Advice on Upgrading Video Card

Hi

I've figured I'd do a small upgrade to my comp and decided on doing it for my video card. I'm not looking for a super video card or anything. Just a decent upgrade that isn't going to cost me too much. I've done some reading in other threads ( http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=10749 and http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=75775 ) and while they were very informative I don't think they totally helped me.

My comp is about 5 or 6 years old and I pretty much only got it for surfing the web, so I'm sure it could use the upgrade. I did a dxdiag run for what I thought might be relevant:

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce4 MX 420
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 64.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 800 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

From what I've read that's pretty... well, shitty, but it did well for it's original purpose. Now I'm looking for any kind of advice on what my next step should be and what I should be looking for (video card wise).

Many thanks in advance for anyone who can help.

This website is your savior.
Tigerdirect.com
Find something for cheap, ships in 2 days min. and 100% reliable.

newegg.com is even better, ive gotten scammed with rebates from tigerdirect to many times, ive learned my lesson

Well, It does not matter where you purchase your video card. Just make sure that it supports DX9. If you can get one that supports DX10 much better. and at a minimum 128 mb of memory.

The more memory you have the better.

DX10 is extremely buggy, I wouldn't use it yet.

Wow. Thank you thank you thank you! I've already found numerous cards that fit into what I was looking for and the prices are great. According to their shipping chart it will only take 3 days standard shipping too.

Well, the things I looked at didn't have rebates anyway, so I think I'm good.

The ones I'm looking at do support DX9, but I'm not sure about 10. And I made sure that none were below 128. It was one of the first things I looked at.


Thanks for all the help. It's greatly appreciated.

If you are just planning on playing GW and just want some better frame rates and more detail, 128 is a good choice. If you are thinking of playing some other games, aka Gears of War, you will want at least a 256 or even a 512 memory card. But if you are thinking of going that route also you may just want to get a new computer since you said yours was 5 or 6 years old.

As I said, I just wanted to do a small upgrade to something.

Right now I'm not really playing anything other than GW and that's not much. If I did want to play more intensive games, I would definitely just get a new computer. Based on age alone I didn't think it would be good enough. (I already thought about that the last time I took a break from GW.)

Just remember your 5 year old motherboard won't support PCI-Express which most video cards are now-a-days.
I'd say you're better off upgrading your whole system as a new video card won't do you much good with your 5 year old CPU either.

dont listen to that, althought it may be buggy now but think ahead, its better to buy it now then buy it again and waste more money.

Yes, that graphics card was in fact shitty they day it was released - it's a slightly updated and intentionally mislabelled Geforce 2 ultra with a crippled bus; it is not only slow, but lack many of the newer graphics features. Whichever card you buy you're likely to get not only faster graphics, but noticeably prettier too.

Anyway, my suggestion is that you first figure out how much you're willing to spend. I normally recommend cards in the $200 - $300 range - that's usually the best cards from the past generation, and the good cards of this generation with slightly less bells & whistles than the flagship models - but there's viable cards for playing Guildwars from about $100 up, and the best cards are of course also the most expensive.

After you've settled on a sum, go to e.g. http://www.anandtech.com and http://www.tomshardware.com and read their reviews and buying guides.

However, if you want a recommendation, my personal favorite right now is the Geforce 8800 GT. It's not the fastest card out there, but it's close to what I consider the price/performance sweetspot.
If you're on a tight budget there's the Geforce 8600 GT, which will certainly run Guildwars and most present games perfectly acceptably.

Whether to go with 256 or 512 MB memory on the card is again a trade-off - with more memory you will get better performance when you enable some high-end effects, especially at very high resolutions, but it's not so that games will refuse to run on cards with just 256 MB.

With an MX card, I'm going to go ahead and assume you have an AGP slot. What you need to figure out is if it's an 8x slot. Maybe if you could post your motherboard model, we could tell you what kind of card is compatible. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get current-generation video cards. Your best bet is probably to go with a Geforce 7600GS. These here are probably the fastest AGP cards you'll be able to get for a computer: Linky

Oh, good call. Didn't think of that. The cards I recommended are PCI-express, not AGP.

Uh, right... how do I find that out again? I remember going through stuff, the property of the vid card and saw Location: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0. So, I assumed it was PCI. Is that not right?

I usually just check by taking off the side panel of the PC, and near the video card it will say ''AGP X8'' or ''PCI-E/PCI-Express''.

Build a new PC.... your new graphics card will be bottlenecked by the rest of your PC.

www.newegg.com

700-800 bucks can get you a very nice PC.

PCI and PCI express are not the same thing. If you're using a PCI video card, you're worse off than I originally thought. You should consider building or buying a new computer.

Yeah, I know there's a huge difference between the two.

But like I said, I only use this comp for GW and web surfing. I don't plan on using it for anything else.

If I was gonna do something that was more graphic intensive and the like I wouldn't even bother doing anything with this comp, I'd just find another.

Ati radeon X1650pro (pci-express and agp versions)
you can pick up it up on uk sites for £30 so it should be less than $50 over there. (for some reason everything is more expensive here lol)

20-65 fps normal
40-100 fps overclocked slightly with atitraytools

Its great value for that much money.