Recommend any Graphics cards

[madmurdoch]

HI i am looking to upgrade my nvidia 6500 128mb card to either 256 or 512mb can anyone recommend any good cards (works well with COD 4) either pci or agp.

Cheers:ty:

[scottyboy]

well depends on how much money you wanna spend I myself for the first time ever went for a ATI card and tbh im very happy http://www.ebuyer.com/product/138550

there have been a few updates since but still a very nice card


scotty

[IcyTouch]

erm a little confused, you said either agp or pcie....erm do you have both, coz you can only buy a card that will fit the slot in your motherboard. so 1st your going to need to find if its AGP or PCI-Express

[toesy]

Either the ATI HD3870 £140-£180 or a Nvidia 8800GT approx £160-£200

I have a HIS ATI Radeon HD3870 and its brilliant.

[madmurdoch]

cheers, unfortunately my budget is a bit lower than that will sift thru ebay/ebuyer for deals. My motherboard has a agp slot and 5 pci slots.

cheers

[monyet]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/04/best_cards_february_2008/
agp http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/04/best_cards_february_2008/page6.html
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141254
But not realy a good upgrade for a gamer pc on this moment

[Chunk]

You need to upgrade your system to PCI Express Murdoch. You can't fit a PCI-E card in a normal PCI slot. You can only use AGP graphics cards which have been obsolete for about 2 years now. You can buy an ATI 3850 AGP 512MB but I doubt you will get terrific framerates as the rest of your PC is ready for the bin. Sorry to give you the bad news. No point buying a fast card to run with a slow CPU. It simply does not work like that.

[toesy]

Cheers Chunk, always good and fair advice.

Wasnt there a 8800 GT AGP around or has that gone ?

[madmurdoch]

thanks my motherboard is asus k8 with a amd athlon 64 processor 3200 2.2 ghz, was looking to see if i can upgrade the processor or if i need to get a full new motherboard?

appreciate all the responses so far

[toesy]

I know this may sound crazy, but you would be better of buying a new AM2 motherboard with PCI and selling your current gear on ebay.

There are some real nice motherboards and cpu packages, you may also need to change yer PC memory at the same time, but the prices for DDR2 now are very cheap.

If you got the cash then a bundle like this over at OCUK £220.00 Click here (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-068-OK&groupid=701&catid=339&subcat=)

But you can build a really nice gaming pc for less than £500.00 there's a build in Custom PC magazine April 2008 edition, where they build a gaming rig with the following components.

Coolermaster Case RC-330 V2 - £25.79
FSP Blue Storm II Power Supply 500W - £58.62
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3l Motherboard - £46.93
Intel Dual Core Pentium E2140 1.6ghz CPU - £43.11
Corsair 1 x 1GB Twin XMS2 DDR2 6400 - £34.08
Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 - £15.26
XFX GeForce 8800GT 256MB - £117.36
Hard Drisk 160GB and DVD Drive - £45.80
Windows Vista OEM Premium - £59.68

So for £446.63 you could have a brand new rig, with Vista.

Or you could salvage your case, dvd,hard drive & operating system and reduce this to £315.36, and if your current power supply is a good'un you could reduce this even more to around £260.00.

So there is lots of options, you dont always have to buy the latest whats in products.

[madmurdoch]

As ever thanks for the detailed infow00t. will look at this option as you say it is probably more cost effective.

Kev

[Chunk]

2Gb OCZ RAM
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(18483)OCZ-2GB-Kit-2x1024-Vista-Upgrade-Edition.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2818483%29OCZ-2GB-Kit-2x1024-Vista-Upgrade-Edition.aspx)

Intel C2D E2180
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(22054)Intel-CPU-Pentium-DualCore-E2180-2x20GHz.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2822054%29Intel-CPU-Pentium-DualCore-E2180-2x20GHz.aspx)

MSI P31 MoBo
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(23294)MSI-motherboard-P31-NeoF-LGA775-Intel-P31.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2823294%29MSI-motherboard-P31-NeoF-LGA775-Intel-P31.aspx)

Antec Sonata 3 case and a real 500w PSU
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(31001)Antec-Sonata-3-Super-Black-Midi-Midi-Tower.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2831001%29Antec-Sonata-3-Super-Black-Midi-Midi-Tower.aspx)

Western Digital 250GB SATA 300 7200rpm 16MB Cache Raid Edition Hard Disk Drive
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(27495)Western-Digital-250GB-SATA-300-7200rpm-16MB.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2827495%29Western-Digital-250GB-SATA-300-7200rpm-16MB.aspx)

Gigabyte GF 8800GT SLI 256MB DDR3
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(30277)Gigabyte-GF-8800GT-SLI-256MB-DDR3-PCIE-DVI.aspx (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/%2830277%29Gigabyte-GF-8800GT-SLI-256MB-DDR3-PCIE-DVI.aspx)

I make that £426 for a really fast budget PC with a great PSU and case that will last through your next upgrade. Also, notice the specced parts are all from the top manufacturers, no XFX, Powercolor, Asrock crap etc. ;)

[Chunk]

As for an OS then Windows XP is still the gamers choice. The above system is quite capable of running the resource hog known as Windows Fista®

[monyet]

maybe the 9600 GT 512 is faster then the 8800 gt 256,and you can already find them for 155 euros [110 pound]

[Chunk]

maybe the 9600 GT 512 is faster then the 8800 gt 256 Maybe, but maybe not. I think the tested GT is a 512 though.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/21/nvidia_geforce_9600_gt/page12.html

[monyet]

Maybe, but maybe not. I think the tested GT is a 512 though.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/21/nvidia_geforce_9600_gt/page12.html

there boot in that test the 8800 GT256 and the 8800 GT512 also read this http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/21/nvidia_geforce_9600_gt/page20.html

[Chunk]

Yes, I have to agree Monyet. It looks the best mid range card available the Nvidia 9600GT, better value than the 8800GT 256 for sure.

[madmurdoch]

cheers for the list, tempted to go this way.. Kev

[toesy]

Chunk is the fountain of Knowledge regarding PC stuff.

And his posts are very welcome, :-)

[Chunk]

Chunk is the fountain of Knowledge regarding PC stuff. Slight exaggeration there by the two toed one. I get loads of things wrong. ;) Monyet knows his stuff too.

[lazy1uk]

depends how much he supped lool

[Chunk]

depends how much he supped lool Shut it Phil :)

[Camshi]

Thing is with comps, surf and try to get the best deals but don't think spending will get you the best available as normally they are out-dated withing weeks.

But build a cheap reliable and easy to modify system and you'll be jamming. Just watch on quality of motherboard and thats really about it.