Hey guys, every year I try to buy myself something for X-mas.
Something not to expensive so I don't feel to guilty.
This year I believe I need a new video card. Honestly I need
a whole new PC, but with bills and budgeting the way they are
I don't have that sort of cash.
My current card is an almost 3 year old ATI Radeon 9250 256MB PCI Card.
Im on XP with a 2.6GHZ Intel processor (Dell)
I've got 756MB of RAM currently, but I'm about to get another 512MB
so I can put myself at an even 1GHZ.
My budget is only about $150-175 so if anyone knows of a decent
card I'd appreicate it. To tell you the truth I'm dying to play Oblivion,
so maybe that will aid you guys in helping me figure out what to get.
APG has been replaced by PCI-E, so if you are planning on getting a new system anytime soon, you might want to wait. If you buy an AGP card now, most likely it will be worthless once you get a new system that only has PCI-E. There are motherboards out there that support both, but it involves strange voodoo magic to get the AGP port to use the PCI-E bus, and from what I've seen it causes more problems than it solves.
That said, if you'll be using your current system for a while, or you just can't wait, there are still some good AGP cards out there. In your price range you're looking at either a GeForce 7600GS, or a Radeon X800GTO. From the benchmarks I've seen, the 7600GS is definitely the way to go. You can find them all over online for around $130. I bought one (a PCI-E version) and it plays Oblivion and everything else I've thrown at it just fine. You're not going to be able to play Oblivion with all the detail cranked, but you won't have to turn all the detail off either. Hell, to play Oblivion at max detail you'd need a $500 video card and a new computer to go with it
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Something not to expensive so I don't feel to guilty.
This year I believe I need a new video card. Honestly I need
a whole new PC, but with bills and budgeting the way they are
I don't have that sort of cash.
My current card is an almost 3 year old ATI Radeon 9250 256MB PCI Card.
Im on XP with a 2.6GHZ Intel processor (Dell)
I've got 756MB of RAM currently, but I'm about to get another 512MB
so I can put myself at an even 1GHZ.
My budget is only about $150-175 so if anyone knows of a decent
card I'd appreicate it. To tell you the truth I'm dying to play Oblivion,
so maybe that will aid you guys in helping me figure out what to get.
Thanks a lot guys and Happy Holidays.
That said, if you'll be using your current system for a while, or you just can't wait, there are still some good AGP cards out there. In your price range you're looking at either a GeForce 7600GS, or a Radeon X800GTO. From the benchmarks I've seen, the 7600GS is definitely the way to go. You can find them all over online for around $130. I bought one (a PCI-E version) and it plays Oblivion and everything else I've thrown at it just fine. You're not going to be able to play Oblivion with all the detail cranked, but you won't have to turn all the detail off either. Hell, to play Oblivion at max detail you'd need a $500 video card and a new computer to go with it