GRAPHICS CARDS, which one?

Question

Ive got a fairly decent pc, 2.8 mghz,140 gig hard drive space,512 mb ram ( am planning to add at least another 512 next weekend). Ive got an ATI Raedeon graphics card, the 9200. I want a decent upgrade, one that will allow me to play most of the newest games on the market, and to be able to cope with 3d design packages like Maya and Autocad. Any recomendations? please only comment if u know what ur talking about. Also, im using DDR ram, but ive noticed that there are quite a few differents types of ddr ram, whats the difference and which is the best?

Answer 1

It depends on how much money you are willing to spend and if your current motherboard is AGP or PCIe.

With a 9200 I guess your motherboard supports AGP only, if this is true then you are limited to which cards you can buy.

ATI only go up to an X1600 Pro in AGP which is a bit pants if you are after a latest generation graphics card, so if you want ATI you should be looking for an X800 XT or X850 XT.

Nvidia do a 7600GT for about £130 - £150 which you can't grumble at. Have a look here.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=462642

Even if you could get better graphics cards in the AGP flavour, putting one in your machine wouldn't be much of an advantage, if any, because your CPU will be the bottleneck and the graphics card wouldn't be able to perform to its full.

Even with a 7600GT your CPU will be the bottleneck but not by a huge amount, and its a latest generation graphics card.

With DDR RAM the main difference is speed, it usually runs at either 266 (PC2100), 333 (PC2700) or 400 (PC3200) MHz. There are other things that determine memory performance like CAS latency, memory timings, but with these you are nit picking really.

So the best DDR is DDR 400 but if your current stick of RAM isn't DDR 400 then your best bet is to get another stick of what you already have (266 or 333). For reliability you should get a brand name like Crucial or Corsair. I use Crucial and it's great value for money and has a lifetime warranty.

If you get 2 sticks of identical memory and your motherboard supports it then it should run as Dual DDR which increases performance again, so try and get a stick of RAM identical to the one you have if your motherboard supports Dual DDR.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Generally for grpahics card, if you are going for high end, I suggest the ATI X1900XT, its cheaper than nVidia's high-end cards and performs much better, but from what I know, one draw back would be its performance on some OpenGL games, although its only on certain OpenGL games, or for a cheaper alternative, the Geforce 7900 GS (although not much cheaper) is also a good choice. If you do not have a PCI Express slot, I think the best card would be the Geforce 7600 AGP Card since it should be the best AGP card around. As for the ram, there should be generally 2 types of ram DDR and DDR2. The difference would be its efficiency and speed, although I heard that its not really very significant. Note: theres DDR2 and DDR3 memory for graphics card and its in no way related to the RAM version of ddr and try to buy DDR3 for the Graphics card, cause its more efficiency interms of your graphics card memory transfer.

Answer 3

I'm shoppping for components. I want a whole new computer from the motherboard up.

I was just researching graphic cards when I came across your question. A friend was recommending a PCI Express card. I'm glad I found the follownig online article. You should read it.

Right now, I'm going to ignore PCI Express and go with a 4X AGP. There is hardly any framerate difference between 4X AGP and 8X AGP. The software to move the graphics card back down to the PCI slots hasn't been written yet. Right now, they can only guess PCI Express will improve HDTV video editing.

Answer 4

I can only make recommendations if I know your budget. But from what I see, your motherboard has an AGP slot, so you have to choose an AGP graphics card from either one of these reputable manufacturers:
ATi - http://www.ati.com/
nVidia - http://www.nvidia.com/

When comparing cards from the same manufacturer, see the model number. A higher model number usually indicates that the relative performance of the card compared to others is higher. This should help you to choose a card depending on your budget.

As for the differences between DDR RAM, I think you're mentioning about its clock rate. A higher clock rate allows it to communicate with other PC components faster, resulting in better performance.

Answer 5

Hey sup, we you need to tell us ur power supply that your computer has so i can reccomend teh best stuff, but if u have a really good power supply then i would get the NVIDIA 7600 GT KO by EVGA, it is really good and its priced around 150-190, i have it and i play every single game with mostly all high settings, and CORSAIR DDR ram is the best, in my oppinion of price and value, u should get the value corsair ddr memory too. BTW on the EVGA Site it says tat video card is 229.99 but its not, they dont update the prices. so dont think its that much. AND if u buy stuff on the internet, then i would buy it from NEWEGG.com best price for the video card and DDR RAM

Answer 6

With that spec of machine you've probably got a motherboard with an AGP slot so the fastest graphics card you can get for that is an Nvidia 6800 Ultra although it'll be hard to find one as Nvidia would rather sell you a PCI-E card, which means a new motherboard as well.

Answer 7

hi hi silver there is noting wrong with the ATI Raedeon graphics card, the 9200., its your pc ram you need do upgradeget that up to 1024mbr and your pc will be fine

Answer 8

Do some looking before buy but i put a nvidia geforce 6800gs in mine and it performs great the next step up would be geforce 7800 or something like that make sure you get the right one for your computer there is a diff. like agp or pcie

Answer 9

nvidia geforce 7950x2 in SLI but it would be better to wait til video cards supporting direct x 10 show up because you will be waisting money when you are upgrading agin in the future

Answer 10

Have a look on www.scan.co.uk they even have water cooled ones