Which card to chose?

[Lixen666]

I want to make a budget gaming PC and am not sure which card would suit best. Or is none appropriate?

1) Sparkle GeForce 6600 SP-PX34DT
(PCIE - 256 DDR)

2) Asus Radeon 9600 XT/TD
(AGP - 128DDR 128bits - SVHS - Composite - DVI)

3) HIS Excalibur 9550 Turbo 256MB/128Bits
(AGP VGA, TV-Out and DVI-I supported)

Thanks in advance

~Lixen

 

[ReverseFluxx]

Well, out of those two, the 6600 would be better, however, I would spend a little bit more and get a 6600GT, which has great performance at a midrange-card's price.

 

[4W4K3]

Well, out of those two, the 6600 would be better, however, I would spend a little bit more and get a 6600GT, which has great performance at a midrange-card's price.

ditto

6600GT should be like $170 now i believe.

 

[ripken2004]

its even down to 160 at newegg, and get the gt, not the regular

 

[Lixen666]

So this one will do the trick?

Sparkle GeForce 6600 GT SP-PX43GDH
(PCIE - 128ddr3 - DVI - HDTV)

How smooth will I be able to run... lets say HL2 with it?

~Lixen

 

[nevinenigma]

quite smooth on high settings(but not AA and AF at the highest)(as long as the rest of your system specs are on par)

 

[Lixen666]

I am not really familiar with "AA" and "AF", what does it stand for?
And the rest of the specs is posted in this thread: http://www.computerforum.com/showthread.php?t=12667

~Lixen

 

[ReverseFluxx]

I can run my 6600GT at everything highest, highest AA (anti-aliasing), and highest AF, which both smooth out the models. HL2 runs nice and smooth with these settings.

 

[nevinenigma]

AA=Anti-aliasing(may of heard about it in photoshop or other graphic designing). Basically it makes edges look smoother as apposed to jagged. However if using a higher resolution it isn't really necassary. AF=Anisotropic Filtering which basically makes textures sharper, without it textures lose quality(blur) as they get further away from the camera(camera being you in the game).