Birthday on the 14th, need a new Graphics Card but which?

[DeadInside.DOA]

Hey everyone. So I have my birthday coming up on June 14th, and I was gonna ask my mom for a new graphics card. I have been doing some research but cant find what I am looking for. I was hoping some of you guys could give me some suggestions.

First here is my system:
Intel Celeron-D Processor 345 3.06GHz/533FSB/256K Cache
1024MB DDR333 PC2700 Non-ECC Memory
GeForce FX5200-8X 128MB Video Card with TV Out

What I want is a 256DDR AGP card. I would prefer ATI Radeon or Nvidia. I have only had Nvida before and never had a problem with them plus they are easy to overclock. ATI seem to be good deals too though for the price.

My mom said she would get me the card for my birthday but I dont want to ask to much from her so I was thinking of $120<. Maybe even have 2 choices like a $100+ card and a $100< card and then she can just choose between the two. Anyway if anyone has any suggestions its much appreciated. Thanks guys

[Kalos]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102665R

An ATI card, but probably the best for your money. Searched Newegg on your price range, and this one is a bargin considering it's usual price.

[Hadgu]

Well as for what card imo i would go with Nvidia i think they run better with less probs. saying that i have one of my other PC's with ATI X800Pro 256mb and had no probs with that. $120 you say well i am in the uk so i work that as about £70 i think:ponder: .I have had alook anyway and from what i can see on Nvidia AGP cards (i assume thats what your motherboard supports up to AGP) theres not really anything there worth getting tbh in the price range. So i would say go with ATI the one i can see thats best to get which would be a far leap forward from what your using is the ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) i found it for £99 but with the stupid VAT we have to pay over here i am sure you can get it for your price range.

New Card:

- Powered by ATI Radeon X1600 Pro - GPU 500MHz
- 512MB-128bit 4 channel DDR2 memory - Memory 800MHz
- 12 Pixel shader processor
- 5 Vertex shader processor
- 8 Geometry Pipelines
- Ultra-threaded SM 3.0 Engine
- 256-bit Ring-bus

Current Card you have:

-GPU 250MHz
-Memory 400MHz
-128MB DDR Memory
- 256-bit Graphics Core
- 4 Pixels Per Clock
- 16 Textures per pixel (max per pass)
- Dual 350MHz RAMDACs

Hope that helps

[DeadInside.DOA]

Ty for your help guys! Both of those options look really nice. I couldnt find a very good Nvidia card for the money either but have never used ATI before.

I do have one question though. My current card is DDR1. Both of those cards are DDR2. I have also seen DDR3 cards. How do you know that DDR2 will work on my system? I also use DDR1 SDRAM in my comp to so I was just wondering how you can know which DDR my mother board can support?

[coolxboxgamer]

graphics card ram has no "compatablility issue"

any agp card thats prob 4x or 8x will work on ure system

also make sure ure power supply is good enough

u need to use a program to check if ure comp support ddr 1 or 2, i reccommend sandra soft 2006 or 2007 "google it"

[Kalos]

It shall work. The GDDR has nothing to do with the motherboard's own DDR compatibility, they aren't linked. As long as it's an AGP card and not a PCI-E, it will run perfectly.

[DeadInside.DOA]

Ok thanks I was confused on system Ram and Video Ram. I looked away from graphic cards that had DDR3 listed for them because I thought I couldnt use them. You guys have been a great help, ty much :thumbsup: