Graphics Card recomendations

[Viper]

Personally, I'd make the sacrifice, wait a few more months and build a newer system...updating old stuff is always a headache.

[Andrew March]

I've got to say pyrocitor, you won't get any improvement on performance or quality if all you're going to upgrade at this point is the graphics card.

Your system really needs completely replacing and if I can suggest go with Viper's recommendation. Live with what you have for six months, then come june most places will have a mid-season sale on and get yourself a brand new rig. Save every penny you can, wash cars, do whatever it takes to get a really decent rig. In the longrun it will be worth it not only for the longevity of the system but for onward sale at a later time.

I bought my current system in August, got a £365 discount because I didn't need a monitor or printer and I sold my old system for a stonking £400 all because it had decent components in it, so my new system has ended up only costing £950.

[Ares Blackmane]

A year ago I had an Athlon 2200+ with a 9600 Pro graphics card. I first upgraded the GPU to a Nvidia 6800 for 180e, then half a year later I replaced the mobo and the processor to an Asrock Dual-VSTA and Athlon64 3500+, for about the same price.

My system is decent again, not cutting-edge but runs smooth, and when it's time for a new GPU I'm ready to go with either PCI-E or AGP.

So upgrading works too - although my XP now thinks it's an illegal copy.

[Samurai]

Microsoft thinks all copies of Windows XP are illegal.

[2cvbloke]

Personally, I'd just build a new PC, with all new stuff, including CPU, Ram, HDD, and of course GFX card...

My PC (once I fix it) is pretty much an old banger compared to modern stuff (it's not true that because you build them for a living means you always have the latest PC!!!), Athlon 1.4ghz, 512mb ram, forgot the hard drive size, but isn't more than 40gb, m/board is an ECS K7S5A and graphics is a GeForce2 MX 64MB...

[Samurai]

The laptop I'm using now is more powerful than my PC.

[Pyrocitor]

Yea I probably will just rebuild it, although I don't have to worry about getting new RAM, HDD, and monitor as the're all brand spanking new anyway.

[Andrew March]

Pyrocitor, you might have to get new ram, depending on the mobo you get.

[citizen]

Originally Posted by Deks

Setting aside the needs of upgrading the core components (as obviously that`s not an option) a solid gfx card would be a great improvement.
The new GFX card alone will give him a solid boost for games and 3d work for example.
I myself cannot expend money on new core components for now, which is why I`m gonna buy a GFX card alone ... and I need it.

Maybe so, but my point is with such an old machine it is false economy, with a machine that is old enough to have come with a Geforce2 (I bought a machine with a Geforce2 card six years ago, and the geforce2 was included because it was a cheap budget card) any speed increase from getting a brand new Graphics card isn't going to be great. In fact it would be better to save until a more complete rebuild can be afforded, otherwise you'll update to a card that'll cost say £100 and last a few months until you change the motherboard and find you don't have an AGP slot to install it in.

In the long run going for an older card in a very old machine is false economy because it'll probably end up costing more than waiting until you have the money to do a more complete rebuild, which was my general point.