Sooo many video cards to choose from...

Just bought a Dell 2005FPW monitor. Once it gets here and I see how well everything works with it, I have a feeling I may be strongly considering a new video card. Any advice on one that's around $150 or less. I don't often do any 3-D gaming to speak of, but will occasionally play some games like Ghost Recon, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, etc. My 2-3 year old system is currently running on a P4 1.5GHz with a Geforce2 FX (I think it is) 64MB card and 1.25 Gig of RAM. Nothing special, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble handling most of the stuff I do. I'm just concerned that the larger monitor will push it a little further than it can handle well.

 

If you have an AGP slot, I would look at the Nvidia 6600GT series of cards. While it is high-end for your processor, the 6600GT can play all the newer games. Here is one for $160, at newegg - http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814145107

If that is too much, look at the plain Nvidia 6600, or the Radeon 9800 or 9600 series

 

rotoclub, I have a 2005FPW.

Let me be the first to advise you that the native resolution is 1680x1050. That is the resolution that you should use at all times.

What that means in laymen's terms:

If you only do 2D stuff like browsing, Office Apps, etc - 90% of all graphics cards will do. Just make sure you get at least 64 MB of dedicated memory (not an nForce2 mobo). Your current card would be acceptable.

If you play games (3D), you will definitely need an upgrade. that resolution will absolutely CHOKE your somewhat dated system. You need to get, at the least, an ATi 9800 Pro or a Geforce 6600GT, with at least 128MB of DDR memory (& a 256 bit bus!, none of these neutered SE or LE versions!).

I run my 2005 FPW on an overclocked and software unlocked Geforce 6800 w/ 128 DDR. Even paired with an Athlon 64 3500+, I experience some slowdown in the new games and especially online ones. I almost wish I had bought a 6800 GT/Ultra with 256 MB of DDR3.

Point being, that you need a bleeding edge card to game on that monitor. That's the primary knock against it. If you can afford it, it's great.

PS - Macdesktops.com & Macdesktops.net should become yoru two newest bookmarks upon receipt of that monitor. Both sites have great wallpapers in your native resolution (since the Apple widescreen LCD is the same monitor).

 

Good info. Thanks!

Another question, what is the story on PCI-Express compared to AGP?

Believe it or not, I do work in IT (PC support and that sort of crap). Just don't have a lot of opportunity to get involved heavily with video cards. We get what we get in these systems and as long as it's good enough you can read a spreadsheet....

 

agreed - that's the running advice right now. Go for the 256 bit bus, definitely.

PCI-E is better technology, but right now I don't think it matters a ton in comparison to AGP. Obviously it matters more what you've got, and whether you feel like upgrading an entire system.

 

pci-e is a faster bus that's only going to get faster. right now i think it's twice as fast to the card as is agp. but more importantly, it's WAY faster getting data FROM the card which will be more important as games take advantage of it (the progammable nature of modern gpu's allows for some pretty interesting fx and other clever uses if you can get the data back from the card at a reasonable rate).

also, pci-e provides more power that agp -- the latest agp cards all seem to require a direct connection to the power supply to get enough juice to run.

the nvidia 6600gt is a good card w/ newer tech than the ati. the ati 9800 pro 128 is pretty robust and pretty much the same speed. i'd get whichever is cheaper.

 

I'm assuming by "not an nforce2 mobo" that you're referring to the ones with onboard video, there isn't a thing at all wrong with the regular nforce2 boards with an AGP vid card. The onboard video is just a geforce4 mx basically, which sucks ass.

 

So I can slap the PCI-E card into a PCI slot on my mobo and get the benefits. There's not some new generation of PCI-E motherboards that I'm not aware of, right?

 

wrong. pci-e is not pci. there are new motherboards with these new slots.

to make matters more interesting, there are different varieties -- x1, x2, x4, x8 x16, x32. the pci-e slots are really tiny and the pci-e x16 slots are more along the lines of the AGP size. those are the only two flavors ive seen. each one is physically different because each increment has more pins to feed more "lanes" of information.

the other nice thing about pci-e is that it's not shared bandwidth for all the slots. each slot has dedicated bandwidth (to the link). the x16 slot has more bandwidth dedicated to it. i think pci-e x1 is clocked at 300 MB/s so 16x is like 5 GB/s of bandwidth. agp 8x is about 2 GB/s.

i bought a board with a mix of pci and pci-e. it also has an agp slot (which technically is just a pci slot with a different form factor) to go with the pci-e x16. it's okay, but a little bit strange.

 

Good thing I asked. That would have sucked to buy a PCI-E card and not have anywhere to stick it. Uh huh huh huh.

So I guess my only option is to go with an AGP card at this point. Considering that I'll probably be looking at upgrading my entire system in a year or so, I think my best bet may be to go with a "budget" card to hold me over. Damn I hate deciding on purchases like this.:banginghe

Next decision...do I build a system from the ground up or buy a high end, kick-ass Dell for the waranty and support?