Graphics Cards - I'm Clueless...

BigBouncyBall

Hi,

I'm in the market for a graphics card. However there are so many to choose from and the prices vary so much! Some seem better suited to gaming others to graphics work (photoshop, animation etc)

Can somebody recommend a few different cards for me to have a look at. I'm going to be needing it for some pretty heavy graphics work like animation rendering in Maya and photoshopping.

I'm not quite so interested in the gaming graphics cards (though would like to play the occasional high performance game!)

I've never bought a graphics card in my life so keep it simple guys!

Budget is up to about £40 (but maybe more)

Any help appreciated!

Zagu

The first thing to find out is if it should be AGP or PCI. Do you know what motherboard you have?

superscaper

Depends on what your computer is. Also graphics cards are just graphics cards, there's no distinction between "gaming" and "work" cards except for workstation cards such as the Quadro series but they tend to be hundreds to thousands of pounds.

BigBouncyBall

right

i'll be looking to run it on a dell dimension 3000:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/specs.htm#wp1075776

PCI slots...i think

superscaper

That does rather limit you. There aren't that many graphics cards made for PCI slots. I've tried looking and only found 1 rubbish £100 one so far. I'll keep looking maybe others with more experience of PCI graphics cards can help.

superscaper

Found a couple more here http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Graphics-Cards-Nvidia/subcat/nVIDIA-PCI-Range, within budget but don't expect anything brilliant from them. I'm not sure how much better they'd be than your existing graphics anyway. Also a lot depends on the actual specs of your PC if you know them? E.g. processor, memory...

BigBouncyBall

hmmm both out of stock...

i think i might just buy a new PC for all of this.

I've been accepted onto a 3D computer animation masters degree and have been doing all my work so far on my Apple iBook (chugging along!) and i think it's perhaps time to get something more appropriate!

I think i'll have a look around for a new desktop...

cheers for your help everyone

ormus

yes that may be your best option. the pci bus is getting old now and theres a poor selection of decent graphics cards. not many new either, more like a used one.
min spec is really an agp card slot for anything remotely heavy/intense.
most new PCs have pci express slots now.

superscaper

Well if you do, I'd recommend getting something with a lot of RAM, it really helps with things like Photoshop, Maya etc.

ormus

ps
ebuyer still has the ati radeon 9250 pci card for 42 quid.
thats about the best your gonna get for the pci slot.

superscaper

ormus wrote: »

ps
ebuyer still has the ati radeon 9250 pci card for 42 quid.
thats about the best your gonna get for the pci slot.

And without knowing the specific specs of the PC, it may be that the graphics isn't the weakest link in the chain anyway. Not really very money saving but I think looking at replacing the entire PC may be a better bet than putting money into trying to upgrade this existing one.