Which Graphics Card?

[Master_Thief]

I just installed and tested my new 7600 gt. It runs like a dream. Plays Oblivion and Battlefield 2 on full graphics and has also had the effect of decreasing the CPU temperature and subsequently reducing the CPU fan speed (though only by a tiny amount). Oblivion still crashed after playing, but hey, thats just Oblivion and I love it.

I'm sorry to hear about your card froggy. I haven't tried RTW yet so i've yet to see how that fares. I used the drivers from the CD that was provided and they seem to work fine. Perhaps you should give them a go. Good Luck!

Oh yeah I just remembered. I did take a look at the latest Nvidia drivers and one of the main updates was support for the 7600 GS AGP card. This leads me to suspect that because the Leadtek card is the only AGP 7600 GT available, their drivers are the only ones that support it. Whether this is true or not I don't know. If you do use the provided drivers a message will appear stating something about them not being tested for Windows XP. Just ignore this and it should work fine.

[Gealai]

Seems that a lot of guys are happy about the

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

XFX GeForce 7900 Gs

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/384/1/

http://www.hothardware.com/viewartic...leid=868&cid=2

Looks like a great 199$ card..

The PcMag choses the GT version by XFX for their complete bang-for-buck PC

[Crandaeolon]

Found a Connect3D Radeon X850 Pro for 149e, and stress testing shows that it flashed without a problem to XT PE specs. I'd call that a bargain.

Edit: For anyone else trying this, be sure you get the Vivo edition of X800 / X850 pro. In other editions, the disabled pipelines are blocked in hardware - they can't be unlocked with a bios flash.

I agree that Nvidia cards are generally a better choice for upgrading an AGP system, unless you feel like trying your luck.

Edit: MTW2 is probably a very texture-intensive game, so going Nvidia might be the better choice here. Oh well, we'll see.

[Master_Thief]

Yeah, I'm loving my 7600 gt at the moment and would recommend it to anyone upgrading an AGP card (though not if they only want to play RTW).

[MSB]

If I had to suggest one lovely good value, low budget graphics card I would recommend the Nvidia Geforce 6200 256MB. It gives a reasonable quality of graphics and it's not very expensive. It's a perfect balance between good graphics and good value.

But, if you have a (much) higher budget I would recommend that you wait for the Geforce 8800 to come out. It will have Shader Model 4 and a much higher clock speed compared to any previous cards. However it will sacrifice all budget requirements for performance and visual quality. I'm no expert, but I would say it could cost up to £500!

[doc_bean]

Gamespot just did a videocard round-up, people looking for a new card might be interested in checking it out.

Be sure to read what it says at the top of the high end card page: they won't future proof your system. I keep saying it too, but few people seem to be willing to listen...

[Dutch_guy]

Gamespot just did a videocard round-up, people looking for a new card might be interested in checking it out.

Be sure to read what it says at the top of the high end card page: they won't future proof your system. I keep saying it too, but few people seem to be willing to listen...

Link would be great