graphics card to suit P4 1.8?

[forbes_esq]

Just bought a Dell GX260 - P4 1.8Mhz (512 ram) and would like to have the option of playing a few strategy titles and other odds and ends.

Looking to pick up a cheap/2nd hand card from somewhere - any recommendations? It comes inbuilt with "64 Mb Video Intergrated" but how limited is it? As a benchmark, I'd like to be able to play the first KOTOR & Rome:Total War. Not worried about FPS's.

thanking you.

[Corrupt Rose]

Depending on your budget, I'd probably shoot for a Radeon 9600 or it's nVidea equivilent (probably a Geforce 5900). Either should set you back about ?80 tops (price drawn from Overclockers.co.uk), but I'd personally go with the Radeon over the Geforce, since the FX series has had a bit of a bad reputation due to not following DirectX standards to the letter.

If you were feeling perticularly flushed with cash, you could got for a 9800, but anything more than that and you're going to be seriously bottlenecking it with your processor.


edit - and vitally important, make sure you crack your case open and make sure you've got an AGP port. Far too many mid-spec Dells are shipping with nothing more than super basic PCI upgrade paths.

[sj33]

The GeForce 6600 goes for an excellent price nowerdays, you can get 256Meg models for 90 quid or so, maybe less. By time you need to upgrade from this card, it'll be time for a full machine upgrade anyway.

[superkully]

The 6600 would be overkill for your CPU.

I'd recommend a 9550 card with 128/256 MB memory. I had one running Rome: Total War and KOTOR happily (albeit not at the highest settings) until I upgraded to a 6600GT for full option HL2 goodness.

The 9550 uses the same core as the 9600 but clocked slower, dunno how much they are but I think I paid about ?55 for mine last year...

[Corrupt Rose]

The 9550 uses the same core as the 9600 but clocked slower, dunno how much they are but I think I paid about ?55 for mine last year...

I expect it'd be pretty easy to clock it up as well. I remember my 9600 clocked extremely well, and if it's based on the same chipset...

[superkully]

I thought that too, but I could only get a 5% overclock out of mine before artifacts started appearing...

Seems like they've designed and built it to only do what it's advertised as capable of (which is fine).

[Corrupt Rose]

I managed to get ~15% out of mine, if I remember correctly. I guess it's simply a case of some graphics card clocking well, and other not, which can be seen in every model, even intra-manufacturer. I guess it'd be wise not to base your purchase on overclockability.

If you managed to get Rome and KotOR running fine on a 9550, then that's probably the way to go for him, as it's cheap and supplies his demand quite nicely. Really, he's got a lot of options.

9550 will do the job at ?50
9600 will do it better at ?80
6600 will do the job brilliantly but will be CPU limited... but on the other hand it'll be there for him if he ever decides to upgrade.

I've changed my mind on the 9800 front. It's kind of in a wilderness there on it's own, and will be bottlenecked by the processor whilst simultaneously not being all that future-proof.

[capcom_suicide]

Hi,

As it happens I have a G260 1.8Ghz plus a R9800Pro. (The 64Mb card it comes with is a Radeon VE and it's crap for 3D)

My config works a treat, plays farcry, HL2 and doom3 fine at 1024.

You need to have the "Mini Tower" box though, as only slimline AGP cards fit into the desktop case.

PS: I found going from 512BM to 1GB of memory made a huge difference in this configuration.

For cards:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_This_Week_Only_25.html

HIS ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR IceQ TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (R9800P-ICEQ128) (GX-006-HT) Price: ?79.95

The 9700/9800 pro are perfectly matched to a 1.8Ghz.

C_S

[superkully]

I'd shy away from overclockers. Used to think they were great but the last two orders with them (and the attached aggro) have put me off them for life.

[forbes_esq]

all good advice - thanks chaps.

My gx260 is the mid-sized desktop version - not the small form factor or the mini tower. Sounds like I'll need a small AGP card to fit in it

not really a PC gamer, but if I can run a basic HL2 with something-or-other, I'd be interested to see what all the fuss is about.

Any idea of suitable/smaller graphics cards? I'm being a bit lazy here, but am clueless with this kind of stuff.

[capcom_suicide]

all good advice - thanks chaps.

My gx260 is the mid-sized desktop version - not the small form factor or the mini tower. Sounds like I'll need a small AGP card to fit in it

not really a PC gamer, but if I can run a basic HL2 with something-or-other, I'd be interested to see what all the fuss is about.

Any idea of suitable/smaller graphics cards? I'm being a bit lazy here, but am clueless with this kind of stuff.

A question I got asked a lot!

(As 20 lads have the desktop G260 at work)

The short answer is..... Not a lot!

XFX GeForce FX 5200 256MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (PVT34KUAHG) (GX-004-XF)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/FX5200_Series.html

If memory serves me, you have to cut the metal holding block in half, as there is not enough space for it on the stupid G260 AGP mounting slot.

All good fun.

Having seen this coming, I opted for the midi tower as a home office PC!

The other dude had bad experiences with OCUK, They were Ok for me, but I had not need to return goods, so you want to avoid.

/C_S