Graphics cardzzz

[Hunter]

I seriously need a graphics card, was trying to play cmt_snow_grove today and I had like 5fps because of intergrated graphics, and my BIOS will only allow the intergrated graphics to use 8MB of my RAM, I have 1GB....

So, i did some research... I have a PCI-E x16 slot, does anyone know of the best graphics card which will run the best for under £50?

Some other information about my system incase you need it:


Field Value
Computer
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
OS Service Pack Service Pack 3
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Computer Name CFF775
User Name Martyn

Motherboard
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 630, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)
Motherboard Name Dell Dimension 5100
Motherboard Chipset Intel Lakeport-G i945G
System Memory 1014 MB (DDR2-400 DDR2 SDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (05/25/05)

Display
Video Adapter Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family (224 MB)
Video Adapter Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family (224 MB)
3D Accelerator Intel GMA 950
Monitor Dell E173FP [17" LCD] (C538557U0VFM)
Monitor Dell E173FP [17" LCD] (C538557U0VFM)
Monitor Dell E173FP [17" LCD] (C538557U0VFM)

Multimedia
Audio Adapter Intel 82801GB ICH7 - High Definition Audio Controller [A-1]

Storage
IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller AD342SKR IDE Controller
Disk Drive Hitachi HDP725025GLA380 (232 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive Samsung SD Card MMC/SD USB Device
Disk Drive Samsung MS Card MS USB Device
Disk Drive Samsung SM/XD Card SM USB Device
Disk Drive Samsung CF Card CF USB Device
Disk Drive Maxtor 7L250S0 (232 GB, IDE)
Optical Drive PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8701
Optical Drive RQJKXYJ 7C5IFKPY3 SCSI CdRom Device
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions
C: (NTFS) 79485 MB (18289 MB free)
D: (NTFS) 158979 MB (37123 MB free)
F: (NTFS) 119208 MB (119140 MB free)
G: (NTFS) 119201 MB (119132 MB free)
Total Size 465.7 GB (286.8 GB free)

Input
Keyboard HID Keyboard Device
Mouse HID-compliant mouse

Network
Network Adapter Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection (86.13.252.156)

Peripherals
Printer EPSON Stylus CX3200
Printer Microsoft XPS Document Writer
Printer Send To OneNote 2007
USB1 Controller Intel 82801GB ICH7 - USB Universal Host Controller [A-1]
USB1 Controller Intel 82801GB ICH7 - USB Universal Host Controller [A-1]
USB1 Controller Intel 82801GB ICH7 - USB Universal Host Controller [A-1]
USB1 Controller Intel 82801GB ICH7 - USB Universal Host Controller [A-1]
USB2 Controller Intel 82801GB ICH7 - Enhanced USB2 Controller [A-1]
USB Device D-Link VGA Webcam #2
USB Device EPSON STYLUS CX3200
USB Device USB Audio Device
USB Device USB Composite Device
USB Device USB Composite Device
USB Device USB Human Interface Device
USB Device USB Human Interface Device
USB Device USB Mass Storage Device
USB Device USB Printing Support

[Mr Buckshot]

Your processor will cut it for modern games but it won't hurt to upgrade that too...these old Pentium 4s are a bottleneck for higher-end video cards.

I don't know about how hardware is priced in the U.K. but over in Canada I saw some Geforce 8600 GTS cards selling for less than $60 CAD, which is a steal. The chipset is over 2 years old but still performs fairly well on modern games, ok you can't hit Crysis maxed out at 1920x1200, but you can run it playably and still have some eye candy to appreciate.

If you can find a similar deal where you live, then go for it.

[Hunter]

I should be doing some jobs soon, so I will have some money coming in, this computer is pretty old, I want to get about 3GB of RAM in it, I supose I could get a new processor.

But tbh, this is even my computer, it is my mums. I have just taken over it Lol. So I would prefer to build my self a new computer from scratch... but that is costly, might just upgrade this and wait until I have got a steady job.

Edit: What about the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB?

Or any of these two?
Here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ZOTAC-NVIDIA-GEFORCE-9500-GT-1GB-1024MB-GRAPHICS-CARD_W0QQitemZ270319993354QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Co mputing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Card s_TW?hash=item3ef053c20a&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1683|293%3A1| 294%3A50)

And here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2GB-nVidia-GeForce-9500-GT-1GB-PhysX-HD-Graphics-Card_W0QQitemZ250464612053QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Co mputing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Card s_TW?hash=item3a50daaed5&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1683|293%3A1| 294%3A50)

[NullZero]

Get a better card than going for cards with 1GB VRAM

And tbh, that processor is ok, but will not cope with full modern physics of some engines.

[Hunter]

The processer will probably run faster with more RAM won't it?

[Bhamid]

Not really, one you have enough RAM, adding more won't help. You really should get a new PC though...

[legionaire45]

This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150337) or one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%20106792627%201067947628&name=Radeon%20HD%204770) would be an example of a pretty decent deal, it's a bit more expensive then you wanted but not by much, and the increased performance compared to something like a 9500 GT or whatever is worth the extra cost. For a little bit more you can get one with a gig of Vram, which should be pretty much overkill for now.

Your CPU will probably be a bottleneck for all but the most inexpensive cards, so you'll probably want to upgrade that soon. Ram is so inexpensive right now that if you do upgrade your CPU, you'll want to upgrade that too. You'll want to make sure that your motherboard supports Core 2 CPUs - otherwise, you'll need a new mobo too :P.

Make sure your power supply is capable of powering these cards as well - Dell tends to use the bare minimum power supply they can, so you might need to throw more money at that.

[Dwood]

Hunter, anyone telling you you have enough RAM has no idea what they're talking about.

Check your MoBo and see how many RAM slots there are. If you have four (2 separate colors with 2 slots each) You can upgrade up to 3.25 Gigs (roughly) if you're running 32 bit. If your MoBo is reeeeaaaaalllyyyy old then it's only have room for 2 slots of RAM.

If you feel up to it I suggest you upgrade your Video card to something like a 4850(or any other competing card in that range) nice power, cheap price.

Due to the way Dell has worked in the Past, I figure it's going to be tough/impossible to get a new Proc without buying the processor from Dell. They have a history of making Processors/RAM not fit without buying from them.

Check to see if your RAM looks like ones on NewEgg. (DDR2-400)

Anyways, 1 GB of Ram is not enough tbqh. Upgrading will show you a dramatic increase in Load times and performance.

tl; dr: If you have more moolah coming in, go for something like a 4850; Be sure you moBo isn't proprietary and will accept DDR2-400 RAM on NewEgg; Get at least 3 GB of RAM (in 32 OS' not all Ram is utilized)

[InnerGoat]

A 9500GT will do fine in Halo, but you should look into getting more ram as said above.

[Hunter]

It is a 32bit system. I mainly just want this computer able to run halo with no lag. Can never play it because the intergrated graphics suck, 8MB :S

Don't really want to start fucking about with this processor stuff now, can't be arsed Lol. This is only my mums computer, I will end up buying my self a computer/building one. Won't be untill I have at least £2000 though, I don't want some cheap shit.

I doubt I can get a duo core on this motherboard. There are also four memory slots. Also, from what I understand, a bit more memory for a 3GHz processor would help it to process data alot faster.

Cheers :)

Edit1:

Will this one be okay do you think? Novatech GeForce 9500GT SLI 1GB GDDR2 DVI/HDMI PCI-Express (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?nov-95gt1)
(The one Haruhi recomended, and it will fit into my system, right?)

[Amit]

A 9500GT will do fine in Halo, but you should look into getting more ram as said above.

What he has now does fine. Intel GMA 950 works great for Halo and Star Wars: Republic Commando. His problem is that Dell's gay motherboard bios lock prevents him from utilizing up to 128mb of the RAM. 128mb is all you'll get from GMA 950.

Most 945G Express Chipset motherboards only support socket LGA775 processors Pentium D and below. Therefore he won't be able to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo processor without upgrading his motherboard as well.

Hunter, since you have tons of space on your computer, pile a the contents of one partition into another partition or external hard drive. Then, delete the empty partition, repartition it, and install a 64-bit OS on it, such as Windows 7 Build 7600 (suspected RTM build). THe Pentium 4 630 has 64-Bit support :) All you need to do then is buy maybe 2 modules of 2GB RAM and run it in dual channel mode.

[343guiltymc]

Don't even bother with something beyond a 9500 gt, or it's going to be a waste. I've bought a 9800 gt on my PC with a Pentium D and the CPU is a MAJOR bottleneck.

[InnerGoat]

Cheers :)

Edit1:

Will this one be okay do you think? Novatech GeForce 9500GT SLI 1GB GDDR2 DVI/HDMI PCI-Express (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?nov-95gt1)
(The one Haruhi recomended, and it will fit into my system, right?)Get one with 512MB of memory you dont need 1GB on a low end card... :ohdear:

[Warsaw]

What he has now does fine. Intel GMA 950 works great for Halo and Star Wars: Republic Commando. His problem is that Dell's gay motherboard bios lock prevents him from utilizing up to 128mb of the RAM. 128mb is all you'll get from GMA 950.

Most 945G Express Chipset motherboards only support socket LGA775 processors Pentium D and below. Therefore he won't be able to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo processor without upgrading his motherboard as well. BIOS flash can fix this in some cases

Hunter, since you have tons of space on your computer, pile a the contents of one partition into another partition or external hard drive. Then, delete the empty partition, repartition it, and install a 64-bit OS on it, such as Windows 7 Build 7600 (suspected RTM build). THe Pentium 4 630 has 64-Bit support :) All you need to do then is buy maybe 2 modules of 2GB RAM and run it in dual channel mode.

Anyways, Hunter, if Halo is your main game, go for one of the ATi cards since that is what Halo was built for. Anything from the 4670 to the 4890 would do, just don't overdo it since you can't exactly utilise the full power of the higher end cards.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Heh, you think a 9800gt is a bottleneck on a pentium D?
try a 4870...

[Hunter]

Hunter, since you have tons of space on your computer, pile a the contents of one partition into another partition or external hard drive. Then, delete the empty partition, repartition it, and install a 64-bit OS on it, such as Windows 7 Build 7600 (suspected RTM build). THe Pentium 4 630 has 64-Bit support :) All you need to do then is buy maybe 2 modules of 2GB RAM and run it in dual channel mode.

Well, I did partition both hard drives into two parts. I don't know why, but the second hard drive has nothing on it so I could make that just one partition.

I have wanted to install another OS on that hard drive, where can I get hold of Windows 7?

Edit: Deleted partitions on second hard drive, formatting now.

[Rook]

This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150337)

Sweet card, it's the one I got. runs meh games smooth @ 1920x1080

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

I got the 4870 :P

[Hunter]

I will probably get the GeForce 9500GT 512MB. Cheers guys.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Good luck w/ it
BTW
How the hell do you manage to do 3d modeling on 8mb vram??

[Hunter]

Dunno, it runs smoothly though :S Very smoothly actually.

Also, what is multi threading? I know it is something to do with rendering, but my processor is capable of it...

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Multi threading allows more use of a processor
Essentially, A Pentium D with multi threading, with two threads on each core, has two physical cores, and 4 logical cores.

[Hunter]

So it makes the processor a lot faster at processing data? Would help with more RAM for the processor to use.

[Amit]

Don't even bother with something beyond a 9500 gt, or it's going to be a waste. I've bought a 9800 gt on my PC with a Pentium D and the CPU is a MAJOR bottleneck.

Depends on the model of the Pentium Ds. The lower end models will but the higher end ones shouldn't bottleneck it too severely.



I have wanted to install another OS on that hard drive, where can I get hold of Windows 7?

You can get the Windows 7 RC ISO file from Microsoft along with pretty much as many keys as you want. You must sign in with a Hotmail account, though. Linked. (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx) I can not state where I obtained my copy of Build 7600 from. You will have to find that out for yourself.


I will probably get the GeForce 9500GT 512MB. Cheers guys.

No, don't. Get a nice cheap HD 4670. By beats the crap out of a 9500GT AND you can play COD4 full settings on it. Many other games will look great if you get curious and decide to purchase or try demos of other games. Also, it may be worth noting that some 9500GT cards requires a 6-Pin PCI-E power supply connection.

Check out this awesome Guru3d Review (http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-radeon-hd-4670-review/9) of the HD 4670.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Yes, Ram is essentially short term memory, and the hard drive is long term memory, the more ram you have, the more you can do at once, but, if you don't have a processor to go along with it, it will be useless.

[Varmint260]

I have no problem with a 9500GT 1GB. Of course, it doesn't really need the 1GB of VRAM as stated above, but I've noticed that in a lot of my games the frame rate doesn't take much of a hit with this card when switching between 1152x720 and 1680x1050, so it's not too bad. Runs quite cool as well. The card made a MASSIVE improvement to my performance (upgraded from Radeon 2100 integrated) when I had the Athlon 2.4GHz processor, so I expect you'll will notice a big improvement. Can't say anything about other cards in the price range, but the 9500 I have experience with.

[Hunter]

I am downloading W7 atm. Its using some stupid Java Downloading Manager... so does that mean I cannot close my browser untill it has finished?
Or have microsoft implanted the ability to stop a download then continue downloading later? Like Firefox does.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

The first one

[Hunter]

ffs... why do they make you use java shit. Why not give you a torrent or something :/

[Amit]

I thought it was a straight download like Beta 1.

[Phopojijo]

So it makes the processor a lot faster at processing data? Would help with more RAM for the processor to use.A thread is basically a logical progression of a program. Do this, then that, then this other thing.

Firstly, the amount of RAM doesn't help the processor do anything (how fast it operates does, but that's not what you're looking it). Memory is just a storage bin for code and data. It lets the processor get the information it wants without needing to fetch from further and further away places.

If your storage bin is large enough to store all your code and data -- getting a larger one does NOTHING for you. And a 9500GT is quite slow enough... and Halo CE's assets are quite small enough... that jumping from 512 to 1GB will be indistinguishable ((possibly slow you down a smidgen actually due to a few factors))

Now back to the threading thing.

Lets say you're making a videogame. You have to deal with listening to keyboard and mouse input as well as animating the scenery (and many other things).

In a single thread, you would need to constantly ask the keyboard "is any button down?" -- if the answer is no, then it works a bit on animating the scenery, then ask again "is any button down?" and so forth.

Now if you had 2 threads on your processor... you wouldn't need to jump back and forth... because you could have one thread say "constantly ask the keyboard what's being pressed" and you could have another thread animating the scenery. The two would then be synchronized by some clock of some sort (usually Framerate) and neither will interfere with each other.

[Hunter]

I have just finished installing Windows 7, and it is awesome. How long is it though, because it says evolution copy :/

Also, is there a key I can press on startup which allows me to chose which operating system I want to load up? Because I have XP on one hard drive and W7 on the other.

I don't want to disable this hard drive (XP) because I want to access the files on it.

And could I make it load one OS by default?

[InnerGoat]

W7 runs out sometime around march of next year, I think :-3

If you installed W7 normally you'll have the choice of OS every time you boot up...

[NullZero]

He probably doesn't have an boot option for W7 in msconfig

[Hunter]

Nope, when I got to the select OS option on boot Windows 7 is not there :( How can I manually add it? I have disabled my XP hard drive atm through the BIOS. but I want to be able to access it.

Wow, wtf. Doesnt directx only got up to 10.1? But apparentlly Windows 7 has got DirectX 11... acording to the DirectX Dialog... I wonder how that will run on intergrated graphics. I did read somewhere that they are thinking of implanting Direct3D into the CPU... Ima install halo. :)

[Dwood]

Hunter... I still suggest you buy the 4850 or 9800 (4850's competitor?) if you have money coming in.

If you buy your own computer you can just take out the 4850 and plop it into the new computer.

And another thing, have you decided to put more RAM in or not?

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

What it is, is that, the cpu can help assist the gpu, or even do all of the gpu work at all, the core i7 gets about 17fps on crysis on the lowest settings at 800x600

[NullZero]

Hunter... I still suggest you buy the 4850 or 9800 (4850's competitor?) if you have money coming in.


The 9800GTX is 4850's competitor, though I still think 4850 holds the title.

And yes, the CPU can help, but it isn't as efficient processing and rendering as a GPU iirc

[Hunter]

I should be getting some more memory for it, and I will need to have a good look at the cards you have sudgested to me after I have fixed this problem with Windows 7.

Cheers btw :)

[Mr Buckshot]

Good luck w/ it
BTW
How the hell do you manage to do 3d modeling on 8mb vram??

IIRC isn't the shared graphics memory dynamically allocated with these Intel cards? As in, if the computer detects that you're running an app (e.g. Halo) that needs a certain amount of VRAM, it automatically steals some extra memory from the main RAM to help out? I think that's how my sister's laptop works (not that I used it for gaming except on one vacation when I didn't have my own laptop accessible).

which means I don't think he's actually running on 8 MB of VRAM...when he's just surfing the web, the PC should reset to 8 MB, when he's gaming then at least 24 MB more should be allocated immediately.