Recommend a Good but cheap Video Card

[viranimus]

snip

You should get a 6670. It will run on your PSU, has a VGA output, runs games well and is only $70 (after rebate). I think some magazine said it was the best value for money GPU in the world.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161386

Not a bad card. Little pricy, but I would point out the following

"System Requirements
Minimum of a 400 Watt power supply."

I see it doesnt require a direct rail, but that MIGHT (not saying it would) but it Might cause some problems, usually with card black outs and flickering.

 

[veloper]

snip

You should get a 6670. It will run on your PSU, has a VGA output, runs games well and is only $70 (after rebate). I think some magazine said it was the best value for money GPU in the world.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161386

Not a bad card. Little pricy, but I would point out the following

"System Requirements
Minimum of a 400 Watt power supply."

I see it doesnt require a direct rail, but that MIGHT (not saying it would) but it Might cause some problems, usually with card black outs and flickering.

I have it on a 300W PSU. It will be fine. At least it's better than some people recommending 5770s and 6870s. At least I know this will work and pump out good framerates at that resolution.

There's 300W PSUs and there's 300 Watt PSUs.

I'd trust a 300W Enermax to support lower end mainstream cards, but not a 300W cheap stuff.

 

[viranimus]

snip

You should get a 6670. It will run on your PSU, has a VGA output, runs games well and is only $70 (after rebate). I think some magazine said it was the best value for money GPU in the world.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161386

Not a bad card. Little pricy, but I would point out the following

"System Requirements
Minimum of a 400 Watt power supply."

I see it doesnt require a direct rail, but that MIGHT (not saying it would) but it Might cause some problems, usually with card black outs and flickering.

I have it on a 300W PSU. It will be fine. At least it's better than some people recommending 5770s and 6870s. At least I know this will work and pump out good framerates at that resolution.

Fair enough. I totally support practical application over theoretical speculation. So I can get behind that. The reliability of the PSU might be one thing to consider, but all things being equal if it can run on a 300w psu, it shows it can be done in most average situations.

 

[Rad Party God]

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.

My oh my!, your specs are oh so similar to mine!.

I too have the exact same CPU, but I have 3 gb of ram and 3 harddrives, 1 500gb SATA and 2 IDE, 160gb and 80gb respectively. And my PSU is a Cooler Master with 460w.

My current graphics card is a GeForce 9600GT, it's been able to run almost everything I throw at it at the same resolution you have (1440x900), ranging in the Medium specs. I can even run Portal 2 at 60 fps, but only my CPU (and probably my ram) is bottlenecking it. The card cost me around $250, but IMO, that was money very well spent. I bought that card like 5 years ago and it's still kicking some serious ass.

EDIT: Today, the card may be a lot cheaper than 5 years ago, but a quick research in Google tells me that a 6670 is much better than my good ol' graphics card, performance and power consumption wise. I'll be upgrading my PC soon and I'll be on a tight budget, I'll definitively consider that card when I get the chance to upgrade.

 

[veloper]

There's 300W PSUs and there's 300 Watt PSUs.

I'd trust a 300W Enermax to support lower end mainstream cards, but not a 300W cheap stuff.

Yeah, but if he has a half decent PSU or a Dell PSU then he will be fine (as the Dell will actually put out 300W like it says).

I knew I was cutting it a bit tight with using 300W but I made sure to get an 80+ Bronze one. I only did that as my build was getting pricy due to the form factor (mini-itx).

Then we should prolly ask the TS first, before suggestion he'd throw money at the GPU. If he doesn't know, safer to assume something crappy.

I still feel all the suggestions are overkill btw.

I'm always there if I can make someone happy with my old hardware. Surely there must be some PC gamer in the area of the TS willing to part with something appropriate for a beer or two.
Me I wouldn't even ask money for anything less than 8600GT and that's already overkill.

Really I'm seeing comparison to core2duos in this thread, but in games an old pentium D is more comparable to a single-core pentium 4 (like a northwood core), than any modern budget dual core.
Even in a properly multithreaded game those 2 cores will just be getting in eachother's way trying to access the RAM. The early dual core cpus were really crap.

 

[Wolfram23]

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102934
6570 would be pretty decent for you. Low power, and honestly your system can't put much more power than that to use anyway. At the most I'd suggest a 6670, or something like a GT 540 from Nvidia. Maybe a 520.

On the other hand, for around $500 you could put together a waaaayyy faster new PC.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'd skip over anything ATI, the drivers have always sucked, everyone said oh they got bought out their policies will probably change! They haven't, their drivers still suck and they don't support any of their laptop cards at all.

Geforce updates their cards often and when a new big game comes out (skyrim diablo battlefield) the card gets updates to optimize performance.

 

[veloper]

Then we should prolly ask the TS first, before suggestion he'd throw money at the GPU. If he doesn't know, safer to assume something crappy.

I still feel all the suggestions are overkill btw.

I'm always there if I can make someone happy with my old hardware. Surely there must be some PC gamer in the area of the TS willing to part with something appropriate for a beer or two.
Me I wouldn't even ask money for anything less than 8600GT and that's already overkill.

Really I'm seeing comparison to core2duos in this thread, but in games an old pentium D is more comparable to a single-core pentium 4 (like a northwood core), than any modern budget dual core.
Even in a properly multithreaded game those 2 cores will just be getting in eachother's way trying to access the RAM. The early dual core cpus were really crap.

From what I've seen looking at reviews (we just hauled our old Pentium D out of the closet the other day), the Pentium D was literally just 2 Pentium 4s strapped together.

And that was fine for cpu benchmarks and mathematics, but for anything that would put the memory subsystem to the test, like a game, you'd be lucky to see a 5% speed increase.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'd skip over anything ATI, the drivers have always sucked, everyone said oh they got bought out their policies will probably change! They haven't, their drivers still suck and they don't support any of their laptop cards at all.

Geforce updates their cards often and when a new big game comes out (skyrim diablo battlefield) the card gets updates to optimize performance.

I've used AMD for a while now and they have been fine.

And seeing as the OP is looking for cheap AMD is the way to go.

It's just a difference of opinion. I've had several ATI cards and ATI cards in laptops, I've had to go to 3rd party drivers every time.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

What's your PSU?

No idea. But the side of the Power Supply says 300W max.

Radeon 7750, go go.

because it's cheap, powerful (for the money) and draws all it's power from your PCIEx16 slot.

Sweet thanks man. Though it is over $100 :/
Anything a bit cheaper? [sub]Just curious...[/sub]

Site says I need 400W for it. So it is a no go...

Plus I nee VGA output. I can't shell out the cash for both this AND a new monitor...

A lot of cards have vga adapters that come with the card