Cheap Shader 2.0 AGP GPU needed!

**Ituralde** · 10-11-2006, 17:46

Well, the title says it all:

I just played the Medieval 2 Demo the last couple of days and was pretty happy that my 3-year old system could handle it so well. I have a Pentium IV 2,66 GHz with 1 Gig of RAM but the chokepoint is my graphics card, which is a Geforce4 Ti4200, while I can play the game fine on the lowest to medium settings I have been planning on buying an all new PC for quite some time now. I want to wait though until Vista with its accompanying Directx10 is out and Core2 Duo processor have fallen in price a little before I make my move.

You may wonder now, why I should care for a new GPU, when Medieval 2 is displaying fine. The problem is that the Geforce4 only allows me to use Shader 1.0 and after wondering a lot why I didn't get to see any nice blood and mud effects on my units and after installing it on my laptop, whose ATI Radeon 9800 Mobility supports Shader 2.0, I realized that it was all down to that little 2 in front of the dot. My Laptop unfortunately only has 512MB RAM which is a little too low and the processor is also lacking, besides I need my numpad to play Total War, everything else just feels akward.

So what I really want is a pretty cheap AGP card wich has Shader 2.0 support. I don't want to spend more than roughly 50$ on it, maybe one of you forumites can point me in the right direction. By the way I live in Germany so keep this in mind before you point me to any Internet site.

Glad for your help!
Cheers!

Ituralde

**Husar** · 10-12-2006, 11:51

Well, you said cheap, so here it is.

But I wouldn't recommend it at all. I'd just wait to get a whole new computer and a decent graphicscard.

**MSB** · 10-12-2006, 12:44

Originally Posted by Husar

Well, you said cheap, so here it is.

But I wouldn't recommend it at all. I'd just wait to get a whole new computer and a decent graphicscard.

The 6600 is shader 3.0 not 2.0, but it is very good value.

**Ituralde** · 10-12-2006, 16:37

That's why it should be cheap, because it's only to bridge the time until I buy the new computer. Also I already have plans on selling the computer on to somebody else who doesn't really need a high-end machine, but would still like to see a decent graphic card in it, so the whole deal might actually pay off for me.

Thanks for the links Husar, will definetly keep checking that price and see if it drops a little more. I would even settle for a Radeon 9600 Pro or something along those lines, as long as its capable of Shader 2.0. Since I don't know which cards support this I though I might ask around here and see if anybody could give me a good hint.

Cheers!

Ituralde