Graphic Card to Tide my friend over

[BuddyGoodness]

My friend has a Dell Dimension 4500. Pent 4 2.4ghz 768 ddr ram, 250W PSU, 2 HDs one optical. He broke both his legs and back and is gonna be out of work for a couple of months. He wants to buy a cheap graphics card (125$ or less) that will let him play Half Life 2, call of duty 2, and Civ 4, ect, ect without having to change out his PSU. He currently has the GeForce MX 420. I am looking at the GeForce FX 5500, Radeon X700, GeForce 6600. I don't know if the last two will need a better PSU but CPU calculator says less than 230W on all three cards. Can someone tell me if one of these cards will do to get him through his downtime or tell me one that will work?

 

[almerac]

dont get any of those, if you can work it in a 7600GS would be optimal, otherwise a 9800pro is a good old school hard hitter, and i guess a distant third would be a 6600GT. all of those will be fine on a 230 watt PSU

 

[dos1986]

You can get 7600gs on newegg for $125 which is as good a deal you will find on an online store its a good card

I would go on ebay though if I was your friend and try and get a better card like x800xl,7600gt,x800xt etc these cards can be got for $125 on ebay get bidding I say

Ohh yeah your psu should be fine Dell underestimates there psu's 250 watt Dell is like 330 watt

 

[glowinggreenlemming]

Do you have an AGP or a PCI express slot in your computer

if you have a PCI express you might want to consider this deal

there is a link i think in the graphics card forum in the first few pages that will take you to buy.com where you can get an xfx 7600 gs for $50 after two rebates and using google checkout. I believe this offer is still good without the rebates it like $90. I copied the link from Pauldh's post on about page 3 of the graphics card forum it might even work .



this card is a PCI express card

XFX 7600GS $49.99 shipped AR.

link did not work

 

[cleeve]

otherwise a 9800pro is a good old school hard hitter, and i guess a distant third would be a 6600GT. all

A 6600 GT will beat a 9800 PRO at pretty much everything.

If you want a good AGP card for cheep, nothing will beat an X800 XL on ebay. Might even get it for under $100, and it'll perform almost as well as a 7600 GT

 

[BuddyGoodness]

Sorry I should have mentioned that. It is an AGP mobo.

 

[Noffy]

Sorry I should have mentioned that. It is an AGP mobo.

I would suggest a X850pro, should be able to find this for $130 and it quite a bit of power. That what I used last year before going to pci-e and it worked great.

my $0.02


Noffy

 

[burn-e86]

otherwise a 9800pro is a good old school hard hitter, and i guess a distant third would be a 6600GT. all

A 6600 GT will beat a 9800 PRO at pretty much everything.

If you want a good AGP card for cheep, nothing will beat an X800 XL on ebay. Might even get it for under $100, and it'll perform almost as well as a 7600 GT
dont forget that 6600 also has SM3 over the X800 which uses SM2.
i seem to remember my 9800PRO holding out against a 6600 pretty well though that was back in the day when 6 series just came out.
also to find a 9800 nowadays is a pretty good challange. though if you get a good 9800PRO 256bit bus, you can OC it to an XT (abet with 128meg rather then 256). this was due to a shortage in PROs, they just changed the XT to 128RAM and a downclocked it and changed the BIOS.

 

[Hameedo]

otherwise a 9800pro is a good old school hard hitter, and i guess a distant third would be a 6600GT. all

A 6600 GT will beat a 9800 PRO at pretty much everything.

If you want a good AGP card for cheep, nothing will beat an X800 XL on ebay. Might even get it for under $100, and it'll perform almost as well as a 7600 GT
dont forget that 6600 also has SM3 over the X800 which uses SM2.
i seem to remember my 9800PRO holding out against a 6600 pretty well though that was back in the day when 6 series just came out.
also to find a 9800 nowadays is a pretty good challange. though if you get a good 9800PRO 256bit bus, you can OC it to an XT (abet with 128meg rather then 256). this was due to a shortage in PROs, they just changed the XT to 128RAM and a downclocked it and changed the BIOS.

a 6600 but not 6600 GT

Any way , you really should consider 7600GS or GT or may be a good working X800GTO with 256-bit bus .

otherwise X800XL or X850 will be very great if you found one .

 

[cleeve]

dont forget that 6600 also has SM3 over the X800 which uses SM2.

Meh. Only matters if you want to play Splinter Cell Double agent.

For the games that use OpenEXR HDR, the 6600 isn't fast enough to enable it either, so it's a checkbox feature.

 

[BuddyGoodness]

I think some of the cards you mentioned like the x800xl requires it's own power line from the PSU or am I mistaken. I have not looked inside his comp yet, maybe this isn't a problem, maybe the psu has a line for power to a video card.

 

[jb124]

I think some of the cards you mentioned like the x800xl requires it's own power line from the PSU or am I mistaken. I have not looked inside his comp yet, maybe this isn't a problem, maybe the psu has a line for power to a video card.

My 800xl doesn't require a connector, but it's PCI-E so I dunno if there are more power lines than an AGP.