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Buying an AGP card.

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Joined
28 Jan 2005
Posts
1,873
Location
Lymington
Hello,

I am looking to get my brother a cheap-ish graphics card as part of his x-mas presents. Its to go in our 'family' PC which is a P4 2.8Ghz, 2x256mb PC2700, FX5200 128MB..... yep a crappy prebuilt job from a major high street store.

My brother has recently got into BF2 but it runs like a dog and hes always wanting to play it on my PC which is starting to annoy me as hes always on it ;) The main problem is that the FX5200 can't handle full view distance so hes always getting snipped because he has to run the view distance at like 60% or its literally a slideshow.

Anyway my dad has agreed to buy some more ram for the PC to take it upto 1gb which will probobly do for running most games on medium to low.

I checked the PSU and its a 250w (pic here). Sorry about the crap quality (w800i) but I was thinking such a weak PSU would severly limit any upgrade? If the pic is too poor I can write down the values of the rails. I was thinking card wise of a 9800pro or 6600gt as these can be found for ~£50 and I don't really want to go over £60 inc p&p but my concern is if the PSU can handle it. About 2 years ago I attemped to put a 9800SE into a prebuilt PC and it caused the PC to overheat and die:(

Now my knowledge of AGP cards is limited as i've been runnning high end PCI-E for the past 2 years but is a 9800pro/6600gt likly to cause the PC to overheat?

I don't really want to upgrade the PSU or CPU, just want to stick in the best graphics card I can with such a poor PSU and not cause the PC to die :)

Any advice?

Cheers

- MG42Maniac
 
I've found a 9800 pro with IceQ cooling for £50 inc p&p, will the IcQ help keep the heat down much?

Also regarding the 7600GS thats slightly over what I wanted to spent as they come in at ~£80 but if they were ~£60 i'd definetly get one. I shouldn't have got him those DVD's :p
 
Maybe look second hand, but the 7600GS seems the way to go.

Oh, and when you get your new RAM, check to see what the top speed your mobo could take - if you sell those two 256 PC2700 sticks, and put in 1GB of PC3200 it will run much faster (if your mobo can take 3200 RAM).
 
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