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"Graphics Card help"

My missus has got a PC with this motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-7VKMLS

It has an on board graphics chip.

I want to put in a 3D card. But it has no AGP slot. Will it be able to handle these PCI x2 cards or whatever they're called? (I really haven't kept up to date with all this stuff since I left uni).

If it does (or does not) support this PCI express guff, could someone suggest a card that I could get? I'm on a bit of a budget, and I really only want it see eJay (ironically enough) doesn't run at about 1 fps....

Thanks very much!

Nah, there are people with 7800s with loads of problems.
Funny thing I saw on the EA forum was a complaint about errors with their 7800 and some EA guy comes in and says it isn't on the list of compatible cards so they should buy one that is.

Yes, he said that for an "nvidia: the way it's meant to be played" game, they shouldn't have bought nvidia's flagship card. Real clever.

i've never had a BF2 graphic error, but then i own a new card, all the cheap people who didn't upgrade deserve their errors.

Dunno about THQ, but I was using the 4.12 drivers for a LONG time and never had any problems with games released after the driver. Neither company's drivers are perfect, but I don't think one can be called 'better'. BF2 is a 'the way it's meant to be played' game but nvidia users seem to have masses of problems trying to find a driver that doesn't produce errors.

Nvidia drivers normally support the newest games were as ATI ones normally have to be updated after the games release and they normally have problems with most games from THQ.

But in this case as games arn't an issue just go with the best card for the money.

gerrid wrote:
> Well that depends which card you have. Some people have real problems
> with ATI drivers, too, and complain that they're constantly being
> updated.

That's a bit silly then, since their driver releases are monthly, whereas with nvidia there could be a new driver 3 days after the last one. ATI's drivers just have a bad reputation as a leftover of the pre-Catalyst days.

Well that depends which card you have. Some people have real problems with ATI drivers, too, and complain that they're constantly being updated.

Anyway, I'd suggest you get the Radeon 9250, then. It's £32, but I'm not allowed to say from where. Maybe SR sell it. That will run eJay just peachy.

Although if you're having problems are you sure that either

a) you have enough RAM
b) you don't have some resource eating virus/spyware/trojan running in the background?

gerrid wrote:
> I'd say go for the Nvidia because it will likely have better driver
> support, although I don't actually know, but the difference between
> the two cards all lies in the VRAM differences.

nvidia's drivers are terrible. There's a new version out practically every week, along with about 20 beta versions.

This is, I don't play games on the PC.

I only want it so that eJay runs quicker, so I don't need a ninja card.

I just want a 64 or maybe 128MB on for 30 quid, or less prefferably...

For PCI cards you're looking at either a ATI Radeon 9250 or a Nvidia GeForce 5200. Neither are great cards, but if you get the 128MB+ versions you'll be able to run Half Life 2 and similar games on low - medium settings, depending on the rest of your machine.

The XFX GeForce FX 5200 256MB DDR is about £55, and the 128MB Radeon 9250 is £32.

I'd say go for the Nvidia because it will likely have better driver support, although I don't actually know, but the difference between the two cards all lies in the VRAM differences.

No competitor links please, you all know the rules by now.