Best video card for my price....

SuperModelRobot

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i have looked and looked found some good cards, but im low on cash but i need a card, i can spend up to $60 bucks..i know its not a lot for a video card, but i want something good and something 128 or more if possible and i need a pci. I was looking at the FX5500 128mb pci card, but i dont understand all the specs..can anyone help me out..
 
to be honest for $60 it really doesn't matter what you get as they'll all pretty much do the same, if you can make sure the card is at least 128-bit which is different from MB. the fx5500 is as good as any.
 
first I would ask why you need a 128M video card for a PC that only accepts PCI cards?
what do you need that much processing power for?
what are your other PC specs?
maybe its time for you to upgrade...
 
Here are my specs...i have a 128MB on board card that sucks balls...i cant play COD 2, Doom 3, C&C Generals runs slow.....and i hate it, my dads upgraded his video from the 64mb built in to a ati 9250..the 256mb pci..and it rocks..and his computer is slower than mine..
 

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Jeez, what a shame to put a good processor on a PCI only MB. $60 is not going to get you much. $80 could get you into a ATI 9200 card which is probably the best of the low end cards. Have you considered a used card?

Anything in that price range is going to be severely limited. For that matter just the PCI slot limitation is going to really cripple you for Doom3.

For now reduce the display mode to 800x600 for gaming and set the texture quality to minimum. You are also using most of your RAM. That implies a lot of background tasks running. Shut down everything but the game when playing. More MB RAM will help some.


Heer is what I dug up for another post-
Home Office Type cards for 2D stuff:
9200SE $30-40 w/64MB RAM
9200SE $40-60 w/128MB RAM
9250 $60-80 w/128 MB RAM
9200 $70-80 w/128 MB RAM

Entry Level Gaming:
There is not really anything I would consider acceptabel entry level gaming that uses the PCI card interface. If you have an AGP slot (dark brown and set back from the rear of the case more) then either of these:
6600GT $120-130 128MB RAM
9800PRO $130 128MB RAM
 
Yeh sucks huh, my computer runs lightning fast (maybe not as fast as others, but for me its gooood) when games, its a bust, ill get another 512 ram and a $80-$100 video card, also whats better, ati or nvidia?

i wish i had agp, but i dont...whats pci express? so 128 will be good, i dont need like a 256 if i can get one?
 
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LeeJend said:
Heer is what I dug up for another post-
Home Office Type cards for 2D stuff:
9200SE $30-40 w/64MB RAM
9200SE $40-60 w/128MB RAM
9250 $60-80 w/128 MB RAM
9200 $70-80 w/128 MB RAM

I love Pricewatch....

i can get a ati 9250 256mb for $65
 
The 9200 is much faster than the 9250. The 9200 is about as fast as you can get for a PCI slot. There may have been some faster PCI cards but they are out of production now.

The extra memory on the video card won't do you any good. 128MB is plenty. The graphics chip is what slows the cards down. If the 256 MB is the same price grab it but don't pay extra for it.

PS Don't confuse the 9200SE with the 9200. The 9250 is faster than the 9200SE.
 
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Ok so the 9000 but not the 9000 se...whats the difference? on pricewatch they have both, but when i go to look atthe 9000 it comes up with 9000 se's?
 
My favorite question. :)

Any time they stick letters after a model number it means something. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. This is all a scam to trick people into paying too much for a poorer product. Like when you are in Mexico the locals haggle to get the best price and charge you an arm and a leg for the same things. So you have to speak the language to find the deals:

LE = Losers Edition, brain dead graphics chip, memory interface or clock speed
SE= Substandard Edition, same as the above
No letters, basic part - this is not used much anymore, it was too simple.
Pro = used to mean improved clock speed version but now usually means a substandard version similar to LE or SE.
XL = becoming the new "no letters, baseline part"
XT = higher speed
XTE = factory overclocked version. a little faster but with the risk of premature failure or stability issues.

Nvidia variants
GT = baseline card, if no GT then it is probably a reduced performance card.
GTX = high end card, usually not overclocked.

XTO or GTO = these are brain dead cards that the makers know can be made less brain dead or over clocked easily. They have to let the public know this without offending the chipset makers (nvidia and ATI). Sometimes the ability to smarten up these cards disappears orders from the chipset makers. Smartening also voids warantees.

Brain Dead Details:
-Pixel pipelines are very important. the more the better. Brain dead cards use the same chip as a good card but the number of pipelines is less, either failed at test or intentionally disabled.
-Memory bus bandwidth. The bigger the bus the more info it can carry. Wider is better. 256MB is standard, 128 is brain dead, 64 is retarded. The cards will all use the same Graphics chip and probably the same total memory. They just choke the life out of the bus.
-Clock speed. there are 2. Graphics chip and RAM. The higher the better. If the Graphics chip did not do well in test they run it slower. They can buy RAM chips that run ok, at slower speeds cheaper. Both actions lead to brain dead cards.


Oh yeah. To answer your question they made a brain dead version of the 9200 so it would not compete with their new X600/X800 series cards. Many new series cards perform worse than older cards but marketing scams unsuspecting customers into buying the new carda with a "higher" numbering system at a higher price but no more performance. Thus the 9200 that is faster than the 9250 which uses a weaker GPU chip and faster than the 9200SE which is brain dead on clock speed.
 
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ehy lee when you talk about "brain dead" cards with pipleine errors or clock speed errors or whatever, does this mean these "brain dead" cards are mmore likly to have errors during load or die prematurly? Also since some of these "brain dead" cards have different proble,s, do this mean tat one 5700 le might be be quite a bit faster than another?
 
iceman7311 said:
ehy lee when you talk about "brain dead" cards with pipleine errors or clock speed errors or whatever, does this mean these "brain dead" cards are mmore likly to have errors during load or die prematurly? Also since some of these "brain dead" cards have different proble,s, do this mean tat one 5700 le might be be quite a bit faster than another?

Yes and yes. It is a total crap shoot what you get.

Worst Case - they have a way to disable 1,2,3,4 pixel piplines that do not run well and leave the other 6-12 doing just fine. They call it an LE or SE and sell it 30% cheaper to the OEM markets. The bad news is that whatever damaged those bad pipelines could also affect the rest of the GPU chip causing long term degradation and additional pipeline failures. (Contaminated silicon melt, misaligned geometry masks, excessive heat or concentration of dopants during circuitry depostion, too thin metalization layer, too little insulation between metalization layers, strained substrate wafer, the list gose on an on.

Best Case - a product line develops for these cheaper brain dead cards so companies just slap the weak chips onto standard cards and sell them at reduced price. Now some body gets smart and figures out how to activate the dead pipes. And after a while, lo-and-behold your card may have zero dead pipelines. Why? Because demand for the brain dead cards increases while the supply of brain dead chips declines as manufacturing processes improve with practice. Now the sharpies start doing busienss with a wink and a hand shake. They make a board like the GT"O", etc. These cards have the full card wiring and use GPUs that the supplier sold as LE but with all 16 pipelines function, maybe the clock was a little slow. These pots of gold show up periodically until their sales cut into sales on the higher dollar card lines. Then the pcbs get redesigned to remove the extra memory lines or pipelines.
 
:) I recommend an NVIDIA. I've had both types of cards but i stil find NVDIA to be a better card. But... Thats only me, i also like AMD over intel so that mighe make people me but whatever. I think you should definately get an agp or pci x16 mb if you want to really get into the COD2 and other high end games, on my computer the graphics are amazing!
With an NVIDIA.
If it helps take it if it Doesn't just disregard it :)
- Jack
 

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