PCI Graphics cards

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PCI Graphics cards

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right i have an E-machines Pc running a p4 @2.93Ghz and over a gig of ram and im after a half decent graphics card it hasnt got a AGP or PCI express (it only has 2 PCI slots) Should have checked before i bought it so what graphics card shold i go for to run games mainly..

any ideas?thanks
 
realistically it is now 2007 so you cant get a PCI card that is good enough. honestly. just get yourself a new mother board, £30 will get you a decent pci-e compatible board on ebay, just make sure it has the right socket for your cpu. not all boards are created equal, make sure you get a good one.

if you are determined to stick with your mother board then at least make sure you get a graphics card that has a 128bit memory interface, 128mb ram, 400mhz memory clock, directX9 compatibility and 240mhz core clock. anything less and you're wasting your time, but with a card of that spec you could limp though some recentish games if you reduce the graphic quality and hopefully manage a decent framerate.

best card you'll find is probably the ati 9250 (not the 9250se!)
or try this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Latest-PNY-Ge...oryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


be careful, lots of idiots on ebay list things wrongly and there will be plenty of pci-e cards listed as pci cards, do your research.
 
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should have mentioned that im curently running a voodoo 3 with 16mb on board (its been in 3 pc's to date) im out of touch with the pc gaming world what do most games take to run these days? you dont seem to see 3DFX now and the drivers im using are someone's mod downloaded to make the card run on XP.....
 
I am running a very fast AGP card, X850XT PE with 256MB, and believe me, it struggles with the latest games, plus has no support for SM3.0 - a few recent games, I can't even install because of the spec.

With PCI and that setup, you have no chance - what type of games are you into?
 
doesnt seem like 2 minutes ago i used to drool about the 850xt with its 16 pixel pipelines and 256bit interface, now they go for a few quid on ebay and are hardly worth buying. its amazing how things change. i remember my original voodoo that i had in my first pentium, a 133 pro, happy days, all the voodoo did was make the graphics blurry, but i loved it.
 
No wonder Comet was selling them cheap at the time :bang: was hoping it would be a simple case of buy a new card but not my luck :mad: darn computers only about a year and a half old if that i was hoping it might at least have an AGP port but ohh no..

so what mother boards suit a P4 processor 516? i take it they all now take DDR ram or has that been super seeded by something else and is Sata HDD now standard?

i'm completely out of touch with it all now despite building a pc in the past without any major drama. but decided with this computer that it looked cheaper on paper than buying all the bits and sticking them together..
 
Yep, things sure move on - GFX cards are huge now, and the big boys run two of them with SLI/Crossfire setups.

Even the fan on mine kicks in big time, and that is just playing CS:Source or something.

So what was the reason to buy this cheapy machine then? It can't have been for gaming, lol.
 
doesnt seem like 2 minutes ago i used to drool about the 850xt with its 16 pixel pipelines and 256bit interface, now they go for a few quid on ebay and are hardly worth buying. its amazing how things change. i remember my original voodoo that i had in my first pentium, a 133 pro, happy days, all the voodoo did was make the graphics blurry, but i loved it.

Was it the loop through type?

I ran a S3 Virge DX.. Couldn't tell if the 3dFx Voodo 2 helped or hindered :eek:
 
I am running a very fast AGP card, X850XT PE with 256MB, and believe me, it struggles with the latest games, plus has no support for SM3.0 - a few recent games, I can't even install because of the spec.

With PCI and that setup, you have no chance - what type of games are you into?

Im in the same boat exactly the same card and I was bloody p***ed of when I couldn't play Rainbow 6 Vegas!.

As for orginal post get a new mobo and processor anf gfx if budget will stretch (y) You will see the difference :).
 
I have the AGP version of that card's bigger brother - the x1950xtx

No issues at all apart from its power comsumption and general physical size!

DSC003381.JPG
 
Jesus christ you could re melt that heatsink into an exhaust manifold its that big :eek:. Does it cause power fluctuations in your house like lights dimming etc :p.

If you're talking about the CPU cooler it's only got 1x 80mm fan on it. The GFX card though is a power worry. 360Watts doesn't quite seem upto the task of the 1950xtx alongside an AMD 64 dual core 4200 :)

The one that's dipping the lights though is my 4400 upstairs

edv_1.jpg
 
Can remember building a server with 2x Dual Core Opterons running at 5000+ or something stupid like that it had 4x 750 watt power supplies (2 were redundant to make it stable :rolleyes:. My computer is a AMD 64 3000+ 1.8ghz ive got it overclocked to 2450mhz only due to my watercooling setup :devil: :slayer:.
 
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