the card instead. It's only worse in the regard that it has 128 megs of memory instead of 256 like the one I linked before. What this means in terms of gaming is that games with lots of high-res textures (like BF2) won't run as well. However, you should still attain decent settings with good FPS.

ADDITION:
The majorgeeks.com forums may not know your exact computer configuration. When they say "PCI", they mean the regular PCI slots and not the PCI-Express slot used by newer graphics cards. The only reason they would say this is because if you bought your computer cheap from Dell or companies like that, they could have stuck in a crappy motherboard in there without AGP/PCI-E. This would leave you royally screwed when it comes to upgrading your video cards.

Yea, my computer came with a crappy motherboard. I looked up the motherboard that came with it on the Intel website and it confirmed that I only have PCI slots. I ordered a Radeon 9250 256 mb on NewEgg. It won't be the greatest card but it'll be decent for PCI type cards. I could upgrade my motherboard but that's risky and expensive so I'll just stick with my shizty PCI slots until I'm old enough to get a job and save up for a new computer.