PCI Graphics Cards...

What's the best PCI graphics card out there for less than $150 if i soley wanted to play Guild Wars?

I was thinking about the Radeon 9550 PCI and the GeForce FX 5500 PCI

Will that give me good graphics with minimal load and high fps?

because thats really what im looking for.

GeForce FX 5500 has problems with the Game and you'd have to edit settings and you still wouldn't get a good run for your money.

Try the Radeon 9550 PCI.

You can get a Geforce MX4000 128MB PCI off of Ebay or online for around $5 (plus shipping) and I can run it with that at pretty good detail... the only problem is the current thing with it locking up when I go to my pounches or bag inventory, and the sword and shield icon of quest completion....

i have the same problem with a blue screen crash whenver i mess with my inventory. So i've restricted myself to PvP

Well... When/IF they ever get this card back in stock. It is the best video card for gaming for all of us crappy dell users.. and the rest of you that do not have an AGP slot.

3D Fuzion 6200 PCI

This card is made by a subsidiary of BFG. So far Chumbo seems to be the only reseller that carries the card. Believe me I looked for another one that carries it. Even called BFG to make sure they didnt have any other resellers. So then I left a messege on Directron's forums asking them to carry the card. Maybe they will. I dont think resellers realize how many of us need this lower end powerhouse of a video card to use in our crappy PCI dells' a lot of us are stuck with.

Anyway If enough people request this card I bet they will get them in stock.

Can you not use AGP or PCI-Express cards?

Or does your PC only have PCI slots?

A question of my own though, are PCI and PCI-E slots the same?;s

I can tell you that most of the Dell Dimesion PCs that you can get for around 300.00 DO NOT have an AGP or PCIe/PCIx slot.

PCIe and PCIx are both PCI Express Cards and ARE NOT the same as PCI.

PCI is the card slot that was available before AGP.

WHAT IS PCI

WHAT IS AGP

WHAT IS PCI Express

Some people with older pc's also do not have an AGP or PCIexpress slot.

But the game runs fine... just need a good video card.

Get ATI Radeon 9250. It is like the 9550 which I have and love, but it is for PCI. Best PCI card that there is.

GO with it, you won't regret it.

Are you absolutely sure?...It doesn't like reboot when you go into inventory or anything? I just need to make sure that I have great GW action.

yeah sells for 80-100 bucks depending on who makes it.. here's some reviews you can check out on tiger..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Recs=10&Nav=|c:319|&Sort=1

PCI-X is not PCI-E. X is 64bit version that has been around for quite some time on server computers.

Atleast I haven't seen anyone advertising their express card as 'PCIx', and googling for PCIx vidcards yields no results.

There isn't a PCI card out there that's going to run this game perfectly.

GeForce FX sucks. The entire 5000 series is utter trash. Geforce MX is the slowest they make, btw. A MX4000 would run like ass. It is DirectX 7 based, and does not support pixel or vertex shaders. Not a good thing for a modern game.

Radeon 9250 is 5-6 year old tech and is going to be quite poor. It's based on a hacked down Radeon 8500 from 2001. Yeah, that's right, a Radeon 8500 is faster even if it is older.

I can't find a 9550 PCI, unfortunately. Nothing on Google.

Watch out for cards labeled PCI but actually being PCIe. You can't use PCI Express.

Your options suck, to be quite honest. Even though the GeForce FX sucks, the 5500 isn't going to be much faster or slower than a Radeon 9250. Pick one and give it a go. GW is not going to run very well though. You aren't going to want to run higher than 800x600 or maybe 1024x768 I imagine.

Honestly, your best bet is not to waste your money on PCI and to upgrade. If you only have PCI you probably are running some ancient board with a slow CPU. The OEMs like to forgo AGP slots if they build in integrated graphics. But now days there is usually a AGP or PCIe slot as well. A slow CPU isn't going to help GW out any.

sigh

the only way to upgrade is a motherboard swap.

he wouldnt be asking for this if he were made of money and could just build a complete new machine.

a cheap video card will do wonders compared to what he has now and will free up system ram being used now for video.

i know.............maybe you could give him all new parts to do it with

I agree with Loviatar. With GuildWars a less expensive regular PCI video card is better then no video card. Some people just need to get by for now...that is why they ask for help. Not everyone wants to BUILD a damn computer. I stopped building them in the late 1990's....just not worth the hassel. I want it to work and work now.

PCI cards are a complete waste of money. The rest of his system probably is quite slow and won't be able to run the game worth anything. How much RAM does he have? Is he running a Celeron 700 or something that is going to be blown away by any modern game? A AGP-less integrated mobo could date back to those days. Heck he says he's getting BSODs, that could be related to any number of hardware problems.

If I were him I'd go out and make the half grand it takes to build a Sempron with something modern for a vid card.

I've tried a Radeon 7500 and 8500 in GW, both of which will run with the best PCI cards out there. I even loaded up the game with a Radeon 32MB SDRAM PCI and GeForce2 MX200, both quite low end. The game is not playable at all with minimum settings until you get to the Radeon 7500. This card is marginal but usable. The 8500 is quite good with the game, but it is also faster than any PCI card you can buy. PCI is going to just kill the performance of these cards and is why the fastest PCI cards are 3+ year old tech. The bus is maxed out and has been since like 2000. I mean, heck, your PCI bus is shared by everything on it (IDE, audio, network, etc) and at best the PCI bus can deliver about 80MB/s in real world usage. Compared to even 1998's AGP 2X (500MB/s) it's a bit laughable. PCI 3D cards aren't really meant for 3D games.

well i have installed a radeon 9550 pci 128 on an older machine last week and it worked fine....

dont always tell folks to bite the bullet and upgrade....some people cant afford to max a creditcard just to play a game....*sighs at people who think throwing money at a pc will fix everything*

yes, upgrading can help, yes, it will give a better performance and gameplay, but....there are more important things that GW..like morgages....food....insurance and medical bills to pay for with creditcards.

since your in the us, take a look thru some of the suppliers if you can....one of our regulars is Vip....im not sure if theres a Vip in usa, or if they will deal one person with yu, but its worth a try....and thats where we get our 9550's
*were buying the PEAK brand, by the way*

Good point Rayea...

There are more important things to purchase in life outside of your PC. I have my PC to enhance my life not control it.

I run a mx4000 64 meg video card on my computer for now. It has a 3 gig p4 with 512 megs of ram. It runs on Medium settings without a problem. I have no specifics but recommend atleast 128 megs of ram to enjoy it to it's full potential.

I run a geforce4 mx420 on one machine and it runs pretty decent. I can run at max settings at 1024x768 and have little to no lag. I can't see the colors on boss mobs, but it does fine. I usually just run on low settings just so I have no chance of getting any lag. This is being run on a AMD Sempron 2200+ with 1024mb of ram.

On my other machine I run a Radeon 9200 on max settings. It lags sometimes but not alot, the lag is mainly down to the systems specs though. Its run on a P4 Celeron 2.4ghz with 256mb of ram. So Im sure if I upgraded the ram the lag would go away for the most part.

You can get a gefore4 mx420 for pretty cheap now. Back when I bought it 4 or more years ago it was only around 40-50$. The radeon which was bought about 3 or more years ago was around 70-80$. So now, you should be able to get either for a small amount of cash. They both aren't that great, but will get the job done. If you want to get the better of the 2, I'd get the Radeon. I can run many more games at higher settings with it on either machine than the mx420.

Id like a post of his system specs before Id make a recommendation, but

Im using a FX5900, have been for about 3 years now(lol), have had no major problems with it.