What to buy?

[Hopless]

Hey, im new when it comes to computer hardware and recently i have been intrested in upgrading my E Machines T2460, so it can run the newer games or i can finally get a decent frame rate on the games i do play. The video card it came with is an S3 ProsavageDDR and from what ive learned and heard its horrible and it really is. I was wondering what is a nice video card that cost around $200 dollars or less. If you need more info on my pc just tell me.

[maximus7001]

Re: What to buy?

Without knowing where you live, I am guessing usa. This r9600xt would fit your budget and leave enough $ left over for another 256mb of ram which your machine is also lacking, r9800pro for $30 more than your budget would make a whole world of difference. Buying a gfx card nowadays can be confusing for someone who has never bought one before.
What will you be using it for?

[MRZigzz]

Re: What to buy?

Sorry to somewhat "attack" your post, maximus7001, but...

Newegg has both those cards for less then at that site (unless that site is using another form of currency, if which case, I may eat my words); the Sapphire Radeon 9600XT ($138 US) and Sapphire Radeon 9800PRO ($198 US). I would suggest the Radeon 9800 PRO, can handle every game out now with incredible results and soon to come games :caugh:Doom III:caugh: with mild to good results (depends on how you look at it) and is in your price range. Plus, if your interested in overclocking, the 9800PRO (havn't had a chance to futs with the 9600XT) does well at OC'ing, yet I havn't taken it to a high degree.

I do agree with maximus7001 in that you many want to get better/more ram, unless you've done that already. It (or possibly the processor might, or both) may choke the video cards preformance by creating a massive bottleneck in the system. I won't discuss that here, since you asked specificly about video cards, and I'm bias on memory (512 or more, no less, and it has to be OCZ or Corsair or Mushkin, that's the only brands I trust ( got screwed once on another brand of memory, didn't live up to what the description said)).

EDIT: yes, more info on the system would help us help you, mainly:

Amound of RAM
Processor Type/Speed

The motherboard would be nice to know too, though it's not that big of a deal.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: What to buy?

Unless your on a Pentium 3 or something, the video is the first thing you need to upgrade, no question. S3 pretty much make the worse graphics there are. Even old PCI cards that use to be popular are sometimes better. It it unlikely that it has any sort of shading capabilities (leaving you unable to play many modern and upcoming games) and S3 graphics tend to be slow. They're not meant for games; they're meant to reduce cost on the part of OEM computer companies by providing graphics that can't be used very far beyond office applications. You need a new video card in order to play any game newer than, say, Half-Life comfortably. For $200 US, the Radeon 9800 Pro is the obvious choice. You won't find yourself upgrading that for quite some time.

That said, it won't fix all of your problems. It's like they said, you may need upgrades in other areas. Download CPU-Z from my signature and use it to determine what kind of RAM and processor you have. That will allow us to tell you whether or not you need upgrades in other areas as well.

[KoolDrew]

Re: What to buy?

for a little over 200 bucks i would suggest going with the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro

[Hopless]

Re: What to buy?

ok i downloaded the progam but i was looking at new egg and there is an SE version of the 9800 and i was wondering what is the diffrence bettween se and pro besides the drastic price cut. Oh and heres the ram and processor info.

Ram:224
Processor:AMD Athelon XP

[KoolDrew]

Re: What to buy?

Th SE doesnt performa anywhere near as good as the normal 9800Pro. And if you can't afford a 9800 pro i heard the gigabyte 9600's were good especially for overclocking.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: What to buy?

The SE has pipelines disabled and is clocked lower (I think it's clocked lower anyway, don't recall). It's basically a normal 9800 downgraded to all hell. Now you can do a BIOS flash that will enable those four piplines and get yourself a non-pro that won't OC well but for quite a bit less than an actual NP. But it's not really a guaranteed thing. You might get artifacts at NP speeds. You might have problems finding a workable BIOS. You might flash it with the wrong BIOS and not have a PCI video card. I really wouldn't suggest trying that little undertaking unless you already own a 9800SE. Not worth the risk otherwise.

I needed a little more information on the RAM and processor. What speed is the Athlon XP? How much L2 cache does it have? How much RAM do you have? I'm assuming you mean that's the speed of the RAM (although that's less than PC2100 if it actually is the RAM speed). It might be best if you just post the HTML summary, I guess.

[Hopless]

[Yawgm0th]

Re: What to buy?

Nothing about the RAM, but I doubt it's a problem. Your bottleneck is definitely the onboard video. The Radeon 9800 Pro will be great on that system.

[Hopless]

Re: What to buy?

thanks for all the help you guys i got all my info in less than a day and thats nice service!