Ben

Anyone have solid knowledge of a good video card to upgrade to? I now have an Nvidia geforce 5500. I see that in order to play BF2 I need a minimum of Geforce 5700 or ati radeon 8500 or greater.
I do not want to spend more then $200 on an upgrade.
Any solid ideas would be great.

Here are my computer specs:
HP Pavillion
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.8GHz
2.80 GHz, 1 GB of Ram
Windows XP Home Edition

Thank You!
Ben

__________________




A battle is dynamic, i.e constantly changing and evolving. Follow the strategy in place but never be afraid to improvise if the situation calls for it.
All I ask for is communication

Spyder

Less than $200, I'd say go Geforce 6600GT, leadtek makes one for about $150 from newegg.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Vulcan

Yep that's a good deal though if you can get a 6800. It's well worth it.

__________________

Ben

There seems to be many different types of 6800's, some costing below $200 and some costing aroung $350, some refurbished and some new.
AHGHGAGAHAGHGAHAGAGH!@!@#$#$$@#$#@$%$%#$^ i hate computer talk.

All I know is that I must upgrade my 5500 since it seems outdated (and I want to get BF2)

__________________




A battle is dynamic, i.e constantly changing and evolving. Follow the strategy in place but never be afraid to improvise if the situation calls for it.
All I ask for is communication

Ben

Radeon X700 Pro Video Card, 8x AGP, 256MB GDDR3 Verto $199

GeForce 6600GT Video Card, 8x AGP, 128MB DDR3 $199

How about these? They should work for BF2 and upgrade the CSS graphice for me, right?

__________________




A battle is dynamic, i.e constantly changing and evolving. Follow the strategy in place but never be afraid to improvise if the situation calls for it.
All I ask for is communication

TheFeniX

I run a 6600GT I picked up for $180 a while back. I pull around 65 FPS on any Source games. The only issues I have are on maps like retreat or harvest where my FPS will drop to around 45 in the large open areas.

__________________

Spyder

Just stay away from the 128MB 6800's that XFX makes.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Ben

what is considered a great FPS on CSS? is 65 good?

__________________




A battle is dynamic, i.e constantly changing and evolving. Follow the strategy in place but never be afraid to improvise if the situation calls for it.
All I ask for is communication

Iamevil

Anything over 60 is good, if its constant.

Spyder

Depends on alot of things. For instance, most LCD monitors don't display anything greater than 60fps. Fps, frames per second, is just a measurement of how many times the screen is able to refresh the image per second. The smaller the number, the more chopiness you see, because you eye starts to be able to tell the difference between the flashes.

Basically, a true 60fps is considered the point where the human eye can't physically identify the flashes as the screen refreshes. Meaning the human eye can't tell the difference between a true 60fps and a true 100fps in and of itself (not talking graphical quality, talking about the eye registering the flashes). So, if you have anything 60fps or greater you're peachy. Personally, I can play on anything 45fps and above no problem. when it starts to dip near 30fps is when I start noticing gameplay issues. It should be noted that handheld video cameras and the like record movies at 30fps.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Sabooya

you will never go wrong with a 9800 GTX + it be serious kick ass on anything.

__________________

Root

If you plan to use TacOS or any other linux distro, go with an nvidia card. They're far better supported than ATI.

Root

__________________

Sabooya

lol i get 26 fps on css. with my 9600 ati
(ATI BOOOO)

__________________

Grunt 70

I love my EVGA 6800GT. It's a bit out of your price range though...but of all things to go over budget...if you are a gamer than the vid card is it...

I might recommend another gig of RAM too... Eventually you'll probably decide BF2 needs it.

I had the EVGA 6600Gt for a week. Newegg had an awesome deal going on the 6800 GT for something like $250 so I brought the 6600GT back to best buy (they had a good rebate deal that week) and went for the 6800 GT. BF2 runs like butter with most settings on high.

The 6600 was great in the short time I had it.

Good luck and hope to see you on TG servers soon

PS...make sure you have a decent power supply too...that could be just as important an upgrade.

__________________
|TG-22nd|Grunt



"When force is necessary, it must be applied boldly, decisively, and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with maneuver" - Leon Trotsky

9 v

This really should be in the General Forums/ Hardware and Software discussion forum.

You'll get more responses from players of other games, not just CS:S, and the knowledge gained is then shared among more of the TG members, not just those into CS.