I'm looking to but together a Vista setup for my Wife's little sister and wondered what the options are for a cheap Card to give Aero a bit of a boost. I saw this Passive cooled HD2400 for £41 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-134-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=939 or a 8400GS for £30 http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/129802 And now a passive 2400 for £30 in poll, I guess http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128951 Any other, better suggestions. I would put passive or quiet cooling down as a bonus but my knowledge of monder cards is nill (I'm on an AGP 6800,myself
You can run Aero with a Geforce 6600 or higher, Radeon x1550 on up. It doesn't need to be a DX10 card.
If you are going for a budget card, just get anything cheap and passive and DirectX 9.0, and avoid anything with Turbo-Cache/Hyper-Memory as it leeches system ram for video use.
Get DX9 Yeah, its better to get a slightly more powerful DX9 card than a really basic DX10. If you can, try to get one with a 128bit memory bus rather than 64bit, for example: Innovision 3D 7300GT 512MB DVI VGA PCI-E (128bit memory bus), man code:I-7300GT-H4F3H for around £40 (passive cooling). Can be found at Ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/125944
Intersting. I was rather not int he know and assumed that Vista desktop would want DX10 for preference. That said what would you recommend to beat the Sapphire HD 2400 Pro for ~£30inc?
You're very limited at that sorta price point I'm afraid. 512MB Inno' 7600GS (£40/£47) maybe? But I'd honestly advise trying to up the budget, and getting something like a 7600GT (<£60 / <£60). It would make a world of difference IMO... to everything - not just the Aero 'experience' Whilst £60 is twice as much as the lower figure you've mentioned... you'd be getting way more than twice the performance for the money. But if £30 - £40 is your absolute limit... you probably won't get any better than either of the two cards you've linked to yourself? And of course you'll have DX10 support with the 8xxx series card. (Quite how effective DX10 would be with such a low-end card however, is another matter!?) I personally can't advise on which of those two would be the better option though?
Hi, Dunno if you've bought yet, but I would not recommend the 2400pro (rare considering I like AMD). Personally, if you do not want to spend much more than ~£30 then get the Innovision 7300GT 256MB DDR2 128Bit PCI-E http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/119699 for £31.89 inc vat. I know this is only one comparison but here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_2400_Pro/1 the basic (not oc'd) 2400pro was beaten on virtually every game by the 7300gt. Have look at other reviews as well (I just picked the first one on google!). I believe the main problem with the HD2400 is that it only has a 64bit memory path. Of course a DX10 card appears to be more future proof by definition, but as hazardous says, how many super-dooper DX10 games will it (or the 8400gs for that matter?) play when it is beaten by previous generation (relatively low spec) cards on DX9 games? Perhaps a few basic points to bear in mind will help you to make your choice easier: 1) 128bits is definitely to be preferred to 64bits, 2) 256MB is a reasonable amount of memory for a low-spec card, 3) Virtually any, fairly recent, add-on card is better than integrated ones, and 4) remember what SPQQY said: "You can run Aero with a Geforce 6600 or higher, Radeon x1550 on up. It doesn't need to be a DX10 card." Good luck.