[ABEO]

I desperately need to upgrade my Graphics Card.

My system specs are:

Duron 800Mhz(next upgrade)
320Mb DIMM RAM
Riva TNTII M64 PRO - 16Mb


I want a graphics card that can run most of the latest games(Halo,XIII,Halo,HL,Hit & Run etc) at good resolutions, and have a nice high max res with a good refresh rate.

I need it to be less than £50(preferably under £40).

I think a 128Mb Radeon of some kind would be good.

Any advice/suggestions?

[SupaFly-TNT]

I am a newly big fan of the radeon cards. I would go for a Radeon 9800 Non Pro (not the SE) or you could also do the 9700 XT which includes a HL 2 vocher i believe.

[ABEO]

That does look good, but from what I see its about £80 over my budget, know where I can get one for less than £50?

[XtremeMaC]

try pricegrabber.com for prices

[Skyfrog]

A Radeon 9600 XT (or even better a 9500 Pro if you can find one) would probably be sufficient for some time to come. If you are really on a budget the 9600 non-pro is very cheap. It's not the fastest card in the world, but I'm still getting by just fine with a Radeon 8500. I never buy the latest models because they are always way overpriced and by the time games come along that really take advantage of them there are new cards available.

[ABEO]

Thanks guys some good advice there.

@Skyfrog: would you reccommend the 8500?

I really don't want to spend more than £50, because I will just have to sell my PC in about 6 months and I don't want to waste a load of cash

[XtremeMaC]

if you're not really upgrading
well I'm assuming after 6months u'll be buying a new expensive computer:) so you could even go with geforce 4, they're really cheap right now. I actually have Geforce 4 440 Go for laptops and I can play most of the games at high rate. back home I got 440mx and its real cheap right now...
I've winfast a170 one...
I just looked at a180 on pricegrabber its $40 which is I guess around £20?
you've £30 left for a better card:)

This post has been edited by XtremeMaC: 15 December 2003 - 10:31 AM

[ABEO]

Hmm well I'm not really too keen on sticking with nVidia because aparently the new Radeons are better, plus I want a 128Mb.

In 6 months(max) we are emmigrating so I will just sell my PC and buy a new one in New Zealand(thats where we are going by the way.

I have found these on ebuyer:
Sapphire Radeon 9200SE 128MB DDR 8xAGP S-VIDEO TV OUTPUT CRT
Hightech ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB TV-Out DVI
Radeon 9200 Atlantis 128MB DDR AGP 8x TV-Out Lite

Any idea what the best chipset is?
They all look pretty good, and what is the difference between the SE model and the 9200 standard?

And what does 'Lite' mean on the last one?

[XtremeMaC]

se and lite I guess means the same
they're basically light versions which say the goodone creates 2billion pixels/sec whereas the se and lite would create 1.2billion pixels/sec
this was the issue in winfast a170 & 170se. I don't know if it applies to your situation.

se= second edition, and sometimes special edition.
lite= dumb version might not always be the issue though,
say the heavy ehe one contains a tv-out, digital out, s-vid out, composite out, etc out, lite might just have digital out.

Wow!!! New Zealand, Never been there, r u going there to get the indepts of lord of the rings
Have fun out there

[ABEO]

Ah so those are all crap then... lol
/me continues searching

Quote

Wow!!! New Zealand, Never been there, r u going there to get the indepts of lord of the rings 

Everybody says that

No we are going to get out of England, its too overcrowded & polluted and its really hard to get jobs, plus house prices are way to expensive

[XtremeMaC]

still wow!!
I might move by myself to anywhere but I think its a tough decision to move with the parents (if that's what u mean by "we")
have u ever been there before (I'm guessing yes,u frequently visit there?)

Quote

Ah so those are all crap then... lol

naa might not be check with their websites. I'd but I've an exam in 2 hrs I don't know what I'm doing in here
anyways. Good luck searching.....

This post has been edited by XtremeMaC: 15 December 2003 - 01:00 PM

[ABEO]

Yes with my family.

We've never been there before but its the cleanest, english speaking, developed country with no indiginous species.

My mum isn't well due to pollution(and she has heavy metal poisening) and to get well she needs to be in a place with clean air.

New Zealand looks like the best place and the houses are like half the price they are here, my dad is buying a PC Repair/Upgrade franchise and I will work with him once he has a good amount of customers, we will probably buy a shop or something too.

It will be awesome

How old are you?

[ABEO]

What is the best chipset on the Radeon?

I have seen Sapphire, Hightech and Atlantis I assume these are chipsets, which is best and how do you determine that?
Or are they all the same?

[WildKat]

www.ebuyer.co.uk
Winfast A310XT 128MB DDR FX5600XT for £65ish
Sapphire Radeon 9600 APG x8 128MB for £80ish

[rstryker]

ABEO, on Dec 15 2003, 02:08 PM, said:

What is the best chipset on the Radeon?

I have seen Sapphire, Hightech and Atlantis I assume these are chipsets, which is best and how do you determine that?
Or are they all the same?

They are Third Party Vendors that use the ATI chipsets to make their own boards.
There are Built By boards that ATI makes.
There are Powered BY boards that others make that use ATI technology.

Go here and click Product Identification

http://www.ati.com/products/

[SupaFly-TNT]

Sapphire is hot right now, they seem to be making good chips. But beware of the SE version of radeons, they are usually much cheaper but much worse in performance, especially when talking about the 9800 and the 9800 SE.

Many of the older cards have XT versions now and those are the ones you want, it doesn't have to be a 9800 or a 9700 but you can find lower priced XT's that are the 9600 range and they run well.

[XtremeMaC]

me I'm 19, my profiles says that
yea chips are the same since ati produces but you might try to find a comparison chart for those
I had no problems with Winfast. Its a good company. I don't know the rest.

and there is another issue
I don't know how old your motherboard is, but if its 4x agp or less you'll not get the same performance from those 8x cards

[ABEO]

Thanks everyone.

I never thought about my motherboard. Its a Jetway, I think it is 4xAGP

I decided that since I will get rid of it in 6 months, this should play just about all games until then so I go the Sapphire 9200SE 128Mb

[ABEO]

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/rad...00/compare.html

[Skyfrog]

Quote

Skyfrog: would you reccommend the 8500?

No, not at this point unless you are really on a budget. It's a nice card but it is starting to show it's age, and you should really get one that supports DirectX 9. I'm not positive but I believe the 9200 is actually a DirectX 8.1 card like the Radeon 8500. It looks like it is actually just a Radeon 9000 with the AGP speed bumped up from 4x to 8x, which your motherboard can't use anyway. I mean it would work, but only at 4x so you'd be as well off getting the older 9000.

I think the Radeon 9600 non pro would be a much better choice for a budget card. The Radeon 9500 is actually faster than the 9600 but they are no longer in production and are getting hard to find. A good place to look would be eBay.

I don't know though, since you'll be selling your PC later on there's really no point spending too much on a card. Anything in the 9x00 series range would certainly be capable enough. Anyway good luck with whatever you decide on.