Video Card Question - In the Market

[derske]

Hey all,
I'm looking to upgrade my craptacular computer for the upcoming expansion. My next improvement happens to be my video card (or lack there of). Unfortunatly, I have no PCI-E or AGP slots :cry: . Now, I've found fairly decent PCI cards around the net and was wondering: how much greater gameplay quality would there be with a 256mb card vs. say a 128mb card?
Thanks for any help,
Derske

[lasgil]

The ram on the video card isnt that important, the most important thing is which gpu the video card has.
For example, a nividia 7200 video card with 512mb of ram will never be as good as a ati9800pro with only 128mb ram.

It boils down to fill rate, ramdac speed and so on..

Tons of articals on the net concerning video card issues, at the top of my head i have to advices.

Buy something in the geforce7600 series or ati x1600, affordeble prizes with good gpu. Check that the ram on the video card is ddr2 or ddr3.

My option is the nvidia geforce 7600go with 256ddr2 ram.
good luck

[lasgil]

sry for crap advices, the geforce 7600go is a laptop card and so is atix1600,
lol

[Clavina]

The trouble with PCI cards is that the PCI bus that the card will use is ridiculously slow compared to AGP and PCI-E.

If you really want a noticeable increase in performance then you should really consider upgrading the system completely ie new MB/CPU/Video card etc. Instead of spending money on these small upgrades I would save the cash for a large and worthwhile upgrade.

[Kalos]

Agreed. If your system doesn't even have an eight year old standard like AGP fitted into it, it must have either been a budget, or a pretty old system to begin with. There's no point having one absolutely racing component that gets dragged down by everything else. The key to system performance is a balanced approach. Really old or cheap parts like a motherboard without PCI-E or AGP aren't going to be very effective bases.

The base of a computer to which all other parts can simply be added onto is a triangle of the Ram, CPU, and motherboard. After that a proper graphics card can be added for further gains, but without that solid base, it's pointless throwing a great graphics card into a peice of junk E.G. Putting a 7950 GTX in a 2.6 Ghz Celeron (It doesn't matter what Ghz ratio it is, if it's a Celeron, might as well have a Pentium II under the hood, it's worst processor still in manufacture for those who have to buy as cheap as possible)