Pondering a new video card. (1 Viewer)

[BrianShort]

As some of you may know, my old motherboard died, so I had to upgrade some of my hardware. I ended up with an ASUS A7N266-VM, an Athlon XP 1700+, and 256 megs of ram.

My current video card is an old GeForce 2 GTS... I've been pondering upgrading to a new card, though I dont really want to spend that much money (I should probably spend $0 )... so I cant afford the Radeon 9700 Pro unfortunately :frowning:... I honestly haven't played many PC games recently, but I'm thinking about getting Splinter Cell when it's released on the PC... I tried out the demo on an xbox at wal-mart, and was very impressed.

How about the Radeon 9000 or the 9100? $100 or so seems like a good price... is there a place I can get one of these that also ships via the postal service?

Also, who has good prices on DDR RAM? I have 256 megs of Crucial ram now, but since I do a lot of digital photography, and use Photoshop, 512 might be nice.

Brian

 

[Max Leung]

That's a good motherboard. Very reliable. Not the fastest, but what is 4% performance difference mean anyways? Nothing!

How about the Radeon 9500? It's cheaper than the 9700, but good enough to play today's games.

If/when you get another stick of DDR-RAM, make sure it is identical to the one you've got now. That will maximize your PC's stability.

 

[BrianShort]

Max: Yeah, the board got a lot of good reviews at newegg, and it was cheap, so I went for it. I was just going for something good that could replace my old stuff that died. I'm pretty happy so far.

Brian

 

[Tekara]

I would easily reccomend the 8500/9100 over the 9000, but if you can getting the 9500 would be the best route. it's more future-proofed and a good performer.

 

[BrianShort]

I've heard there is a 9500 that can be hacked into a 9700 Pro? Can I ask here where I might pick up one of these cards?

Brian

 

[Tekara]

yes, the 9500 128mb NON-pro cards can be hacked into 9700's but you have to make sure of some things: the memory must be in an "L" shape, the inline memory signifies that it will mod into a 9500pro if you run the hack instead of a 9700, which by all means is not bad at all. It's starting to really get tricky to find those cards again as ati is making the new 9500's on a new pcb, which only has the inline memory.