Need Advice on a graphcis card for M2TW

This post was made by Mrs Cabbage in the Citadel; any advice from people here would be gratefully received:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mrs Cabbage

Hiya Everyone

I will have Medieval II arrive soon, but I don't want to ruin it, by playing it with my current graphics card.

After getting lost in a world of Rome : Total War I visited these forums, I realised how much more awe inspiring the battles would have been if I had more than the 20ish people in an army!

My PC is as below

AMD XP 2600+
2 x 512MB of DDR memory
ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB DDR 8x AGP
Asus A7N8X-X SKT A Nforce2 AGP X8 Sound USB 2.0 Motherboard
PSU Q-TEC ADT-350 (+12V - 30A)
Seagate ST380011A Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM ATA/100 2MB Cache
Windows 2000 Install

3dMark03 stays pretty much 640 no matter how I tweak settings

I have spent the last 3 evenings reading up on the new technology (and don't things change so fast) and have decided the best way to get my PC Medieval II happy is to upgrade the graphics card.

It has to be AGP and I can't bring myself to pay more than £100 as it will only be for this game - my christmas present to myself will be taking a few days work and playing this game all day

I have been looking at the X1000 series from ATI

Here are 2 examples

£82 - Sapphire Radeon X1650 PRO 256MB GDDR3 VGA TVO DVI-I AGP
£72 - Gigabyte Radeon X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2, PCI-E, DVI, HDTV Out, Retail with Silent Heatpipe II AGP

One of these has no fan (I think) and that might be important - my current PC is very quiet and I don't know how loud fans are on graphics cards...

I would be very grateful for any input anyone can give me to help me decide the best way to go with this. I have till Tuesday to research until I will then make an order for a new card. I have to go to work now so please don't think I am being rude if I don't respond until this evening.

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Well, first of all I understand you're content with just playing the game - no matter what (normal, or lower settings are OK) ?

I'm saying because the cards you listed aren't quite top of the line cards, you won't get one of those in the < 100 category.

Anyway, not knowing any of the listed cards I'd simply pick the more expensive one - that 10 pound difference won't hurt you, and you'll get the better card.

That said, do consider upping your budget, if you can. Video cards are very, very, important and you don't want to have to upgrade them every new game. In my opinion you should invest in the future, meaning you should either wait for Vista (DX10) or buy a slightly more expensive card which will give you a good (even great) run for your money on all current games, and even on those still to come. An example of such a card (AGP card, that is) would be the A7600GT, a fine card - for sale for about 200 dollars ( I think, may even be less !), and it's still one of the best cards considering it's price - quality correlation.



[EDIT] I only just noticed the prices you wrote down were listed in pounds, which would make the cards (simply by looking at the price ) a bit better than I thought, at first. Still, I stand by what I said.

[EDIT 2] some AnandTech linkies considering Radeon X--- Cards, check out the home page - it's quite a useful site

Home

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Two

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I have the 7600gt and it is absolutely brilliant. From what i've seen its one of the most powerful agp cards around ( with the exception of the pimped up gainward cards which cost a fortune). I paid about &#163;150 from www.overclockers.co.uk including packaging etc. I haven't had any problems with it but I know some people have so its up to you if you want to take the risk. For the amount you were suggesting the cards you listed are probably the best ones to get, just make sure you get agp. The best thing to do is to keep on looking around and chatting with people on the forums. I did that for about a month and ended up satisfied. Good british websites include: -
www.overclockers.co.uk
www.lowestonweb.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk

The 7600GT is by far the best value AGP card around at the moment, and should allow you to run M2TW at reasonably high settings. I wouldn't waste money on either of the other cards you mentioned-they'll be obsolete very quickly, and won't run Medieval well in any case.