Recommend a Good but cheap Video Card

[viranimus]

WTF

OK OP... there is an abundance of invisible epeen waiving going on here. I know its normal in PC hardware threads, but to hear some of the misinformation going on here is alarming.

First, I do NOT like ATI. Aside from all the other factors, It is annoying when its like pulling teeth to determine what an ATI card can do from spec sheets. What I gleaned from the current card is "up to 128MB of memory" and 2003-5 release date.

So you want an upgrade, you want it to help your gaming experience, and you want it cheap, and you have a PSU running 300w.

These would all do what your trying to do.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125407
20$ card after MIR.
Low profile so no need for a PSU rail
Boosting card processing from 125mb to 1gb
Modern low end card that will have modern benefits like vertex shaders 4.0, 64 bit OS support, DX11, etc

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500223
Same as above, little more cost, but from what I personally find to be a more reliable manufacturer.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130792
All of the above, still more cost, but higher series modern card and more than enough plus keeping the cost below 100$. I would have every confidence of this being able to run the witcher 2 (provided the rest of the system holds up to spec) Granted it might be without all specs on high or ubersampling, but it could be tweaked to get you 30-50 fps and get through the game with no trouble.

Honestly, Its regretable, but asking for PC part suggestions online is about the worst thing you can do.


Edit: And yes, a apentium D can be a 3.5ghz dual core processor which is perfectly fine.
VGA is also perfectly fine, and actually VGA makes it easier to set up HTPCs. But worst case scenario, Almost any video card you buy new will have a VGA to DVI converter included anyway.


Secondary edit. Listen.

I have ran Arkham Asylum with a Dual core 2.3, 4gb of DDR2 ram, and a GEforce 95001gb on full specs at 50fps. You do not need to dump 200$ into a video card. a minor 50$ upgrade will be more than sufficent to carry you from 2d gaming to full relatively modrern 3d gaming. Sure your not going to be on the bleeding edge, but youll be able to play essentially everything you might want. Also, thats why they make www.canyourunit.com

 

[Solo-Wing]

My Current specs:
Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz

Ahem, sorry, just a bit surprised there. Whoa, is it 2012 already? Ahh - awkward - um, I don't know how to delicately put this but you might want to consider upgrading that as well, as almost every graphics card on the market will be CPU limited with modern games.


"I would also prefer it if it had a VGA output."

I got bad news for you, VGA is hugely being phased out. Anything I suggest will not be supported in the next few years so you may be left high and dry. The ultra-low end micro-computer the Raspberry Pi, that doesn't even have VGA out, only HDMI/DVI out.

*Sigh* Guess I should just save up for a new PC then... guess I am stuck with 2-D games for now. Mostly the stuff I have gotton from The humble bundles...

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Anyone know if this would be any good?
http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-507.shtml

Do not get a x450, they're really crap; a friend of mine forked over £800 for a brand new Gaming PC that had the 6450 1gb (silent model), and Skyrim ran at approx 30fps at 1366x768 with near lowest settings.

Have you considered any nvidia cards? The GTS 450 is quite good and the msi model is only for $89.99.

Also, what are your preferred settings?

 

[viranimus]

And you might wanna consider getting a better processor too. A quadcore isn't THAT expensive right now. But I dunno what your budget is, so yeah.

While that is true... upgrading a processor is never just upgrading a processor. As soon as you start trying to upgrade a processor the first thing you realize is.... you have to switch out the motherboard to find a compatible quad core processor, Then you see the new mobo uses DDR3 whereas the old one used DDR2... which basically means by trying to swap out processor your basically just building from scratch anyway and if your going to do that, you might as well do it in one consolidated purposeful attempt to build, instead of under the guise of upgrading.

Besides, I have in the last year bought 2 different Pentium D processors, They are the first series of Dual core, but I have seen them go as high as 3.5ghz and theres really not a huge processing jump from dual core to quad core on 32bit systems anyway.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

And you might wanna consider getting a better processor too. A quadcore isn't THAT expensive right now. But I dunno what your budget is, so yeah.

This.

I had recently upgraded my cpu(& psu) recently; I bought a (used, but in perfect working order) for £60 at ebay; worth checking out, as well as a new psu(to prevent any shortage problems), which I bought for £22.60(ebay as well).

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

My Current specs:
Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz

Ahem, sorry, just a bit surprised there. Whoa, is it 2012 already? Ahh - awkward - um, I don't know how to delicately put this but you might want to consider upgrading that as well, as almost every graphics card on the market will be CPU limited with modern games.


"I would also prefer it if it had a VGA output."

I got bad news for you, VGA is hugely being phased out. Anything I suggest will not be supported in the next few years so you may be left high and dry. The ultra-low end micro-computer the Raspberry Pi, that doesn't even have VGA out, only HDMI/DVI out.

*Sigh* Guess I should just save up for a new PC then... guess I am stuck with 2-D games for now. Mostly the stuff I have gotton from The humble bundles...

Don't lose hope yet; you can get a hdmi/dvi-i to vga connector for a cheap price; hell, I'm using one right now!

 

[Solo-Wing]

WTF

OK OP... there is an abundance of invisible epeen waiving going on here. I know its normal in PC hardware threads, but to hear some of the misinformation going on here is alarming.

First, I do NOT like ATI. Aside from all the other factors, It is annoying when its like pulling teeth to determine what an ATI card can do from spec sheets. What I gleaned from the current card is "up to 128MB of memory" and 2003-5 release date.

So you want an upgrade, you want it to help your gaming experience, and you want it cheap, and you have a PSU running 300w.

These would all do what your trying to do.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125407
20$ card after MIR.
Low profile so no need for a PSU rail
Boosting card processing from 125mb to 1gb
Modern low end card that will have modern benefits like vertex shaders 4.0, 64 bit OS support, DX11, etc

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500223
Same as above, little more cost, but from what I personally find to be a more reliable manufacturer.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130792
All of the above, still more cost, but higher series modern card and more than enough plus keeping the cost below 100$. I would have every confidence of this being able to run the witcher 2 (provided the rest of the system holds up to spec) Granted it might be without all specs on high or ubersampling, but it could be tweaked to get you 30-50 fps and get through the game with no trouble.

Honestly, Its regretable, but asking for PC part suggestions online is about the worst thing you can do.


Edit: And yes, a apentium D can be a 3.5ghz dual core processor which is perfectly fine.
VGA is also perfectly fine, and actually VGA makes it easier to set up HTPCs. But worst case scenario, Almost any video card you buy new will have a VGA to DVI converter included anyway.


Secondary edit. Listen.

I have ran Arkham Asylum with a Dual core 2.3, 4gb of DDR2 ram, and a GEforce 95001gb on full specs at 50fps. You do not need to dump 200$ into a video card. a minor 50$ upgrade will be more than sufficent to carry you from 2d gaming to full relatively modrern 3d gaming. Sure your not going to be on the bleeding edge, but youll be able to play essentially everything you might want. Also, thats why they make www.canyourunit.com

Yay hope is restored.
What do you think about these:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX35629
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33184
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33161

Would any of them be good?
Oh one more.
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX35819

 

[veloper]

So a pentium D @ 2.80 ghz.
Back in the day a rig with that cpu would have something like a geforce 6800 at most.
I'd have given one to the TS for free, if I had not given it away a long time already.

Don't buy any of the fancy suggestions above, because anything moderately powerful will be complete overkill for that CPU.
I reckon even the cheapest current gen cards with onboard memory(512mb for example) will still be idling alot, while your CPU is struggling to keep up.
Also don't bother with uprgarding to 4 GB ram.

Look for used stuff. Cards like a geforce 6800, 7600 or radeon X800, X1600, etc. shouldn't be worth any more than a good word and a cold beer.

 

[Ralen-Sharr]

a lot of things I agree with

ok, I must say that yes, I am in the "I don't like ATI" club. I'm not there because I just like Nvidia, I'm there because of the farking driver problems I've had with their hardware before. Also the guys I game with have had their share of driver problems with ATI. Some people don't have problems, others have nothing but. I haven't had issues with my Nvidia stuff. Never did and they do the job well.

However, with a 300w PSU, you may have issues with almost any video upgrade you do. Even if you don't you're likely going to shorten it's lifespan by pushing it to it's limit. I'm kinda surprised that you aren't already having issues with that low of an output.

 

[viranimus]

I know people will refute me, but yes, I think those should be fine..... considering....

WTF

OK OP... there is an abundance of invisible epeen waiving going on here. I know its normal in PC hardware threads, but to hear some of the misinformation going on here is alarming.

First, I do NOT like ATI. Aside from all the other factors, It is annoying when its like pulling teeth to determine what an ATI card can do from spec sheets. What I gleaned from the current card is "up to 128MB of memory" and 2003-5 release date.

So you want an upgrade, you want it to help your gaming experience, and you want it cheap, and you have a PSU running 300w.

These would all do what your trying to do.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125407
20$ card after MIR.
Low profile so no need for a PSU rail
Boosting card processing from 125mb to 1gb
Modern low end card that will have modern benefits like vertex shaders 4.0, 64 bit OS support, DX11, etc

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500223
Same as above, little more cost, but from what I personally find to be a more reliable manufacturer.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130792
All of the above, still more cost, but higher series modern card and more than enough plus keeping the cost below 100$. I would have every confidence of this being able to run the witcher 2 (provided the rest of the system holds up to spec) Granted it might be without all specs on high or ubersampling, but it could be tweaked to get you 30-50 fps and get through the game with no trouble.

Honestly, Its regretable, but asking for PC part suggestions online is about the worst thing you can do.


Edit: And yes, a apentium D can be a 3.5ghz dual core processor which is perfectly fine.
VGA is also perfectly fine, and actually VGA makes it easier to set up HTPCs. But worst case scenario, Almost any video card you buy new will have a VGA to DVI converter included anyway.


Secondary edit. Listen.

I have ran Arkham Asylum with a Dual core 2.3, 4gb of DDR2 ram, and a GEforce 95001gb on full specs at 50fps. You do not need to dump 200$ into a video card. a minor 50$ upgrade will be more than sufficent to carry you from 2d gaming to full relatively modrern 3d gaming. Sure your not going to be on the bleeding edge, but youll be able to play essentially everything you might want. Also, thats why they make www.canyourunit.com

Yay hope is restored.
What do you think about these:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX35629
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33184
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33161

Would any of them be good?

Me myself and I out of those 3 I like the latter 2. I support ASUS. Sapphire card looks stout enough and looks more geared for low profile. Not a fan of ATI, but yeah as far as ATI goes, They look sufficent.

basically what your looking for is a card that will move you from your current 125mb to about 1gb, and that memory clock being DDR3-DDR5 instead of DDR2... everything else need wise will just sort of fall into place.

So yes, the latter 2 I think would be more than capable of handling things like Team fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Batman Arkham asylum, War for Cybertron, Duke Nukem Forever, ect Might have trouble with some things like say Battlefield 3, or starcraft 2, but those are graphics whores anyway. Most modern games and it leaves you to tweak system settings to find the balance you like.

EDIT: I do like the Edited ASUS card, but again, thats me being partial to ASUS, EVGA, and Nvidia chipsets over ATI. If your looking for an Nvidia card, look for a series number around or in the 50s or higher. IE 250, 440, 550, 660, etc. The 20s are alright, but they are built more as all purpose, but modern cards. They can work, I have a 520 in my HTPC right now with a Pentium D 3.0 4gb of DDR2 ram and a 520.. and I can run The old Republic on it at about 35fps with some modest spec cuts.

 

[Solo-Wing]

snip

I added one more to the list I showed you.

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

8800GTS. I still use this card, and it runs games like Skyrim, Diablo 3, witcher 2 and others at max settings with 40 to 60 fps solid. Its cheap, dependable, and you won't destroy a motherboard or psu with it.

 

[viranimus]

And you might wanna consider getting a better processor too. A quadcore isn't THAT expensive right now. But I dunno what your budget is, so yeah.

While that is true... upgrading a processor is never just upgrading a processor. As soon as you start trying to upgrade a processor the first thing you realize is.... you have to switch out the motherboard to find a compatible quad core processor, Then you see the new mobo uses DDR3 whereas the old one used DDR2... which basically means by trying to swap out processor your basically just building from scratch anyway and if your going to do that, you might as well do it in one consolidated purposeful attempt to build, instead of under the guise of upgrading.

Besides, I have in the last year bought 2 different Pentium D processors, They are the first series of Dual core, but I have seen them go as high as 3.5ghz and theres really not a huge processing jump from dual core to quad core on 32bit systems anyway.

To be honest the OP would probably be best off building an entirely new, cheapish PC from scratch anyway.

The other question is why in the name of the Gods would you bother using a 32bit OS when 64bit is right there?

Well Honestly I do tend to deal with cheap crap. Some hardware simply isnt compliant with 64bit OS. Sometimes 64bit is pointless overkill dependent on the intention of the system too. My laptop for example runs 7 home 64 and it has an integrated video card. Theres no point to have a 64bit OS on it because running spreadsheets, and flash via browsers is not going to see much of a difference between 64 and 32 anyway. Which is why I intend to migrate it over to Linux Mint 32 soon enough.

But the real question Why? When you deal with a reliable company such as http://blairtg.com/store2/ who typically deals in 32bit centric skeletal hardware, you tend to go with the flow of what the hardware you can get cheap can do.

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

I am not looking for anything elite. I just want something that can play something like Portal 2 with medium/high Quality at about 30-40 frames a second at my screens full resolution. That should be more then enough for all my games in my steam library.

My Current specs:
Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz
2 GB Ram (Will be upgrading to 4GB eventually)
2 Harddrives. 500GB and 320GB each.
And my current Graphics is ATI Radeon Xpress 200

So anybody know any cards that I could get?

I would also prefer it if it had a VGA output. I really do not want to get a new monitor. I am happy with my 1440x900 screen.

Also what is your budget? I recently built a gaming pc for about 400 bucks. Its got 8 gig of ram, 500g hard drive, a quadcore processor, and it runs pretty much everything i throw at it. In all honesty though, an 8800GTS is an amazing card, its older so its cheap, and this card has done amazing things for me. I play everything at 1440x900 as well, so i can agree with the resolution

 

[devotedsniper]

A Nvidia GTX 460 (even the 768mb version) is a great card, i'm currently using it and i can still play on high at 1680*1050, its not the cheapest but it's somewhat affordable with good performance at £100 (£50-70 if you buy it used). I don't intend to upgrade yet, will be a good few years before it's running things on low though i would say.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

5770 has served me well.

In fact, it's served me better than it should have done. I'm still playing maxed out games at a high resolution with over 60 FPS. I shouldn't be. My GC should be outdated by now, but it's not. Yet.

And you might wanna consider getting a better processor too. A quadcore isn't THAT expensive right now. But I dunno what your budget is, so yeah.

I have a 5770 that is still doing standup work, only now in my girlfriend's machine. That card is remarkably robust.

 

[Vrach]

Check out the 6850/6870. They're quite cheap now, pretty strong cards and afaik, they draw very little power. They will run you around 150$, but I really would recommend them as some of the best-buys atm.

If you wanna stick to under the 100$ tag, go with a 5750, you can get it for 90$ apparently, just looked.

That said, I would agree with some of the above posters, save up for a whole new PC unless you're a really undemanding gamer. I don't mean in the sense of "oh I'm cool with playing games on lower details", I mean you're quite literally not gonna be able to run most upcoming (if even current) games with that rig :/