What specs should I look for in a good video card?

Question

I'm not looking for anything cutting edge, hoping to spend $100-200 if possible.

Also, does DirectX9 vs DirectX10 play a huge role in my purchasing decision? Would a video card with 528MB supporting DirectX9 be the same, less or more than a video card with 256MB supporting DirectX10?

Is Direct10 only for Windows VISTA?

I'm looking for a PCI-Express Card.

What GPU speed is considered good, better and excellent?

Answer 1

Amount of RAM is very low on the list of specifications you should be looking at. Core clock speed, pixel pipelines (or stream processors as they are now called), memory clock speed, and memory interface are all more important. The best thing to do is just look at benchmarks and see which one actually performs better, else you can end up getting lost in a sea of numbers.

DirectX 9 vs DirectX 10 is not a huge deal in that price range to be 100% honest. All the fancy new games that will use DirectX 10 will not look that great on a low end card like that anyway, so I would just focus on getting the most powerful card for the money, regardless of DirectX version.

I would personally recommend this one:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102067

Answer 2

The amount of video ram (would be in megabytes), the speed of the gpu (would be in megahertz) and the version of direct x it uses (the newest is 10 but if you don't have vista 9 is the highest you can use). Direct X 10 allows you to use the newest graphics technology so it would help with new games, but if the program doesn't use direct X 10, the card with more ram is always better.

Answer 3

A DX10 card sort of "future proofs" your PC. It will also run pretty well with DX9. The 8600GT is well within your budget. It performs slightly better than a 7600GT. You will enjoy playing many games with the 8600GT.
Yes, DX10 is only supported in Vista.

Answer 4

an nvidia 8600-8800 would be a good choice .. u need to ascertain ur slot type to see if u need a agp or pci express first .... i wouldnt worry about the card memory in my experience it makes little difference ... the card gpu speed is what counts ...

Answer 5

I would select the DX10 card myself.

The DX9 card with more memory will run better on most games that are out right now.

But once newer games come out, that utilize DX10 and the new architecture, the DX10 card will outperform the DX9 card when all the new eye-candy is enabled.