Graphics card help

[BTB 500]

Need a bit of help/advice choosing a new graphics card for my PC. I don't do PC gaming, and my Dell PC (Pentium 4, 3 GHz, 1 GB RAM, XP Pro) just has the 'base' graphics card it shipped with: 128MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X300 SE. However, I do run a radio-control flight simulator. Performance of this is just about OK with my current hardware, but there's an upgrade I'd quite like to take and the release notes say

This patch introduces quite a few changes and requires at least OpenGL 2.0. Please only install this patch if you have a 3D-card with OpenGL 2.0 driver support. Do NOT use this patch on 3D-cards older than a NVIDIA GeForce 7000 series or on ATI cards older or slower than the X800 series. We also recommend a minimum of 128 MB of 3D graphics card memory.

So I'd obviously need to upgrade. They suggest a card with 256 MB for best performance, and say the following will work well:

• NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
• AMD/ATI Radeon HD2600XT

But these seem 'generic' i.e. a quick search for "GeForce 7600 GT" on Play.com gives 3 cards ... two for £69.99, and one for £129.99. Similar results when searching on "Radeon HD 2600XT". They are all PCI-E with 256 MB, how important are the clock speeds and other minor(?) differences, and does the card manufacturer matter much? Any preferences?

All suggestions / recommendations welcome! I want a quick / simple upgrade, and obviously don't want to spend more money than necessary (which I suspect I could easily do).

Many thanks

 

[gurpz]

The choice for new graphics cards is pretty much endless and at the end of the day it really depends on the budget. If you let me know how much you wish to spend I can recommend the best one within the budget including:

Best all round clock speed
Highest GPU Ram
Highest GPU Pipelines

In my opinion card manufacturer is important and the best brands I have come across are MSI & Asustek. BFG are also well known for their OC series graphics cards.

 

[gaz_l]

I've installed a couple of these into machines at work:

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=4MW0

They've been installed onto machines that are doing complicated 3D modelling and are driving 30" panels running at 2560x1600 resolution - quite a workload. But we've had no problems with them, they seem nicely made too. I've had a couple of Sapphire cards myself and have no problem recommending them - they just do what it says on the box.

Be aware there is no VGA output on the card, though, so you'll need a DVI-capable monitor (and no old CRT's ).

HTH,

Gaz

 

[BTB 500]

Many thanks guys, I do have a DVI LCD screen so that Sapphire card looks like it will do the biz ... good price too.

 

[gurpz]

I recon a 512mb graphics card would be far better for the long run as more and more new games are beggining to demand 512mb onboard GPU memory for recomended performance.

 

[IanA2]

Need a bit of help/advice choosing a new graphics card for my PC. I don't do PC gaming, and my Dell PC (Pentium 4, 3 GHz, 1 GB RAM, XP Pro) just has the 'base' graphics card it shipped with: 128MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X300 SE. However, I do run a radio-control flight simulator. Performance of this is just about OK with my current hardware, but there's an upgrade I'd quite like to take and the release notes say

So I'd obviously need to upgrade. They suggest a card with 256 MB for best performance, and say the following will work well:

• NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
• AMD/ATI Radeon HD2600XT

But these seem 'generic' i.e. a quick search for "GeForce 7600 GT" on Play.com gives 3 cards ... two for £69.99, and one for £129.99. Similar results when searching on "Radeon HD 2600XT". They are all PCI-E with 256 MB, how important are the clock speeds and other minor(?) differences, and does the card manufacturer matter much? Any preferences?

All suggestions / recommendations welcome! I want a quick / simple upgrade, and obviously don't want to spend more money than necessary (which I suspect I could easily do).

Many thanks

I have the same machine as you I think (Optiplex?) and was also thinking of upgrading my card, I gave up cause I got confused as I was given to understand that Dell machines need Dell specific cards...something to do with the fitting...could well be wrong though. I'm sure someone will know.

 

[timskemp]

I have the same machine as you I think (Optiplex?) and was also thinking of upgrading my card, I gave up cause I got confused as I was given to understand that Dell machines need Dell specific cards...something to do with the fitting...could well be wrong though. I'm sure someone will know.

Depends on the case, slimline ones need a riser card or a half height video card. When ordering dells in slim cases always order the riser at the same time!

 

[whizzkid11]

If budget allows, go for the nVidia 8800 chipset - there are a few on ebay as well...

 

[gurpz]

If budget allows, go for the nVidia 8800 chipset - there are a few on ebay as well...

Do agree its a WHOPPER of a graphics card and is cheaper on ebay then in the shops but still fairly pricey:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MSI-NVidia-Ge...oryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[BTB 500]

The machine is a Dimension 8400, which I'm pretty sure isn't a slimline case.

I think with the more powerful graphics cards you can run into power supply and/or cooling issues? As mentioned, I'm not a PC gamer after ultimate performance ... just want to make a step up to support the upgrade on my r/c sim.

Thanks for the continued advice.

 

[masqueraid]

If you don't want hefty graphics power in Vista then wait 'til the sales start - the 7600 series are likely to get heavily discounted as people will be wanting DirectX 10 cards in their PCs. The prices of them on eBay will also start to fall as a result.

 

[masqueraid]

Also make sure you install the manufacturer's drivers as Windows has no native OpenGL support

 

[BTB 500]

Well .. I got the 256MB Sapphire ATI Radeon HD2600XT from Dabs that Gaz suggested.

Physical installation was dead simple, I took the opportunity of removing an unused modem card and rather a lot of dust & fluff while I was at it! Dell provide an excellent handbook with the machine (specific to that model) which starts with how to open the case and covers adding and removing all sorts of hardware.

Anyway I then ran into a few issues with the device and driver installation. I'd previously found and downloaded the latest versions of everything, but couldn't get the new hardware wizard to pick this up from the C: drive. Cancelled out and ran the install separately, got everything working apart from the fact that the card itself was still showing as an unrecognised PCI device. Somehow this corrected itself, my R/C simulator ran great, and all looked OK.

Until the following day when my wife used the machine. Swapping to her ID it immediately blue-screened - a "stop" error. Rebooted and tried again - same result. Bum.

So ... uninstalled the drivers and all software and started again. After a few hairy moments with the screen running in 4 colours and ultra-low res. I managed to get everything installed via the new hardware wizard, using the supplied CD rather than the downloaded files. So ... looking good, and no problem switching user now.

Fire up the R/C simulator and ... the machine hung. Hmm. Rebooted, and after a bit of delving around I found that all audio output had been assigned to the HDMI output on my new graphics card! Nothing related to audio in the graphics card config. software. A bit more fiddling and I found how to reassign it via the Windows Control Panel.

A few days on and everything is stable & fine, no problems at all. I've still got the latest drivers that I downloaded, but I'm not particularly inclined to install them!

The R/C simulator runs really nicely with a great frame rate - so job done

 

[gaz_l]

Sorry to hear you've had problems.. I've fitted another couple of these this week (HP hardware, rather than Dell, admittedly), and they slotted straight in with no issues.

The only purpose of computers is to give us grief..

Cheers,

Gaz