Videocard for Spider-man 3 & Lost Planet (PC)?

Question

I know I have an outdated videocard (ATI Radeon 9550 w/ Stealth S120), and I decided to buy spider-man 3 with a new videocard. Anyway:

*I would like to know what videocard exactly would give me performance and speed for under $300.

*Is there a difference from NVIDIA cards vs ATI Radeon cards? Like the, NVIDIA 7800GS vs ATI X1650 Pro? Anything would be helpful.

~I know what the card should have, but I just can't place what card to get. Any support will be helpful.~

-Thanks

Answer 1

Your 9550 is AGP. Best for AGP would be ATI's x1950 Pro AGP or Nvidia's 7950GT AGP.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102071
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150223

Nvidia and ATI cards w/ comparable number of shaders or stream processors and similar core clock and memory speeds would have comparable performance. BUT ATI cards tend to draw more power.

Answer 2

You can put in any card that fits your graphics port slot. But you might be over shooting your system with a high graphics card. Like putting a Corvette carburetor on a Honda Civic. Look at the retail boxes for those games and see if the other requirements are met by your computer. The graphics card alone does not make the game run or run well. If you have a slow CPU or a mother board front end speed that is low the card may not matter much. A good rule of thumb to remember is to match the cost of the CPU close to the cost of the graphics card. Hope this helps some.

Answer 3

You don't need to spend close to $300 to get a decent graphics card that will play those games.

Here's a link to a really nice card for $229, and if $300 is what you're looking for even this will make those games look unbelievable at most screen resolutions. It's an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, a new card from ATI. It's big though so make sure there's lots of room in your PC Case for it to fit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195029