Updating my Video card

Here are the specs on my computer:

AMD Athlon 64 Processor
3700+
2.19 GHz, 960 MB of RAM

Currently i have a ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series and was wondering what video cards would be good to get. I just play Guild Wars and may be getting Battlefield 2 in the future.

Personally, i have a budget of up to 200 dollars.. i have been saving for quite a while. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What slot is on your board? (agp x? or pci-e) xpress 200 is shared memory so anything in the 200 dollar range will knock your socks off.

$200 is a lot!

I am betting you have PCI, but update us is not. AGP really opens up the possabilites, but you can make do with PCI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143069

--DAMN! While I was looking up cards I came by these. WTF? 512mb for $150 card? Good reviews and tops the best PCI cards. Cheap, and good ram. My 7800GT has 256mb.

how do i check if its pci-e or agp

EDIT: I have PCI but i dont know if its PCI-e

Is it a "name brand" computer, or one that was custom built?

A lot of name brand systems do not have video card slots. In that case, your option is to get a PCI card, with really sucks. Most higher quality boards have AGP. If it is a newer system, it may have both AGP and PICE, or just PCIE.

Look on the motherboard, and look to see if the slot closest to the CPU is offset from the others. AGP and PICE are normally longer, and a different colour from the PCI slots.

And you do not have to spend big bucks for a good video card. I have always favored the "Budget Line" ATI cards. For $50-75, you can get a 9550 (AGP) or X550 (PCIE), each with around 256 megs of ram. For a game like Guild Wars, this is more then enough to play with all options turned on. If you want to spend a little more, the X1300 (which was top of the line a year ago) often sells for around $120, with 512 Meg of RAM.

The biggest difference between these and the higher end cards (X1800, X1900, etc) is normally in "Bragging Rights". Getting an extra 10-20 fps (frames per second) may be great, but can you really see the difference?

Movies play at 24 fps. In the case of most games, the human eye stops noticing a difference somewhere between 50-85 fps (depending on the individual, monitor size, and monitor quality). So when people brag about getting 110 fps, it is only bragging, since to a person it would look exactly the same as if they had only 85 fps.

Buy something now that can last you to the next generation of video cards... you will not regret it as then you don't need to fork out again.

I agree. But the "next generation" will be out by the end of the year.

Sometime in November-December, the cards that support Direct X 10 will finally be available. Even the newest ATI X1950 (which came out last week) is not Direct X 10 compatible. Which means if somebody shells out $500 for the newest hottest card, there is no guarantee that it will fully play the newest games much into the new year.

If you need to get a new card now, get a low-moderate priced card. Then save your money, and wait a few more months. It will save a lot of grief later down the road, when you discover that your $350 video card is not compatible with the newest Direct X (or fully compatible with Vista).