advise on a new vid card

M

Merky Works

New Member
i have a dell 4300 P4 1.6, 512 ram with a nvidia geforce2 mx/mx400 64mb vid card. now if im not mistaken this is a pci style card, right? well i want to have a dual monitor setup and this card only has 1 vga slot and 1 s-video slot. now i have read that i need a pci card that will have vga and dvi(dvi-vga adapter) so that i can run 2 monitors. however i dont know what is a good card to get. I know the processor and mobo are holding me back but i cant afford a new system right know so i want to get a card that can opporate good with what i already have yet still be better than my current one. any thoughts?
 
whats your budget m8y ?, If your a bit of a gamer i recommend nvidia 6600 up too a 6800GT or ATi X800 up too X850.

EDIT: If you only have PCI for graphics here are some to look at. Sorry for the confusion :)
 
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ghostfacesuk said:
whats your budget m8y ?, If your a bit of a gamer i recommend nvidia 6600 up too a 6800GT or ATi X800 up too X850.
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He said his card is PCI, open up the case and tell us if there is a brown port on the motherboard. If so, then you have AGP, and you can go with what ghost suggested for the video cards.
 
ok I was mistaken about the pci, i looked at the mobo were my card is and there is a green clip thing there and the card goes into a brown socket. i then opened up everest and looked at what the gpu specs were and it said under bus type AGP 4x @4x, current agp speed 4x, supported agp speeds 1x,2x,4x, and agp aperture size 128mb. i would say that there is no budget for the card but i would think that I could not get to fancy with a vid card cause i do not have the processor to handle it. also this is a 3 year old mobo, with a 478 socket chip set. i do game but not that much because this gpu really sucks (i cant play need for speed without lag/chop on middle resolution) but if i were to get a nice card then i would play more. i am not expecting to able to play doom3 on the highest resolution.

ok took a look at card and the xfx geforce 6600gt (I assume i can use this one)seems in my price range. now what is the difference between the 6600 and the 6600GT. also if i was to go with the 6600GT which would be better the 128ram or the 256ram. I know the more ram the better but will MY computer really notice the difference.
 
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Merky Works said:
ok I was mistaken about the pci, i looked at the mobo were my card is and there is a green clip thing there and the card goes into a brown socket. i then opened up everest and looked at what the gpu specs were and it said under bus type AGP 4x @4x, current agp speed 4x, supported agp speeds 1x,2x,4x, and agp aperture size 128mb. i would say that there is no budget for the card but i would think that I could not get to fancy with a vid card cause i do not have the processor to handle it. also this is a 3 year old mobo, with a 478 socket chip set. i do game but not that much because this gpu really sucks (i cant play need for speed without lag/chop on middle resolution) but if i were to get a nice card then i would play more. i am not expecting to able to play doom3 on the highest resolution.

ok took a look at card and the xfx geforce 6600gt (I assume i can use this one)seems in my price range. now what is the difference between the 6600 and the 6600GT. also if i was to go with the 6600GT which would be better the 128ram or the 256ram. I know the more ram the better but will MY computer really notice the difference.
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If your motherboard can only handle up to 4x speed, i wouldnt waste money on a nice card since you'll be getting a much lower performance. I would get a new motherboard if you want to also get a nice card.
 
well i dont have the $ to do both a mobo and vid card. so what card can i get cheap then that will have dual outputs and be better then my current card?
 
Merky Works said:
ok I was mistaken about the pci, i looked at the mobo were my card is and there is a green clip thing there and the card goes into a brown socket. i then opened up everest and looked at what the gpu specs were and it said under bus type AGP 4x @4x, current agp speed 4x, supported agp speeds 1x,2x,4x, and agp aperture size 128mb. i would say that there is no budget for the card but i would think that I could not get to fancy with a vid card cause i do not have the processor to handle it. also this is a 3 year old mobo, with a 478 socket chip set. i do game but not that much because this gpu really sucks (i cant play need for speed without lag/chop on middle resolution) but if i were to get a nice card then i would play more. i am not expecting to able to play doom3 on the highest resolution..
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I was about to say I had that card in my old computer. Also (dunno if this has been said before me (cos I cant be bothered to read all posts) ). Any graphics (good) card will be limited by the motherboard so u may want to think about investing in a new MOBO that supports AGP8X. This provides double the pipelines for the data to travel down. (please correct me if im wrong as I usualy am lol).
 
ok the apollo has 12 PixelPipelines vs the ati which has 8 but what does that mean?

also the apollo has OpenGL 1.5 vs the ati that has 2.0 again what does this mean?

then they both have 256 memory interface however the apollo only has 128mb memory were the ati has 256mb, again i know that memory size is important but how much so here.

now you said that the clock speed is lower so wont that mean that it cant work as fast?

by just looking at the numbers the ati card seems better( to an unexperinced person), so if you could explain why i would really appreciate it so that i can learn.
 
pipelines, think of it as a highway
ATI will always be better at OpenGL then nVidia, but that doesnt make them better
128 compared to 256 isnt too much of a diffrence
clock speed is slightly lower, but is more efficiant then the 6600GT at moving information
the nVidia is better

but the x800GTO is much better then a standard 6800, but look for a 6800GT, it will blow it away :P
 
Merky Works said:
ok the apollo has 12 PixelPipelines vs the ati which has 8 but what does that mean?

now you said that the clock speed is lower so wont that mean that it cant work as fast?
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More pixelpipelines = better. The card has more pixelpipelines to compensate for the reduced clock/mem speed.
 
wow the 6800gt is really nice but the price is a little steap for me. but would my computer really be able to fully use the 6800gt fully and for that mater would it even be able to use the x800gto?
 
also I was looking at my psu and it is only a 250w 12V 14A, im guessing that is not going to be enough to run a new high power vid card. what do yall think?
 
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