WTD: New Graphics Card!

matty_c608

I'm looking out for a new graphics card. Does anyone really know a lot about them, and would recommend me on for £30 - £40 (inc Delivery?).

I undersand a lot bout computers, so I know that more RAM on board etc will help it. AGP is better than PCI right? I'm looking at about 256MB memory with the card..

Anyone personally recommend a good one for quite intense graphics on computer games, and a small bit of rendering and modelling in CAD software? Perhaps a card that has worked well for yourself?!

Oh and the cheaper the better!

Many Many Thanks,

Matt.

markj113

No offense but a good graphics card for £30 -£40 including delivery isnt going to happen. For that sort of money either spend an extra few £s for a motherboard with onboard graphics or have a look around ebay.

PCI is slower than AGP and PCI express is the latest and fastest spec.

p.s. have a look around ebay for the Radeon 9800 PRO cards you may get lucky and pick 1 up around your price range and they are still very quick cards.

To play the latest games with nice resolution and detail you will need something like a 9800 pro, 6600gt or faster.

matty_c608

Thanks for that, i'll look round ebay yeah!

What do you think of this card?

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10277335&pid=45&tid=2

or

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10278883&pid=207&rstrat=3160

or

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10281790&pid=207

or

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10276413&pid=207

or

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10276697&pid=207

ktuludays

To be honest m8. Most of those cards are fairly old spec and will struggle to run most new games, if at all.

the 9550 may at a push but i doubt it.

I agree with markj113, either tweak your budget upwards or check ebay for a 9800 pro

Rave

256MB is a waste of time on most cards costing less than £100. For £50-ish you could do a lot worse than a 9700 or a 9700Pro from here. They're refurbished*, but the 9500 I bought nearly 18 months ago from them is still going strong. The 9700 is the real bargain there, you could probably overclock it to 9700Pro speeds anyway.

*as far as I can tell this means secondhand, but tested to ensure they're working.

biglugs

At this end of the market 256MB isn't going to give you a lot over 128MB - you'll be limited by your PC system and the card's processing power anyway.
Nothing new in the £30-£40 range is going to let you play Half-Life 2 at full settings - better to keep an eye on Ebay for an FX5700 Ultra or similar spec - probably cost about £50ish.
My son can play Counter Strike Source on reasonable settings on his NVidia FX5200 PCI card without a lot of problems. His FX5200 scores about 4,600 in 3DMark2001SE if it's not overclocked, on a Celeron 2.66GHz machine.
If you are going to buy a Radeon 9250 you can get one from PC World using their shop online and collect at store system for £27.01 for a 128MB card. I put one of these in a P4 2.8GHz machine a few weeks ago and it managed about 4,800 in 3DMark2001SE.
To be honest if I were you I'd forego a few takeaways and save up to get a 6600GT - you can pick these up for about £100 new and I sold one 2nd hand yesterday on Ebay for £85 including delivery. This is a completely different gaming experience for an extra £40-£60 over your budget and worth every penny.