Video card upgrade advice

[charlievan 0]

Can anyone give me some advice on this. I have a Duron 1.2 gig, with 256 and 128 ram, all the games I have play well except the punisher thats because my rage 2 doent support T&L or Glide technology and Battlefield 1942 it does not play at speed I know that is memory but what if I upgrade my video card to 128 megs ( in a couple months I am upgrading the motherboard so I can use ddr memory instead of sdram and getting a nvidia 256 video card I just cannot afford that right now I am trying to correct this on a budget ) I have a possibility to get an ati Expert 128 with 16 agp real cheap will this work or do I need to find a used Voodoo 3 can anyone answer this or does anyone know where I can get another video card cheap.

Charlie

My email is cowboycharley01@yahoo.com

[jmmijo 1]

Because you're on such a tight budget, it's going to limit what you can really do. That being said I would recommend either the ATi 9200 series or the nVidia 5200 series GPU cards.

 

These will be decent performers for the money and they work as either an AGP 4x or 8x card.

 

If your motherboard will only support up to an AGP 2x then that really puts you in a bind and I'm afraid that when you upgrade to another motherboard you're going to have to get a graphics card then as your current card would most likely not function with the new motherboard that supports only AGP 4x or 8x cards.

 

So since you didn't mention the make/model of your motherboard, perhaps if you could find that out then a better recommendation could be made for the graphics card upgrade

[jmmijo 1]

Originally posted by Alec§taar:

Quote:

Jmmijo,

 

I think you are becoming the "resident hardware expert/fiend" here this past year or so now... you know about a TON of diff. types of cards & such!

 

(No joke, I only really pay attention to what I build here, & that's once every few years only, & then I take a peek around online like @ Tom's Hardware Page, or just ask you guys here usually!)

 

 

* This come from building systems regularly, or something?

 

APK

 

P.S.=> I seem to recall, maybe from Philipp's "new server this weekend" thread in the FEEDBACK forums, that you have or work for a company that builds machines... correct? If so, it's showing... just something I observed about you, in that you DO know what type of cards do what, etc. apk

 

Thanks for the comments there APK, I appreciate that

 

Now as for a guru, well that's to be debated of course....

 

I do build systems, every Monday - Friday that is, and of course this means I get to test out mainstream and both high/low-end hardware and what seems to work and what doesn't work as well.

 

Since I build systems for both corporate and retail clients, these systems run the gammut of pricing and performance.

 

As for the feedback comments, I see that Philip went with Dell. Well there's no accounting for taste, but as long as Dell is giving Philip the level of service and support that he needs then I have no problems with it

 

Now back on topic here, as soon as we can get a bit more info on this users motherboard make/model we maybe able to give a more informed suggestion for a graphics card. I have a feeling (s)he may have an older AGP 2x motherboard which basically relegates the user to an older AGP 2x/4x card only.

[DosFreak 2]

The Geforce 256, Ati Expert 128, and Voodoo 3 will not work well for the games that you mentioned. (Well the Geforce 256...MIGHT work but it's doubtful the game will officially support it).

 

If you can find out what computer you have we may be able to provide a better video card.