im looking to buy/build a new system sometime soon, with my limited knowledge it should be a fun experience of compatibility issues and thing blowing up :] (although i will get help along the way)

im onto looking at GFX cards, but i need to know what im looking in a good card, what figures are good, good makes etc.

Novatech GeForce 6200 256MB 8xAGP DVI/TVO Graphics Card


I'd appreciate it if some one could explain the factors in a cards description(if that makes any sense) ive gave a random example above.

thanks

Makes - Not really important. For nVidia, eVGA, BFG and XFX have the best warranties, though.

AGP = Interface. AGP is older, only works with an AGP mobo. PCI-e = newer.

You really can't compare GFX cards on specs - you'll have to Google reviews.

I had a 6200. It will run LFS no problem, it's mainly CPU based. But it may suffer in other current games.

Reading a bunch of specifications of a video card won't tell you how "good" it is, just as the clock speed of a cpu won't tell you how "good" it is. It will give you an idea, but you won't really know until you use it.

If you want an idea of how a piece of hardware stacks up against other ones you have to search the net for a review of it. All reviews have benchmarks which show exactly how that hardware performs. That's how you know what's good and what's not good. A bunch of numbers will not help if you don't understand what they represent!

Quote from LazLoW :

I had a 6200. It will run LFS no problem, it's mainly CPU based. But it may suffer in other current games.

Oolololol no it won't.

I also had one and it was the biggest waste of space ever.

Edit : Tomshardware (google it) has charts of all the 2008 cards, and some of the 2007 cards for comparison on a variety of games at different resolution and AA/AF settings.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Oolololol no it won't.

I also had one and it was the biggest waste of space ever.

Edit : Tomshardware (google it) has charts of all the 2008 cards, and some of the 2007 cards for comparison on a variety of games at different resolution and AA/AF settings.

Like the person who you quoted said, lfs is mainly cpu based(which... I thought you'd know by now). Your's probably didnt run it because your cpu was weak.

3.06 P4 at the time, hardly 'weak'. Merely adequate.

Quote from Jakg :

You really can't compare GFX cards on specs

if you actually have the specs (clocks, stream processors, bus width, memory type and clocks, some examples off the top of my head) and not just a bunch of not really significant numbers (memory size) the you can generally (not always) compare cards

in the end, a benchmark is what you need tho, yeah.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Oolololol no it won't.

I also had one and it was the biggest waste of space ever.

Edit : Tomshardware (google it) has charts of all the 2008 cards, and some of the 2007 cards for comparison on a variety of games at different resolution and AA/AF settings.

Im sorry to quote u but it runs LFS good, actually it runs it better...
i have a AX6200NX (idk if written well) and have 10 fps more than the other graphic card i had.... (i had sapphire 9600) it doesnt overheat if i put AA/AF to full but it gets down to 15 fps

Well it ran LFS crap for me, and it's a well known "budget" card, often what you get as standard in a computer.

Where does overheating come into it?

i think one of you is content with his graphics card being enough to run the game at 1024x768 and medium detail while others don't consider the graphics card to be any good unless it can get triple digit fps at 1920x1200 with 8xAA and 16xAF.

I run 1280x1024, happy with 4x AA and 8x AF, looks just as good as 8/16 but you get an extra ~15 FPS.

well, then, why do you characterize the 6200 as running lfs 'crap' ? i am more than certain it can run at 1024x768 without effects and medium detail. is that 'crap' ?

Quote from LazLoW :

I had a 6200. It will run LFS no problem, it's mainly CPU based. But it may suffer in other current games.

I had an onboard 6150 and it ran LFS....just.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Oolololol no it won't.

I also had one and it was the biggest waste of space ever.

Edit : Tomshardware (google it) has charts of all the 2008 cards, and some of the 2007 cards for comparison on a variety of games at different resolution and AA/AF settings.

Tend to agree...

You may have seen the thread around my choice of card here.