Looking for a gaming graphics card, help?

Question

Ok, i was going to go all out and build a gaming pc with a nvidia geforce 7950 graphics card. but with that and everything else i was looking at it was going to be like $1300 without a monitor. i went to dell and can pretty much get all i was wanting with a monitor for $1k even. with a compromise on the graphics card. im gettin 2 gigs of memory with a amd x2 dual core 4200 with Vista installed. they give 3 choices for graphics cards, from cheapest to most expensive: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE, 256MB NVIDIA Geforce 7300LE, and 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro. im kinda partial to nvida. but price and quality is much more important. i probably will upgrade in a year or when the price goes down on the high end cards. but what is a good card for now, from the above 3 for a mid level gamer? playin games like FEAR, flight sim X etc, and have no problem. even games that are coming out over the corse of the year, and still will run good? like i said i plan to upgrade so only need for 8 to 12 months.

Answer 1

Hmmm, you're in a tough spot.

First off, all of those video cards are too low-end to seriously consider for gaming - they are for people who want to do spreadsheets, look at photos and don't care about FPS. The Radeon X1300 Pro is the least awful, but it's still waaaay too slow for Fear, Half-Life 2 etc.

If Dell offers it, I'd choose the "No video card" option and buy a GeForce 6600 (maybe $75 new, even less on Ebay) There's no way I'd take anything less than a 6600GT currently, and I'd really prefer at least a 6800, 7600GT or Radeon X1600 (around half the price of the 7900GT)
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Keep in mind that for gaming, the video card is your most important component- performance in games like Fear, Call of Duty 2, Vanguard etc is usually GPU-limited, rather than CPU. So when budgeting your build, remember that a slightly slower CPU paired with a better video card outperforms a faster CPU and a lower-end video card. For example, an AMD X2 4200+ with that GeForce 6150LE will be much slower than a 3800+ with a GeForce 6600.

The 7900GT is really the sweet spot- it can run everything right now, and it's much cheaper than the GeForce 7950GX2 or ATI Radeon X1950XTX. A year from now it'll be a clunker, but by then we'll see all-new cards, and today's top cards will be $250 instead of $550.

Going with Dell is usually more expensive than a generic or buying components through NewEgg, but I understand- their free monitor/memory upgrades sometimes make for an unbeatable deal.

Just be careful- many Dells (like my Dimension 4700) come with puny power supplies that can't handle the additional load of current PCI-E video cards. When I got a 7900GT, I had to upgrade to a 400W power supply, but Dell's power supplies aren't standard mount - a regular ATX psu won't fit properly in the case! As a result, the replacement ran me $100 instead of $50 for most machines. And there's just the inconvenience- I had to order online from PC Power & cooling, pay for shipping & wait for delivery instead of just walking into CompUSA or Frye's and just buying one that day. So beware of buying Dell if you plan on upgrading in the near future- there may be hidden costs.

2nd point- For the cost of the AMD 4200+ you might be able to get an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. The Core 2 Duo processors aren't just faster than X2, they're less expensive! But of course the motherboard cost may be a little higher. But I'd certainly look at going Core 2 Duo if possible. They beat the X2 as soundly as the X2 beats Pentium-D.

Finally, I'd save money by going with XP instead of Vista. The major benefit is DirectX 10, but the only DX10 cards on the market which have that are the massively expensive Nvidia 8800 series, and we won't see games using DX10 for months...

Do you really want to suffer through Vista's initial compatibility issues and inevitable patches when your existing hardware gets better performance under XP? I'd rather have $100 more to spend on RAM or video, and upgrade the OS later... much later.

Answer 2

Not sure of a minimum but I'm able to play Diablo III using an older XFX AMD HD RADEON 5770 on the highest settings in "windowed" mode (I run dual screens). The price of that card seems to be dropping close to your $100 mark (NewEgg has an MSI model listed at $114.99, but not in stock). The rest of the system will have some bearing on performance too though so you may want to post your CPU and RAM (amount/speed) as well. I'll second the recommendation against the GT 520. That is not a gaming quality card. If you prefer NVIDIA, the GT 640 would be a much better option compared to the GT 520 and runs for about $99. I can't say what sort of performance it will have running Diablo III but by performance marks that Simsimi linked, it is a lot better of a card.

Answer 3

here's a link on ebay where you can read reviews of them by ebay members.