Can anyone recommend a good PCI card, Im after something from £50-100, the net is just too big with far too much confusing information. Any advice appreciated.

I’d be inertested in this. Seems you can have 2 cards, which seem identical in spec, but are £2-300 different in price???

I’m thinking about upgrading my PC M/board, and will need a new G/card. Need DVI and VGA output. Not fussed about ‘SLI’ or whatever, it won’t be for ‘hardcore gaming’, just watching fillums and that. Bout the same price range.

Ca anyone break down all the jargon?

I assume you mean PCI Express (PCI is a really old format and pants for graphics).

Any card by Nvidia or ATI would be good if you are not fussed about games. Even the newer cheaper ones support HD video modes. An ATI HD2600 pro is probably all you need. I now have a Nvidia 8800 GT and it plays games and video files perfectly.

8800GT here too. Amazing card, especially for the money:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/26258

Different manufacturers take a chipset then add a few of their own bells and whistles. Like the ability to change the clock settings, or some big fan or something. The card’s the same tho. You’re better off buying a cheaper model of the same chipset (ie 8800GT or whatever) unless you are a PC component tart.

Just price up tomscharts and make ur choice.

So what’s the difference, then?

For EG, my Mac Pro has an ATI X1900 card, which is PCIe 16x, 512Mb. Twin Dual DVI outputs, meaning it can handle 2×30″ displays (!!). The card itself is about £250 or so. I specced it at the time I ordered the computer, as the bloke on the ‘phone told me it was a ‘big improvement’ over the 256Mb card that came as standard. It’s complete overkill, really, as I only run a 19″ monitor on this machine most of the time (sometimes a 24″ one as well).

My PC has a 256Mb card, with one DVI output and one VGA. I dunno what maximum size screen it can handle. Cost about £60 new.

So, is there a difference with the size of screens/number of screens that the more spensive cards can handle? something to do with 3D rendering or whatever?

What does all the jargon mean? Why do I need DDR3 over DDR2? What do I get for the extra money?

The card itself is about £250 or so

Well yeah, about 3 years ago maybe. The card is now so low end they don’t even make them anymore, you can buy the new, cheaper, cooler version (X1950) for about £80 if you hunt about. The technology is flying along at crazy speeds.

Most modern graphics cards can only handle 2 screens unless specifically designed to use 3 (like some matrox 3 head ones are). If you’re just generally browsing etc there is no difference what-so-ever, the only real difference you get with a newer card is modern games will run a lot smoother (assuming the graphics card is the choke point and not the CPU).

Back on the original post. If you don’t want to run games I’d just get the cheapest graphics card you can. What sort of things did you want to run and what spec is the rest of your system? Preferably something with ATI or Nvidia chipsets as it’ll be infinitely easier finding drivers. Nvidia 9600GT/8800 or ATI X1950/HD3870 for example would all be in the middle of your price range and run most new stuff.

The only advantage for expensive cards is for playing games. Or *maybe* for some intensive CAD or 3D applications. But basically games, and super duper mega 3D ones at that, not normal ones. If you weren’t playing games and bought a £250 card then you were royally ripped off I’m afraid.

You can get a graphics card that does everything perfectly apart from play games for about £20. A card that will let you play most modern hardcore games reasonably well will still only cost you like £70 ish. The super expensive ones are only for geeks and obsessives that need the best frame rates on the most graphically intensive games with all the options turned on. And even then, you can pretty much do that for £150.

Ahem, if anyone wants my perfect condition in original packaging blah, blah, blah Xpertvision/Palit pre clocked very quiet Sonic 8800Gt 512Mb PCIe card for £65 posted let me know.

andy[dot]howley[at]gmail[dot]com

Ah, ok. Well, I did buy this machine 2 years ago, and the card was pretty top-end at the time. Only cost £70 extra over the standard one. Have to say, games like Halo and COD4 are a lot smoother on my Mac. I don’t think I’ll be needing to upgrade the card for quite a while yet!

So, there are ones here from £20, to over £2,600! Which one, under £100, would be the best vfm, for internetting, video, and a few games?

And WhyTF is that top-end one so spensive?????

– find out what resolution you run or want to run ur fav game in e.g 1280×1024,

– check to see which cards can manage 70 or preferably 100 fps,

– buy the cheapest.

I’d guess the top end ones are for game 3d developers or freaky CAD people that need loads of GPU power.

You can buy one for a Mac, that allows you to use 3-D goggles, to move about in a virtual environment. Very specialist, though. Love to have a go; remember ‘Lawnmower Man’?

My 24″ screen runs at 1900×1200, does this mean I need a spensive card?

Thing to check before you splash out on a card is it’s maximum power draw, can your power supply unit supply enough Wattage for it in combination with all your other existing PC components? Also a lot of the medium to high end cards have to have additional PCI Express 6 pin and/or 8 pin power cables from your PSU to power them, as the card needs more power than the PCI slot can deliver on it’s own.

If you are going to be using it to watch video’s etc than it might be worth checking the reviews of your shortlist of cards as some cards can be really really noisy.

Then to complicate things a bit more some cards can be really long so it’s worth checking how long a card you can fit in your pc case.

I’d second Tinribz with Tomscharts being a good starting point. Nvidia 9600, 9800GT (aka 8800GT) or ATI 4830 are all in your pricerange.

The top end GFX (gaming type) cards are so expensive because they have to make back r n d costs, chip fabrication from design to final die (bearing in mind the top end chips usually come on a smaller process too) is a very expensive pastime.

The super top end silly money ones are, as has been said, for freaky high end 3D design and animation purposes and tend to have multiple processing chips and loads of ram on board, plus factor in the costs of smaller scale manufacture.

Apparently they don’t run games very well though :O)

So, for ‘pwning noobs’ on some online game thingy, a £100 card will suffice?

A mate works at a science uni. There, they have machines configured to do all sorts of complex calculations, like simulating cell growth, or protein structures and stuff. He was telling me that one machine can cost TENS of thousands of pounds!

Don’t think I need one of those, to run VLC player on…

Thanks all. I’ll have a look at Tomscharts, and sort one out.

(BTW, I can get loads of computery electronicky stuff proper cheap, at trade prices! :wink:)