Which graphics card should i get?

M

Matthewsmith

New member
I have a Dell dim 3100, 1 gig of ram with pentium 4, 3ghz. I'm looking to upgrade from my on board graphics to one of the above. I'm not looking to buy a new pc for 2-3yrs.

Its not a big deal (luckily I have a 360), but I find pc gaming much more fun for some reason. Especially retro gaming (Diablo and old games i've never played before) I'm not looking to play the latest games or certainly games that will be released in a years time, just some older titles that i've yet to complete eg. Quake 4, Prince of Persia Sands and a few others.

I've scoured the forums and come up with two cards, in a nutshell, which of the cards is the best bet? If at all. Or have I missed a better card?

The cards are nVidia Gforce 6200 v's Visiontek1300

Obviously I only have PCI and 1xPCI (sadly no 16XPCI slots)

Cheers

Matt
 
To be perfectly honest with you those cards aren't going too be much better than your intergrated.

Id recommend picking up a cheap motherboard and an ATI 2600 if you want too play games at any reasonable frame rate.

Im assuming its a 775 P4 here...

Somthing like

This motherboard

and a decent midrange card such as this

There is probably better combos out there, they're just a starting point for others to build on:p
 
Hi Ham thanks for replying, I had an inkling someone was going to say the cards would not be a great deal better than my on board :( How much beter would one of the cards be, in reality? I think my inigrated is 64mb, but other two are 256, are they really not better?

I really dont know if i'm looking to get a new motherboard just yet, the PC is less than a year old and I dont know enough to go tinkering with the internals too much.

Like I said I have a Xbox 360 for the latest games, I just want to be able to play Quake 4 and prince of persia and a few other games around that level of quality.

Would I be able to play these kinds of games with the Visiontek1300 or nvidia?
 
On pci the speeds and bandwidth they would operate at would be pretty damn slow. Think trying to suck juice through a straw, the width of the straw would limit how much juice you can get. For newer games you need more juice so a newer card on a newer architecture (as ham said) would provide more juice and more gaming power - perhaps make the games playable as i doubt pci based cards could run stuff like ut2k4 and quake etc.
 
name='Matthewsmith' said:
I think my inigrated is 64mb, but other two are 256, are they really not better?
Click to expand...

It more depends on the number of pipelines and core components than the amount of memory - memory is just for storing things in.

The problem with buying a new motherboard is that IIRC Dell do not use a standard ATX layout so you'd need a new case to go with the new motherboard and graphics card...

The 6200 will be the best you'll get TBH and even then it'll struggle
 
There is a card i've found which is 1xpci compatable (see link below).

This card is 1xPCI compatible, so would it be slightly better than the 6200 which is PCI compatable? Or, from reading the reviews would it be crap coz it uses "hypermemory" which I guess means it uses my system memory. I do have 1 gig of ram, which I know isn't a massive amount, so should get the full 512 from the card? But as prosser 13 said, will that make any difference?

i'm getting even more confused.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161017

Should I buy the link above or the 6200?

thanks again.
 
Well as a comparison most soundcards are 1xPCI dude and sound doesnt really require that large a "straw" as i mentioned earlier but even they have now moved to the new-ish platform of pci-e which is the current "large straw" the latest applications require - whether sound actually needs this is debatable but graphics certainly need to be at least AGP based (which in your case as mentioned before would need a new motherboard, im not sure about the case though)
 
I also thought they had AGP. If so get this card

ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail
 
I ran a system check I have two PCI slots, one 1xPCI slot, and a PEG slot (32xPCIe slot) I'm not really sure what the PEG slot is. Anyone?
 
Meh, gonna need to physically look inside it me thinks.

PCIe sounds even happier.

If u can`t figure them out by looking, try`n post a photo or summit.
 
I would say take a look, but don't expect too much - I know many people from forums who've bought a relatively new Dell and then found that Dell have removed the PCI-E slot from the motherboard!

As for Hypermemory, I would avoid it - its just going to steal your own system RAM and slow down the system in general...
 
just took some pictures, too big to upload, i've cropped them a little. sorry if its confusing.

Bacicaly I only have 3 free slots.

I have 2 long white slots (sorry this is so dumb of me), my win tv thing is plugged into that, and i have another spare one underneath. See cropped 2

The only other free slots are the two black ones seen in cropped 1.

Cropped 3 is just a picture of 2 somethings plugged into another 2 slots?!?!?

Sorry for being really thick.
 

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Just been googling.

So the two white slots are PCI? So I have 1 free PCI (like the scan said)

The small black one is 1xPCI? which is free (like the scan said)

The only other free one is the longer black one. Which is????

The pictures i've just seen show 16xPCI as blue slots. I have none :(

Still dont know what a PEG is or whats plugged into it.
 
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