once more into the videocard question, my friends...

[mid]

OK, I've read the previous threads on this qiestion of which one to get, and I've been given a distinct impression that ATI is the way to go.

However, everyone is talking about the Radeon 9800, which costs an absolute fortune. I'm working on a very limited budget here for upgrading, and I'm really not sure what to do.

I've got a 64Mb GeForce2 GTS that is perfectly happy, and can come over to the new machine if there isn't any point in buying a budget card. So, working on a budget of ?60 or so, is the 'ATI only' advice still the case? I know that the GeForce 5200 gets a lot of stick, but is it really so bad for its monumentally cheap price, when it seems to at least actually get me a DX9 part?

[csuzw]

how much gaming are you planning on doing on your pc and what kind of games.

I don't think there are any fully DX9 games out yet - I though HL2 was gonig to be the first although with it being late it might not be anymore.

I have a 64mb 9600 in my laptop and it runs everything I've tried so far (Deus Ex2 is probably the most graphically intensive I've tried) smoothly even in high res - often at 1400x1050.

Don't know how much the cost but I would expect it to be similar to a 5200 - maybe a bit better but noticeably for a while. I've seen them for less than ?60 on EBuyer. There is also a Geforce FX5600 on EBuyer for ?70

[Ciaran]

How much money you plan on spending?

You could get a 9500 from eBay(link found in another thread) and softmod it to 9700.

A 9600 256mb is only ?70.00, which should out perform the 5200.

A Radeon 9800 128MB is only ?120 from Here and the Pro version is ?30 more.

[mid]

Ah. I see the problem - I was looking at 9800XT prices, not the vanilla version. Which halves the price. I strongly suspect the real answer is to wait until HL2 actually turns up on shelves, and see what my budget will do then. Until then its basically not going to be asked to do anything it can't do right now, apart from maybe UT2k4. Call Of Duty runs just fine on my current box for the most part, and things that are far too slow are sufferring from lack of CPU and hard-disk, not graphics oomph.