GFX Card Recomendations please?

[imafreewoman]

Hi,

My graphics card is crap. Windows can't detect the drivers and has gone awol (won't boot past the me screen unless in safe mode, had to borrow my daughters PII to get on the web).

I need a new graphics card but am not sure whick one to get. You guys have been so helpful I thought I'd ask you. If it's inapropriate in this forum - sorry!

I'm about to upgrade my ram to 512 (min) and my os to winxp but otherwise my specs are below.

My only requirements are that its as cost effective as possible (bit skint!) and is good for emulation.

Many thanks,

Sam

PS Thought you might like to know it's a case of 'Murphy's Law' - I only found Zelda MQ today after 3 days of searching

 

[Trotterwatch]

What price range are you looking for?

Good cheap cards are the GF3 range, and the Radeon 9000 cards. If you are just looking for a card to use in an emulator (or low end games) then a GF4mx would be a good and very cheap card.

 

[Doomulation]

The gf4 mx does have some problems with jabo's 1.51 plugin... lain: but I suppose you can live with it; it isn't that bad

 

[Smiff]

The gf4 mx does have some problems with jabo's 1.51 plugin... lain: but I suppose you can live with it; it isn't that bad

Doomulation there is no need to keep referring to it as 1.51 - "1.5" will do, they are very very very similar, people might think otherwise if you stress the last .1

 

[The Khan Artist]

Doomulation there is no need to keep referring to it as 1.51 - "1.5" will do, they are very very very similar, people might think otherwise if you stress the last .1

Contrariwise. If he says 1.5 people might think they are exactly the same.

 

[Smiff]

gah. gay. right no more point updates. oh yeah, there won't be any anyway. (and btw you are wrong, 1.5 mathematically implies 1.45 to 1.54, thereby including the new one, whereas 1.51 implies 1.505 to 1.514, a set of one).

Hows that for confusion aha.

 

[Smiff]

hang on, i just read your post. we're talking about graphics cards, so 1.5/1.5.1 *are* exactly the same.

To answer the question, avoid GF4MX, some of the radeon 9x00 are cut down aswell (making them less good than the 8500) so BEWARE those names and count those pipelines (which manufactures can be coy about).

 

[The Khan Artist]

hang on, i just read your post. we're talking about graphics cards, so 1.5/1.5.1 *are* exactly the same.

Oh, good point.

I was only trying to be funny, anyway.

 

[64ultramaniac]

also i enjoy imafreewoman's processor speed
wow that's a whopping 14GHZ
really, why do you want a new gfx card when you have such a huge cpu

OS: Win ME CPU: Athlon AMD 14000

 

[Doomulation]

Doomulation there is no need to keep referring to it as 1.51 - "1.5" will do, they are very very very similar, people might think otherwise if you stress the last .1

Ok then - 1.5 it is,
Oh my, i'd like a 14 ghz processor

 

[imafreewoman]

Firstly I have no idea what a 'pipeline' is!

I'm pretty sure my CPU is an Athlon AMD 14000 tho it might be 1400. I can't check at the moment cos I'm on my daughters pc.

I'm not sure of the general cost of gfx cards but ideally I need to spend as little as I can get away with. We don't use video etc on the pc so it just needs to be good enough to run games (and roms).

I wanna play Zelda!!!


Sam

 

[Smiff]

okay, if this helps i'm just looking at jabo's list of level1 cards (what he calls the ones that can do everything properly) and he has the following down:

Radeon 8500
Radeon 9x00
GeForce 3
GeForce 4 Ti series
GeForce FX

I'd suggest taking the cheapest of those! (probably the Radeon 8500 or GF3).:baaa:

 

[URAMetroid]

First before we tell her to buy a new video card in the range of AGP, does her PC have an AGP slot or not (because her video sound's integrated to me, and most (IMO only) PC's that have integrated video don't have an AGP slot)?

For video, I'm happy at the moment with my All in Wonder Radeon 7500, it may be a bit on the low end, but it's TV tuner makes up for that (and it beats my old video chipset in my last PC, I think it was called "S3 Visions864" with 1MB of video RAM (Note: at first it was a 486DX running at a speed of 33MHz, now it's a 486DX4 100MHz)).
My video card cost only about $150 US dollars.

 

[marioshroom]

most of the mobo have a slot of something!

even pci card of gfx is better than a chip of the mobo!

i should recommend gf3 ti 200 agp if u have this agp slot!

very very good for all things!

shroomario

 

[imafreewoman]

Right,

My sister has d/l the drivers for my current gfx card and I'll give them a try tonight. I'm not sure if I have an AG? slot available but I've given the list of gfx cards that have been recommended to my mate (who built my computer for me) because he knows my specs better than I do. I've asked him to pick the cheapest one that will work with my set up.

My sis bought a GeForce4 on ebay for £50 inc p&p. Is this a good deal (thats about my limit £wise).

Many many thanks for all your help. I'll let you know how I get on and will probably be back when I've got it to try and set Zelda MQ up.

Sam

 

[ScottJC]

The gf4 mx does have some problems with jabo's 1.51 plugin... lain: but I suppose you can live with it; it isn't that bad

Rubbish, theres no problems with mine.

 

[Doomulation]

Whatever
Heh, oh and imafreewoman, there's no such thing as AMD Athlon 14000 just so ya know

 

[mightyrocket]

For N64 emulation an 8 mb TNT2 is enough.

 

[ra5555]

Hey, if you want to know the best video card to buy right now in terms of price and value, then it definately is the Radeon 9700 non-pro. You will get all the speed and features you need, and if, in the future, you find it slow you can just overclock it to 9700 Pro speeds (it's an excellent overclocker). Besides you can now get it for as little as $200 , and for that you get a fully featured directx 9 card that will be capable of running HL2 and Doom3 with good resolution, effects and fps. The readon 9100 will not be able to do that. In additon you will be able to play comfortablely pretty much any of the latest games with 6xAA and 16xAA.

For N64 emulation, you will be able to turn on full anti aliasing (with smooth vision 2.0, ATI's 6x looks better than Nvidia's 16x) and 16xAS with no slow downs at all.

Good luck

EDIT: it might seem an over-kill right now, but trust me, you will not regret it.

 

[Hexidecimal]

While we're on the subject of video cards, I'm also looking to get a new one, not that i don't like me geforce4, but it could be better, I found a GeForce 4 Ti4200 128meg for 95 bucks on pricewatch.com. Just wondering if anyone has any knowledge of this card.