so my 6600gt is starting to show its age

and bioshock can't even play at low settings


so whats a good card that would let me play bioshock at medium-high settings on a 1024x768 screen.

budget is less than $200.



Thanks!

Is it AGP or PCIe? You could give the X1950 Pro a try.

Is your motherboard AGP or PCI-e?

x1950pro/xt if you can find one cheap. Currently it's getting harder to find them, along with an amost comparable 7900gs. Here's one to look at, if it's a pci-e card that your looking for.
7900gs for cheap! $126 shipped!!
PNY VCG7900SXPB GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133186

x1950pro $166 shipped - $40 MIR = $126!! same as 7900gs, but just a tad better.
HIS Hightech H195PRF256DDN-R Radeon X1950PRO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161060

That would be the best under $200 right now. Hopefully you have a competent PSU to handle the GPU, so keep that in mind.

Thanks guys its pci-e


lunyone - those 7900gs are clocked 50 mhz down to agp speeds for some odd reason i've checked them out

also will x1950pro work on a 570sli mobo?

and another thing...will it run bioshock on max or just medium-high?

my psu is 520Watt on 34 Ampere single rail config

it should handle it right?


if not i can get the thermaltake 5.25 inch PSU and shove it in my system to power just the card

Don't know if it will run on max settings or not, since I don't have Bioshock . For the amount of $ that you want to spend, the x1950pro is the best bet. The 7900gs's don't require as much power, but are just a shade slower than the x1950's. Any PCI-e mobo should support either the 7900gs or x1950. Not sure why you would have a problem with either, unless your talking about doing SLI (which is nVidia's version of AMD's crossfire). If your thinking about doing SLI/Crossfire, I wouldn't do it. I don't think you can SLI two ATI boards, you would need a Crossfire board to do that. You would be better off getting a 8800gts for about the same $ of a SLI setup and still have better performance.

thanks for the help.

no im not going to Crossfire an ATi Card with a nvidia chipset.

i know better than that. haha.

i was just wondering since the chispet is an nvidia chipset that was made specifically to SLi Nvidia cards i thought it wouldn't take even 1 Ati card.

Not a problem. I think I read somewhere that the x1950pro only needs something like 26-28A max on the 12V rail. So I'm assuming you would be fine. Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong.

Nope. You can use whatever PCI-e card in that mobo. It's only when you want to SLI them is where you'll have a problem (as you noted earlier).

7900gs is terrible for bioshock

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page8.asp

go for 1950pro or 8600gts

Here's a link for video card comparison between 8600gts and x1950pro. You will have to decide which works for you.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=276

just finished the demo a few minutes ago (game was kinda creepy near the beginning, but still fun). XP pro x64 sp2, X2 3800+, 2GB PC3200, 7800GT (all at stock speeds), @ 1024x768 res, other ingame settings on high (they were all the default settings and res for the game), and manual driver settings as well (8x AF, gamma correction on, multisampling on, threaded opti on, AA and verticle sync controlled by app, etc). gameplay was around 20-25 FPS it seemed, so it was definetly playable either way, no stuttering that i noticed. if you want perfectly smooth fps though with a similar gpu (such as the ones that were being recommended), you may need to turn a couple settings down some below max.

20-25 fps and it was smooth?!? =) lol

with 200$ i think u can get a 1950xt 256mb .. wich is a pretty damn good card. I played STALKER 16x12 with all maxed with it.... wasnt perfect smoothness but it was definately playable... after i switched it with 8800gts 640.. to be honest i didnt see much improvement if u can believe that...

lol, well, it was definetly playable overall, there were only a few places where it could actually be considered smooth though (40+ fps or so im guessing, given what the settings were). with fraps i could probably give more accurate numbers.

edit: well, i was fairly close anyhow... fps hovered around a high of 30 fps on average, b