A Retro cad for my Retro computer?

sunjay

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Jan 29, 2006
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Hi,

I'm James, I'm new to this forum. I would like to as if anyone can suggest a PCI (not PCI-Express) graphics card for my retro computer.

I'm not much a gamer, I mostly work in Photoshop and at times Maya. I also want to be able to play No One lives Forever 2 and Flight Sim 2005, but games are not my priorities.

My computer has Intel Celeron 1.1ghz clocked to 1.46ghz with 512 mb ram. motherboard has no AGP slot but intergrated Trident Blade 8mb graphics.

I've done some research on the nVdia Geforce FX5700 LE and the Radeon 9100, but can't decide. I've also looked at brands such as Matrox and Oxygen, but all these things are getting too confusing for me. So help from you guys are greatly needed.

My budget is max $100AUD.

James
p.s I'm no good at computers, all that specs were accquired with the help of my friend.
 

riva2model64

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Jan 9, 2006
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The ATi Radeon 9250 sounds like a good choice
but it is both slow and pricey

Then there's also the GeForce 4 MX 440 PCI
its slow and a less pricey, harder to find
it is DX 7 and can't play games like Battlefield 2
 

sunjay

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What about that nvidia geforce FX5700 LE? I've heard that the Radeon 9100 is only DX8 capable and the feforce is DX9 capable. Is this true? Also my friend said never get geforce 4 MX series. What's wrong with them?

James
 

CRAFTSMAN_69

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The 5700le is only available to my knowledge with 64bit memory interface which makes it among other things worthless and expensive. This is about as good as it is gonna get with DX9 and a 128bit memory interface

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133134

and available in 256 megs as well

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143032

The FX5500 is a decent low end card that supports DX9 and will play most games set on low settings.You might want to consider getting a used S370 motherboard off ebay for cheap and go AGP instead which will open your options up.
 

sunjay

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I'm so confused. In terms of specs, what would be the best card with PCI interface? What I'm saying is, what is the top card with PCI interface. I guess my budget can stretch a bit.

thanks
James

p.s Googling all those jargon to try and understand.
 

sunjay

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OpenGL? What is that? I've had a look at the newegg.com site and have found these 2 that i'm considering

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814133134
and
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814103167 (suggested by Raven_87)

Sorry about my limited knowledge on computers, but, the Radeon has OpenGL 1.3 while the Geforce has 1.4 . What does that mean?

and another thing, the Radeon has a another weird connector out the back as opposed as the 'normal' ones for the monitor. Whats the 'other' one for?

thanks
James
 

hashv2f16

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I think the MX cards were the budget cards and the FX series cards were the top. Like how celeron is the budget processor and the pentium is the top of the line. My mate got a MX440 (or something like that) 128MB agp card and the visuals look like crap, slow as crap etc