Here I am again lacking in a graphics card. I know nothing about them past a 6800GT. I currently have an ATI X1650 that went south on me, thus I am also computerless unless I bring my laptop home from work (meaning my family is computerless until I get home).

I don't do much in the form of gaming anymore. I'm still running with LFS and FS9 as pretty much all I would do which the ATI worked just fine with.

I'm looking for a cheap gfx card of which they are so beyond what I know since the 6800GT era that I have no idea what to look at. I'm just trying to match up with my AMD64 3500 processor.

At Newegg, I am seeing a lot of 9500GT cards for $50-75. As for power supply, mine looks weak at I think 288W. I want to make sure something will run on that.

Would anyone have any suggestions? Like I said, they have moved far beyond what I know when I was looking before, which was in the 6800GT era of being a really good card. Really, anything above my now defunct X1650 would suffice. I'm just looking for cheap, which I see there is a very large selection. Thanks for any thoughts.

Tbh honest with you mate im not going to recommend you anything with that PSU, it just won't cut it :/

The best thing you can do is buy a new PSU such as this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150596

Once you have got a PSU, a simple ATI Radeon HD 3650 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148213 will do everything you need easily and it has the added advantage of 512MB Ram & DX10 - although you won't be able to run DX10 app's very well if im honest.

Im not an ATI or Nvidia fanboy but imho ATI has Nvidia licked up in the budget sector.

Hope this help's mate

with you processor, i would opt for something like a 7600GT- 7950GT. the 7 series nvidia has a very good chip and would balance well with your hardware.

Quote from dadge :

with you processor, i would opt for something like a 7600GT- 7950GT. the 7 series nvidia has a very good chip and would balance well with your hardware.

I typically buy everything from Newegg, which is really the only retailer I know of. I don't do ebay, don't trust it. Wow, I can't even get a 7600GT or even the old 6600-6800GT from Newegg. They have the GS models available, but not the GT models.

I noticed the newer stuff is all listed at PCI-E 2. I'm way behind the times as always and only have PCI-E.

I've never heard of 288W PSUs, they used to come rated at 250 or 300W. Is that the 12V line rating maybe? Even better post your PSU maker/model.

That said there are a lot of misconceptions about PSUs, you can run a 90nm A64 system off a decent 300-330W PSU, but unless the system has been optimized for low consumption it's better to opt for a 425W unit because of reduced noise levels.

Some early PCI-E 2 cards had troubles running on PCI-E 1.1 motherboards but I think those issues have been solved already.

hmmm


i got a cheap ati graphics card for 34 euro in Ireland of all places ( second or third most expencive place in europe ! )

512mb with hd out ports... runs lfs at 120ish fps on good specs, though i cba to change them... could run it smoothly on full specs with one of them video recorder programmes... )


maxburns.ie


should have what your looking for minus the p&p

Don't by something that is several generations old already. They will perform worse and use more power than the lowest end of the latest generation of cards. Something like a HD4350 or something is probably a better bet for a cheap, low-power card. I'm still not sure your PSU can handle it though.

280GTX.
J/k.

If i will be you, i will get a Radeon HD 4650.

Response to wein and Shadowww's suggestions, what I'm looking at with those is they are PCI-E 2.0. I have the original PCI-E. The 4350's I see are 64-bit, the higher numbers (4650) I see is 128-bit.

So.... being the gfx card ignorant that I am, what is the difference between 64 and 128 bit? The one I'm replacing is an X1650 128-bit 256mb which has been more than enough these past 4 years for what I do and was a giant leap from my onboard chip.

And.... what exactly is the difference between PCI-E and PCI-E 2.0?

The 4650 512mb shown here are definitely in the price range. Sapphire is what I had with the X1650 I'm replacing. I do know why it crapped out (user error, installed a network card right below blocking cooling). Thus, I was quite happy with a Sapphire card until I messed up by blocking the cooling. I see a Sapphire for $60 minus a $15 rebate.

Quote from mrodgers :

And.... what exactly is the difference between PCI-E and PCI-E 2.0?

Don't know but they should be backwards compatible.

Quote from mrodgers :

what is the difference between 64 and 128 bit?

The "bitness" refers to the width of the memory bus of the card. Basically the more bits, the more memory bandwidth the card has (though memory speed is obviously also a factor).

Lots of bandwidth is important if you play games in high resolution and with high detail textures. 64 bit may be a little cramped depending on your usage. If you can afford a 4650 with a 128 bit memory bus, that is definitely the better choice, assuming your PSU can handle it (here's a handy graph plotting out power draw of complete systems with some of these cards)

PCI-E 2.0 is just a revision of the PCI-E spec basically doubling the speed of the interface. Like mentioned above cards should be backwards compatible with the older standard like was the case with AGP (4x and 8X). I haven't tried it myself though.

Ok guys, just to be sure I am not chasing something around and replacing stuff unnecessarily, I want to confirm that my problem lies with the gfx card. Here are some photo snaps of my screen as I boot up....







After that final shot, stuff is still loading in the background then the monitor blanks out and goes to powersave mode as if there is no longer a signal.

Am I safe to assume that my problem is the gfx card?

As for the card, I figured out my PS was 300W. I liked the ATI 4650 that I mentioned, but the recommended power was 400W for it. Thus, I've downgraded my expectations to a HD3650 which states a recommended 300W. Any comments on that selection?

Someone had recommended me the GeForce 9500GT, but it required min 350 W power.

Yeah, that looks like the memory's gone. I had similar corruption on mine when that went. The fact that it's there in the boot process rules out driver error.

As for the the 3650, if you look at the link I provided above it pulls the same amount of power as the 4650 in real world testing, so either one would probably work. I ran a 3850, a quad code and 3 disks off my 350 watt PSU (barely), so I think you'll be fine.

You'll want to get more than a 400w, most PSUs are rated for peak power which they can only run for a small amount of time and then go pop.

I would reccomend investing in a new psu and possibly a new mobo so you can upgrade more in the future.

Quote from mrodgers :

Thus, I've downgraded my expectations to a HD3650 which states a recommended 300W. Any comments on that selection?

Well, to answer your actual question, a 3650 is about half of a 4650 in terms of theoretical performance (eyeballed from the specs), so it's a definite step down, but if you're worried about power consumption the 3650 is probably the better choice. I'm not too sure about the figures in my link above now that I've looked at the specs. Seems weird that they're the same with that big a difference in shader/texture units, regardless of clock speed. The architectural differences between the HD3xxx and HD4xxx are minimal.