I'm no longer on current terms with hardware news and I have to get a new GFX card soon.

Until recently, I had a Celeron 800, so my old RIVA TNT2 wasn't all that bad.

However, I made an upgrade before going on holiday and the old card slows down the new machine (didn't have enough money to get a GFX card with the other parts).

I don't need supernatural graphical power, but I want the card to keep up with the rest of it. Currently, I have Celeron 2.4 GHZ, 512 MB RAM in one chip and a fast hard drive. As you see, it's geared towards getting the max speed and reliability I could get for that price. I've always enjoyed good graphics, but I hate lag even more, especially when I'm playing multiplayer games. Speed is priority, though I wouldn't like to give up on quality altogether. I tend to go for max quality in multiplayer and max speed in multiplayer.

I don't do any engineering stuff or graphics rendering and fancy features are only needed for games and game editors.

Suggestions, please? GeForce or RadeOn, which model? As it's only really for gaming, I wouldn't like to spend more than about $100 on it.

The only thing you'll get for $100 is a GeForce FX 5200, which is decent enough (I use it myself). It doesn't support some of the new DX9 features, however, but unless you play a lot of the latest graphically intensive games, you don't need it either.

GeForce 4 Ti-4600 is still a valid choise, even though it is , by now, about a year old product (it was the flagship of nVidia).

Well, I have an X800, but that's pretty expensive. I don't have a GeForce 4 T4800, but I've played games on it at my friend's house, and it is an awesome card for the money. It can run games like UT2004 without skipping a beat.

Highly recommended. This one is the closest I could find. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-140-021&depa=1

@Tal: Any problems launching games that require DX9?

I could field that one.

With DX9 games, at least the majority of them, you can play, but you don't get all the bells and whistles, such as dynamic lighting, shadows and crap.

Ah, good. My chief concern is being able to run the game at all. Things won't launch on my Riva no matter what :(

Well, the reasoning is this: If a GeForce 3 can run Doom3 and the game looks pretty good, then you don't have much to worry about.

What kind of games are you planning on running with new gfx card?

I have a setup similar to yours (2.4ghz P4, 512MB) and I bought a ATI Radeon 9600xt 128mb DDR. It is an extremely stable card (the Catalyst software is topnotch) and gives you all the power you need without the high cost of the 9800pro or higher. I recommend it over the Nvidia's myself due to the fact my friends were all Nvidia users but eventually switched to ATI Radeons. There are a lot of customizable settings with the Radeon, an Overdrive feature, and a great interface that's easy to use. It easily handles any normal game like NWN cranked at high quality mode, and can handle more intense games like Prince of Persia, Max Payne 2, and Combat Flight Simulator 3.

For total dominance i'm upgrading to a gig of RAM to allow me to crank my settings all the way up on Flight Simulator 3 without ANY slight stutters or millisecond lag. I'm very picky and the 9600XT has perfromed great. It supports DX9.0 of course. Bottom line it makes games look incredible and i've had no problems whatsoever with a variety of different games.

It cost me 200 bucks about 8 months ago. It may be slightly cheaper now. But it lets me get Half-Life 2 for free when it FINALLY comes out.

Radeon 9800 XT...it'll prob'ly be around 120 $ or so, if you can find a good deal, but if you don't mind spending a few extra dollars on it, that lil extra will go a long way in getting you a sizable performance boost.

I'm getting one with my new computer myself. :D

Dude, 9800 XT is 300 bucks minimum, the only lower price is on EBay, which is not a good place to get a video card(for obvious reasons).

Whoa...really? Wheeew...that's heaps.

I'm getting mine with my Dell desktop...and it costs me around $ 150 to upgrade from onboard video chip to a 9800 XT. I didn't know just the card on the market was that expensive!!

Anyway...in that case, 9600 XT looks to be the best option my friend.

Slightly off-topic, but the 9800XT is ridiculously over-priced for what you get. You can get a 9800 Pro for about half the price and only sacrifice about 10% in performance; alternatively, you could spend less than $100 more, get an X800 Pro, and improve your performance by at least 50% minimum.

Faraaz, are you sure you were upgrading from on-board graphics to 9800XT? Maybe it started with something other than on-board graphics, and you were upgrading from there? Or maybe you're not getting a 9800XT - perhaps a 9800 Pro or 9600XT instead? $150 seems like such a good price that it sounds suspicious. Or maybe it's something specific to laptops (which I am not really familiar with).

[ September 01, 2004, 15:34: Message edited by: Splunge ]

@Splunge: Meh, I'm not very sure myself Splunge. And remember, that the figures I had were in AUD, which I converted on the fly, so you might not want to be too specific about the figures I quoted.

I was just recommending to Chev that he might want to hold out a while, so that he can get the 9800, which is a much better card.

Acrually, after doing some searching, the new PCI-X cards by ATI(or made by a sub-company like MSI or Powercolor) are better than the 9800 series, with twice the bandwith thanks to PCI-Express, and are priced to move.

The X300 is around 125 and the X600 is around 160 and up.

True, but then you'd need a new motherboard, and (to get back to chev's situation) I don't think he wants to spend that much.

interested in second hand product?

Forgot that you need the PCI-X mobo, which at this point is limited to 915/925 I think. Yeah, that sucks.

Especially since he would need new RAM as well. And PSU. And CPU. Since the new PCI-X mobos throw out all legacy tech.

Just to put my two-penneth worth in.

I recently had a P3-500MHz machine, 192Mb Memory and to keep it going I installed a GeForce4 MX400 card. To be honest, my machine still outperforms (my son has this machine now) many of my relatives machines that are P4-2000 and P4-2600.

I have upgraded now. P4-2800, 512Mb memory, WinXP and a new graphics card - Radeon 9200. And it runs beautifully. I have always been a big fan of ATI cards, which have always been very reliable and only went to nVidia because of the cost.

I would recommend the Radeon cards. The most cost effective being the 9600 or 9200 (which is even cheaper). To be honest, whichever you get you will be deeply satisfied and much better than what you had.

Besides which, in a years time the 9800+ will be less than $100 and we'll be wondering why people are still using the ancient 9200/9600 cards.

Why pay $100 for a half decent card when you are only going to want/need a better card in a few months time. Save up and buy a 6800 Ultra.

Not to mention the 480 Watt power supply.....

The Geforce 6600's are just now coming out. It'll be awhile before they're available outside the US, but they are looking to be a very good buy. Your processor can handle just about anything out right now. The 5900XT's and the Radeon 9800pros are still the best buys, that are available.

If you're still messing around with Linux, or even plan to in the future, get the Nvidia card no matter what else.

Could I sugest the GeForce MX 4000 - It's the cheapest DX9 capable graphics card on the market (well at least in Australia).
Other than that SE actually stands for Sloth Edition (as opposed to second edition)
With the release of recent cards (X800 and 6800 etc) the prices of other cards are likely to fall.
New cards (X### range, and 6800's) need newer mobo's.
9700's are still pretty good (more than twice as powerfull as the 9600) but are no longer in production - so if you can find one second hand for a good price would be good.

PC Powerplay just did a giant round up of available cards. (All prices in Aussie dollars, x0.7 to get US)

~$100: Radeon 9200
~$300: GeForce 5900XT, but when ATI drops the 9800s to this level, they're better.

The 300 dollar cards (I got a 9800 pro for 365 wholesale) are so much faster than the $100 cards that I recommend you get them. A 9800 Pro is probably the best value care out there at the moment.