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"Don't know anyhting about graphics cards....."

Can anyone give me a bit of advice?

I am looking to get a new graphics card to replace my Hercules Prophet 4500. I have a limited budget and am not sure what to do? Looking around the best I can get for my money appears to be a Radeon 9000 (I have £100 -£150) However, there looks to be about 15 varieties by various companies, how do you know which is best? And will an upgrade from my Prophet to this card be worthwile and noticeable??

Lots of websites give reviews and mark there cards in benchmarks...great...this means nout to me! If I upgrade how will the graphics compare to a PS2?

I have a P4 2GhZ with 512MB DDR Ram and 80Gig HD. Would this system with a Radeon 9000 play something such as GTA Vice City as well as my PS2 does?

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Well is it Win XP? If so you need a special Refresh Rate lock because everything is locked in 60hz in game because of XP.

1024*768
monitor has max 60HZ, game set at this

Crap i mean what res and Refresh rates is it on?

What rest are you playing in if any.

No option in game to turn on V-Sync but there is an option on the Graphics card utility scree, it is already turned to on? Any other ideas??

I would go with the Radeon 9500. Best bang for bucks. It is probably what I will stick in my PC when I build it.

The salesman wrote:
> I have bought a new card, not a raedon but a MSI FX5200, not the one I
> wanted but i got it cheap.....Graphics are certainly better, however,
> on some games (i.e. morrowind) the screen gets 'blocky(?) when I am
> turning...it's hard to explain but if you imagine the bottom half of
> the picture updates a fraction of a second before the top half?
>
> Any ideas what the cause of this are? All drivers are up to date and
> I have tried it in every res,

that would be because V-SYNC is not turned on, i guess. V-SYNC makes the vertical columns of the monitor synchronize with each other to prevent 'tearing', which is what you're experiencing. there SHOULD be a control on the game itself, but if not your graphics card utility tray should have an option to turn it on. the only disadvantage is increased graphics load by a small amount.

I have bought a new card, not a raedon but a MSI FX5200, not the one I wanted but i got it cheap.....Graphics are certainly better, however, on some games (i.e. morrowind) the screen gets 'blocky(?) when I am turning...it's hard to explain but if you imagine the bottom half of the picture updates a fraction of a second before the top half?

Any ideas what the cause of this are? All drivers are up to date and I have tried it in every res,

Memorandum wrote:
> You can pick up a Radeon 9100 for about £70 if you shop
> around.
>
> It should be right up your street, and yes, should play GTA: VC very
> well.

Bloody hell, that's cheap...

URL...please...

You can indeed - www.theoverclockingstore.co.uk, I'm quite tempted by it, actually...I always have a habit of putting off upgrading until the Next Big Thing, then being somehow disappointed by it or not having the money available at that time. Need to do something soon anyway, this Ti500 objects strongly to running at 75'C..