tough decision for newbie please help!

person135 · 01-28-2008, 09:28 PM

ANY HELP IS REALLY APPRECIATED! THANK YOU!
Hi I am trying to play Call of Duty 2 on my Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 lol and it is just horrible. Therefore, I am going to buy a new video card, but not a high end one because I'll be getting a laptop soon with a good video card. I'm looking at under $30 range, but $32 or something will be fine.

I found two that I like, one is a MSI Radeon x1550 128MB onboard and 512MB hypermemory with 4 pixel pipelines, 350mhz clock speed, 64bit GDDR2 800mhz memory, and RAMDAC 400mhz. Its $18 and the features are
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering
Avivo Video and Display Engine
3DC+ Advanced Texture Compression
Next-Generation HYPER Z Technology

the other is a MSI Geforce 7300LE 128MB and 512MB overclocked. 4 pixelpipelines, 450mhz clock speed, 64bit GDDR2 650 mhz memory, and RAMDAC 400mhz features are:
NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 Engine
NVIDIA ForceWare Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
NVIDIA nView Multi-Display Technology
NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control 3.0 Technology
NVIDIA PureVideo Technology

first of all, do all Geforce 7 cards have intellisample 4.0 and Ultrashadow II like wikipedia says? Also, will any of these be able to play Call of Duty 2 on med-high settings? It seems like the x1550 would since it was released 1/2007.

it seems like the 7300LE is better since I've seen people play Crysis and CoD4 with it, but it has a heatsink and no fan, and so it uses up two PCIE slots and generates a lot of heat. the x1550 also looks pretty good since it can do AA and AF stuff, and ATI says it is good for high end gaming.

here are my comp. specs if you wana know, and I know they suck, that's why i'll be getting a laptop soon
Sempron 3400+
768MB ram

I know none of these two cards are really meant for gaming, but I'm only going to be needing it for a couple of months to play games like CoD2 and HL2:EP2
so if you guys don't like them, can you recommend me some under or around $30?

PunterCam · 01-28-2008, 10:31 PM

If it's just call of duty 2 you want to run smoothly then anything and everything will be fine. When I was playing cod2 when it came out I used an amd athlon xp @ 1.8ghz, 750mb ram, and a geforce Ti4200 (or something) with 128mb ram. I ran it on medium settings (at 800x600) and it was perfect. I've got a shitty 7300gt now and it runs COD4 with medium settings fine.

Looking around some yank sites you can get this card for $30 if you're prepared to borrow some cash from someone and pay them back with the rebate (which I don't really understand, but apparently it's genuine, give em a call) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...2&body=REBATES

It would do.

person135 · 01-29-2008, 12:07 AM

thanks
its good to hear that both of them will play CoD2, but my computer is a sempron, so that might make it hard

also, I found another card thats $24. It's an EVGA 7300GT 8 pixelpipelines, 64bit 666MHZ GDDR2 128MB memory. EVGA says it has intellisample 3.0, but on another page they say it has 4.0 Its only $24, so how does it compare with the one you picked?

01-28-2008, 09:28 PM	#1 (permalink)
person135 Bronze Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 27	tough decision for newbie please help! ANY HELP IS REALLY APPRECIATED! THANK YOU! Hi I am trying to play Call of Duty 2 on my Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 lol and it is just horrible. Therefore, I am going to buy a new video card, but not a high end one because I'll be getting a laptop soon with a good video card. I'm looking at under $30 range, but $32 or something will be fine. I found two that I like, one is a MSI Radeon x1550 128MB onboard and 512MB hypermemory with 4 pixel pipelines, 350mhz clock speed, 64bit GDDR2 800mhz memory, and RAMDAC 400mhz. Its $18 and the features are Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering Avivo Video and Display Engine 3DC+ Advanced Texture Compression Next-Generation HYPER Z Technology the other is a MSI Geforce 7300LE 128MB and 512MB overclocked. 4 pixelpipelines, 450mhz clock speed, 64bit GDDR2 650 mhz memory, and RAMDAC 400mhz features are: NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 Engine NVIDIA ForceWare Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) NVIDIA nView Multi-Display Technology NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control 3.0 Technology NVIDIA PureVideo Technology first of all, do all Geforce 7 cards have intellisample 4.0 and Ultrashadow II like wikipedia says? Also, will any of these be able to play Call of Duty 2 on med-high settings? It seems like the x1550 would since it was released 1/2007. it seems like the 7300LE is better since I've seen people play Crysis and CoD4 with it, but it has a heatsink and no fan, and so it uses up two PCIE slots and generates a lot of heat. the x1550 also looks pretty good since it can do AA and AF stuff, and ATI says it is good for high end gaming. here are my comp. specs if you wana know, and I know they suck, that's why i'll be getting a laptop soon Sempron 3400+ 768MB ram I know none of these two cards are really meant for gaming, but I'm only going to be needing it for a couple of months to play games like CoD2 and HL2:EP2 so if you guys don't like them, can you recommend me some under or around $30?

01-28-2008, 10:31 PM	#2 (permalink)
PunterCam Gold Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 487	If it's just call of duty 2 you want to run smoothly then anything and everything will be fine. When I was playing cod2 when it came out I used an amd athlon xp @ 1.8ghz, 750mb ram, and a geforce Ti4200 (or something) with 128mb ram. I ran it on medium settings (at 800x600) and it was perfect. I've got a shitty 7300gt now and it runs COD4 with medium settings fine. Looking around some yank sites you can get this card for $30 if you're prepared to borrow some cash from someone and pay them back with the rebate (which I don't really understand, but apparently it's genuine, give em a call) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...2&body=REBATES It would do. __________________ 2006 Mac Pro Dual, dual core xeons @ 2.0Ghz each 2Gb Ram (I'm too poor) NVidia Geforce 7300Gt 256mb Onboard Sound - optical out to Logitech Z5500 Digidesign MBox2 output to PMCs 250Gb Drive running both Mac OSX and Windows on seperate partitions, 400Gb Seagate Drive for Windows, 400Gb WD Drive for OSX 24¨ Acer AL2416W (not nearly as bad as you'd think) Various Lacie external drives

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01-29-2008, 12:07 AM	#3 (permalink)
person135 Bronze Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 27	thanks its good to hear that both of them will play CoD2, but my computer is a sempron, so that might make it hard also, I found another card thats $24. It's an EVGA 7300GT 8 pixelpipelines, 64bit 666MHZ GDDR2 128MB memory. EVGA says it has intellisample 3.0, but on another page they say it has 4.0 Its only $24, so how does it compare with the one you picked?