[prx984]

im looking for a new video card for my brothers computer. he currently has a 9200 SE agp but unfortuneatley the motherboard in his computer only supports up to agp 2X , 4 works, but its terribly slow. either that or its something with the card. anyway, i was thinking of PCI instead, not PCI Express, our motherboards dont support that. the motherboard is a SiS 810L i think. its a fairly low end board, but we haven't had any problems with it. anyhoo, are there any PCI or AGP video cards that you guys would recommend? just looking for something fairly cheep too, under 150 dollars. and we want it to be able to play a few decent games, like Doom 3 with lowend to medium graphics. thanks.

-brian

edit, iv done a lot more looking at newegg.com and i found something that may work for what i need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814143032 its fairly cheep thats what's got me worried about it though. the core clock speed on this card is 270mhz from what i see there, and the one thats in my brothers computer now is only 166mhz or so. so i think this one will work perfectly, just wanted to know if anyone has had good luck with this card. thanks again.

This post has been edited by brian10161: 06 May 2006 - 12:03 PM

[SINasTER]

Hi Brian, unfortunatly for you I dont think that investing in a new video card is worth it... Your brother's board is pretty old and from my opinion it's the board that is the problem! ATI's 9200 isnt the best card to do 3D, in fact its a super budget video card that was suposed to offer good performances with a low initial cost and yes, it is slow no matter what AGP timings you run it!

But your main problem is something called a "bottle neck" caused by the board... Your board cant push data to the other components fast enough to deliver a good performance!

My best advice would be to upgrade the system entirely with something that has a little more punch but still in the budget category... But remember one thing, when your buying a motherboard dont go too far in the budget category because its the main thing that causes the system to lag! get a good board with a decent (but budgeted) CPU and some good (but still budget size) memory.

for a good budget video card I would recommand that you go with nVidia instead of ATI... More bang for the buck! And if you want to follow my advice with an upgrade then I recommand ASUS for the board and something like a budget oriented OCZ memory kit.

Hope this helps a little

[prx984]

thanks for the reply, but unfortuneatley i cant upgrade the motherboard, my dad doesnt wanna go through that fiasco again. ill see what i can do though. i doubt we'll be changing the motherboard though. i just want to know if the geforce 5500 will work on this board thats all, and if it does and his games dont run right, well thats his problem lol. he needs to realize that not everything goes his way. but ill still see what i can get changed. i dont want to buy an entire new computer though, it seems like such a waste to do so because the 1800 chip he has is fine for games, its just the video holding it back. if the card works and runs his games at low detail hes happy. and if hes happy then im happy. thanks again for the reply.

-brian

This post has been edited by brian10161: 06 May 2006 - 12:45 PM