Advice On A Graphics Card

eezarthegreat

Any chance I can get advice on a graphics card?

Link: http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/328595/art/gigabyte/gv-nx73t256p-rh-geforce-7.html

I have a geforce 4 MX and I really want to get something good and relatively cheap.

Thanks,
Joe

TerrorFirmer

Don't bother - the 7300 is awful and a terrible performer in games.

What are the rest of your specs? I'm going to assume about 2ghz give or take a few 100mhz if you're using a Geforce 4Mx.

It might be worth getting a new computer, it depends on what you want it for. Games? How much ram do you have? Couldn't really recommend a card without knowing your cpu and ram, but I can tell you the 7300 is useless and while it would technically be an upgrade from a Geforce 4, it's only able to run new games on low settings.

8T8

Is this one of the old GeForce 4 MX with the AGP interface or one of the newer ones branded MX-4000 that had PCI-Express ?

If its the one with the older AGP interface basically what Havok said & on top of that AGP cards don't have much in the way of choice.

Still if you want something that is at least Direct-X 9 compatible & offers reasonable performance, Komplett have an AGP 6600GT which should suffice (the 6600GT line have been phased out). Or an AGP 7600GS which is basically the same in terms of performance if not slighlty faster but also cheaper.

Anything faster probably wouldn't be worth it if the computers CPU isn't that great.

eezarthegreat

Mine is a 2.6ghz, I've 512 ram, the geforce card, As far as I can remember it's PCI express altough I forget how to check

I kinda wanna overhaul the computer, gonna buy a gig of ram soon so I want to get a nice card also.

Thanks for the reply...

HavoK wrote:

Don't bother - the 7300 is awful and a terrible performer in games.

What are the rest of your specs? I'm going to assume about 2ghz give or take a few 100mhz if you're using a Geforce 4Mx.

It might be worth getting a new computer, it depends on what you want it for. Games? How much ram do you have? Couldn't really recommend a card without knowing your cpu and ram, but I can tell you the 7300 is useless and while it would technically be an upgrade from a Geforce 4, it's only able to run new games on low settings.

TerrorFirmer

2.6Ghz isn't great but it's not too bad either, I'd recommend adding another 512mb ram and getting either a 7600GS/GT or an X1600Pro/XT graphics card.

You'd be able to run new titles on reasonable settings. I'm assuming its a 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 processor - if its a Celeron, forget it, it wouldn't be worth trying to upgrade it with modern gaming in mind.

8T8

One way to check what kind of graphics interface you have is to download & run CPU-Z then look at the "mainboard" tab at the bottom you will see it list what kind of interface is present AGP or PCI-Express.

The CPU tab will also tell you what kind of CPU you have.

eezarthegreat

Ok turns out I have AGP v2.0, It's a pentium 4 processor. It's not that my pc is anyway bad(it does everything I want it to do) but with time obviously it ages and it'd be great to give it one last shot at life.

I'll check those graphics cards HAVOK, thanks for the tip.

8t8 that little download is dead handy so thanks for that

8T8 wrote:

One way to check what kind of graphics interface you have is to download & run CPU-Z then look at the "mainboard" tab at the bottom you will see it list what kind of interface is present AGP or PCI-Express.

The CPU tab will also tell you what kind of CPU you have.

8T8

If it's a P4 and AGP go with the 7600GS AGP, "most" current games should be playable with medium{ish} details settings around 1024x768.

That should give it as you say one more shot of life.

Driver can be obtained here, it is important to keep your drivers updated with current graphics cards.

shortie989

make sure u hav at least a 300w power supply ur pc sounds a bit old, so u shud really check. Just thought u shud know b4 buying.;)

TerrorFirmer

I think the 7600GS is powered entirely from the pci-e slot, so it wouldn't matter about the psu...

Is the AGP version the same?

bus77

HavoK wrote:

I think the 7600GS is powered entirely from the pci-e slot, so it wouldn't matter about the psu...

Is the AGP version the same?

No. The AGP needs a spare power lead. The recommended psu for it is 350 watts.

TerrorFirmer

I thought it was only the GT needed it...