Graphics card

ok right now i have an itel graphics card (stock) and it sucks so im wondering if this graphics card is a good choice to play guild wars with

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1093468042109

Not sure if that will support Vista, I'm more of a nVidia person myself. Make sure that your card does support Vista (so anything 7 series or higher from nVidia, not sure on the ATI side).

dont get a video card from best buy, they are very overpriced

my friend got that card and said it works really good but i also heard this card was really good from a lot of people which one should i get?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102040

ok the card from new egg is out of the question so i went to walmart.com and saw the card from best buy and another one which one is better because i want to buy the better one

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=5018729

You need to check what you actually have on your motherboard. You are jumping around from PCI to PCIe and AGP. It is extremely unlikely that you have all 3 of those slots on your motherboard. Find out which kind you have. If it is only a PCI you will probably want a new motherboard, if it's AGP, even though they are dying out now you can still find a decent GFX card for them (that's what I have :'() and if it is PCIe you are in luck, those are what are primarily used now.

Once you have found out what kind of slot you have on your motherboard, then you can sort out your graphics card.

Not to mention factoring in power requirements. If you have an OEM (which is highly likely) depending on the PSU amperage...you may not want to change anything.

I would get this one from who ever you want and you are still useing integrated for GW.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1093468058401

how can you tell what type you have

oh and ps don't get anything from best buy, get it from walmart its much cheaper

ok well here's my current card info

Name Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2562&SUBSYS_01601028&REV_01\3&172 E68DD&0&10
Adapter Type Intel(R) 82845G Graphics Controller, Intel Corporation compatible
Adapter Description Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller
Adapter RAM 64.00 MB (67,108,864 bytes)
Installed Drivers ialmrnt5.dll
Driver Version 6.14.10.4342
INF File oem59.inf (i845G section)
Color Planes 1
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1024 x 768 x 75 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0xE8000000-0xEFFFFFFF
Memory Address 0xFEB80000-0xFEBFFFFF
IRQ Channel IRQ 16
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\ialmnt5.sys (6.14.10.4342, 789.06 KB (807,998 bytes), 1/1/1980 1:00 AM)



i have no idea what this means i just copied and pasted it out of the system info

cheaper, as in crappier?

anyway, open your computer's case, and look inside. check where the expansion slots are. do they all look the same? then you do not have agp or pci-e, and your options will be very limited. if there is one slot that looks different, check its length. if it is noticeably longer than the other slots, you have agp. if it is roughly the same length as the others, but placed further back, you have pci-e.

Is your computer a name brand, or a clone? What processor is in it?

You always want to go with the highest slot you have available. If your computer has AGP, then go with that. The Intel 82845G is an older video card, integrated into mostly first generation or "budget line" P4 units.

If this is a name brand, tell us what it is and we can probably look on-line to see what it has. But if it is a Dell Dimension (most of those used this chipset), then you are probably outta luck. The Dimension normally comes with 3 PCI slots, and that was it. This severely limits your upgrade ability. Maybe 1 out of 25 Dell DImensions has an AGP slot, but they are very rare.

yeah i have a dell dimension but can you tell me with good detail how to check the slots cause my friend has a newer dell dimension and he got the RTI radeo 9250 and it works fine

Well you can either look at your motherboard or find out which motherboard you have.

Odds are, you only have PCI slots available then.

Just look inside the case. If you only see 3 white slots, you only have PCI. If you see a fourth brown slot, that is AGP. Unless you bought your dimension in the last 3-6 months, and it cost in excess of $1,000 base price (a higher end Dimension XPS), you do not have PCIe. Dell PCIe is normally white, and it is offset from the PCI slots, with a "hook" at the end of the card closest to the middle of your computer. It is also longer then PCI.

If you only have PCI, about the best you can really do is the ATI Radeon 9250. You can buy higher cards, but they would be a waste of money. Any improvements seen by getting something like the X1300 in PCI would be a total waste, because the PCI is much worse then AGP is for bus speeds.

ok so i "can" buy the ATI radeon 9250 cause thats the one i was looking for in the first place and that would be great because guild wars works really good on that

oh and i just found out my friend has a compaq not a dell

YOu can buy a PCI Radeon 9250. Make sure that it is PCI, because they also sell the 9250 in AGP.

you can also give the geforce fx5500 PCI a try. works quite well for me, but i'm not sure which one is better: radeon 9250 or fx5500.

This is actually 2 different issues. If somebody wanted to, I have actually seen Radeon x1300 cards in PCI. But then the question becomes why?

The biggest problem he has is being hampered by PCI. Sure an FX5500 or an X1300 will give awesome graphics. But the increase in data traffic through the PCI bus will just bring things back down to a crawl. The old PCI bus was simply never designed to handle the amount of data of the fx5500 or X1300.

Something like this always turns into a trade-off between quality and performance. In things like DTP or light video editing, the performance hit is not as bad, so it may be a fair trade-off. But in MMORPG games like GW, the increased "busyness" quickly turns into more data then the PCI bus can handle. Walking in the countryside with few or no monsters is no problem. But then when you go into a major town with hundreds of people running around, things then slow to a crawl as the graphics card and bus struggle to keep up with all of the rapidly changing data.

When I make considerations like this, I tend to take frame rate as more important then uber graphics quality. Knock your socks off graphics do not do much good when you are running at 5 fps, and you are lagged behind the rest of the party because of sluggish performance. The Radeon 9000 or GeForce 4 series make a pretty good compromise when you are on the PCI bus.

thanks for all the help guys im probibally going to get the 9250 cause i like how good it works

i'm not sure if the fx5500 counts as a high powered card. the people i talked to said that it is pretty ancient now. if i set it to minimum graphics detail with high textures, it usually does around 25 fps. i'm not sure what the radeon can do.