graphics card suggestions

[Commander Trigg]

I'm in the market for a cheap new graphics card that will hopefully allow me to play oolite with the enhanced details and shaders so I can see all the pretty eye candy type stuff.

At the moment my computer has an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 128mb, so it's pretty basic. I've seen a few different cards available on ebay for around £25 - £30 but I have absolutely no idea what to go for. Could one of you wonderful techy people throw me some suggestions?

[DaddyHoggy]

I'm in the market for a cheap new graphics card that will hopefully allow me to play oolite with the enhanced details and shaders so I can see all the pretty eye candy type stuff.

At the moment my computer has an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 128mb, so it's pretty basic. I've seen a few different cards available on ebay for around £25 - £30 but I have absolutely no idea what to go for. Could one of you wonderful techy people throw me some suggestions?

I presume you're still on AGP then - new AGP cards are getting rare and quite expensive - for what they are - I've seen AGP 6200s for as low as about £17 (256MB) - they'll work with shaders - they're just not very quick.

I'd recommend Nvidia over ATI - I really don't like ATIs drivers (OpenGL has never been very good in my opinion/experience) or their support/forums (as others have reported in the past - AMD admins tend to delete awkward to answer posts from their support forums)

Let me know what your max spend is - and I'll have a fish around.

As a start (on what you're getting for your money) - if you want to compare a couple of card's Horse Power - you could do worse than looking here: http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

[Cody]

I'd recommend Nvidia over ATI - I really don't like ATIs drivers (OpenGL has never been very good in my opinion/experience) or their support/forums (as others have reported in the past - AMD admins tend to delete awkward to answer posts from their support forums)

I must second all of that... I was a long-suffering ATI user until very recently.... nVidia, definitely!

[DaddyHoggy]

Ouch! Just looked on Ebuyer - the 6200s have gone up a lot in price (doubled in fact) c. £36 - so this would be a much better bet: http://www.ebuyer.com/222279-inno3d-760 ... 00gt-h4f3c

About 4x faster than a 6200 for another tenner...

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php ... &card2=435

[Commander Trigg]

This isn't my main computer so I'm not looking at spending too much on it. The motherboard is a "Shuttle inc SN45V10" so it has a pci slot too, although since it's in a micro case, fitting a pci gfx card in could be an issue.

I've found a 6200 on ebay with a starting price of £8 that I'm watching, hopefully I'll get home from work in time to make a last second bid on it.

[DaddyHoggy]

This isn't my main computer so I'm not looking at spending too much on it. The motherboard is a "Shuttle inc SN45V10" so it has a pci slot too, although since it's in a micro case, fitting a pci gfx card in could be an issue.

I've found a 6200 on ebay with a starting price of £8 that I'm watching, hopefully I'll get home from work in time to make a last second bid on it.

Oh dear - be careful!

PCI != PCI-E!!!!!

PCI is the old interface used by sound cards and the like.

PCI-Express is the replacement for AGP - so do you mean PCI or PCI-E?

[Commander Trigg]

Lucky escape there then, I was just reading from the MB specs. Looks like I'm sticking with AGP then