Graphics Many threads like this, but i need some advice £200 to spend!

I've got £200 and want a graphics card to revive my gaming experience.

I've got a 64MB GeForce3 card in my Dell that came with the PC. It is now **** but was good enough back at the time of purchase.

I've got 384mb sdram in this PC i think (yes **** i know).

It's a 2GHz.

Tell me what the best card foe £200 or under would be for this machine please.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

 

Radeon 9800 pro, their were a few going for about £130 a really silly price for waht you get.

'doc

try www.scan.co.uk btw

 

thanks, do you know if that's the cheapest site. They have OEM and not retail. What's included in the retail version do you know?

Also do they need some power from the power unit? If so how much? All my power ribbons are being used. I'll need a splitter if power is needed. I wonder if my power unit will have enough?

 

Could a Dell Dimension 8100 desktop pc's motherboard take a 9800 pro? Does anyone know?

 

right the pc has between 25o and 300 watts, this wont take the card will it?

What medium-high end card could run without eating all my power? Any ideas?

 

Firstly i take it your pc has an agp slot right?
Secondly, you might aswell get a good quality psu while you are at it. If you buy a good one you can use it in future pcs. Look at it as an investment

 

"Firstly i take it your pc has an agp slot right?
Secondly, you might aswell get a good quality psu while you are at it. If you buy a good one you can use it in future pcs. Look at it as an investment"


I've read elsewhere you may need an adapter to fit new PSU's to Dell mobos. I believe they make the part of the board which accepts the PSU as a Dell-only standard. Therefore, they figure you'll buy any new PSU from them. However I've also read elsewhere that Dell's wattage is rather weak and they don't sell anything over 300 or 320 watts or so(?).Research this a bit b4 running and simply buying a new power supply thinking you own a normal PC.

There are sites though which will sell their PSU's with Dell adapters. Check around.

 

yeah ive got an agp slot....

Suddenly i'm beginning to hate Dell, i wonder why.

 

I just need a card good enough to run hl 2 on pretty much full everything at least 30fps constant. I'm just buying 1500 mb of RD ram for the PC to help ram wise. Would a 9600XT cut it?

Basically I might as well get a card that can run without needing power direct from the psu. Im going to uni in september and so its mainly for my younger brother, im putting the most money in. He'll only need it for about another year and a half.

 

psu converter

 

"Also please note that the Dimension 8100 is not compatible with this cable (we have no solution for the Dimension 8100)."



thanks anyway

 

9600 XT *should* run it fine as long as you have a reasonable CPU/Ram behind it as well..
Have seen HL2 (an early beta) running on a 9800 Pro and 9600XT based systems, both with 2500 bartons, both can run 1024 without a flinch, and 6*AA and 16*AF at that res as well fairly smoothly in the XT's case and great for the pro. If this holds for the full game then the XT will be fine for running with maxed settings....(though there will probably be a loss of fps due to high res textures etc, but still the XT should cope no probs)

 

Thanks for the info. I'm ordering a 9600XT on tuesday.

Is there a leaked version of halflife on the net then?

 

yeah i've seen a beta of hl2 running on a 9600, so i'm pretty happy!
(getting 9800pro soon)

 

Be careful running a 9600XT with a shoddy psu, when I got mine it made my whole system (powered by a generic 250W) unstable. So I got a luuvely Antec TrueBlue 480W and it's rock solid (not to mention quiet and glows blue )

 

Try it, but as cibyr says you may need a decent/more powerful psu at some point, however there may well be issues fitting one to a Dell pc....