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Cheapskate bang for buck option

MAllen

MAllen

MAllen

Associate
Joined
24 Feb 2003
Posts
2,236
Location
Brighton, UK
My mate's got an ancient Pentium 4 3Ghz PC (Don't laugh). In a low profile case. She wants to sling a cheap graphics card in there for improved graphics compared with the old on-board Radeon.

Obviously there is no point in putting in some monster graphics card as the old PC won't make much use of it. We are also limited on PSU power. And we are not expecting to play the latest titles. Just add a little 3D grunt to the machine for older titles.

Which half-height graphics card would you buy? (Here or elsewhere)

OR - can someone point me at a quick comparison list so I can compare AMD and nVidia models. Been out of the game for a while so lost track of the different graphics card naming schemes.

(Also would consider anyone who wants to sell me a second hand half-height graphics card)

Thanks in advance. :)
 
"Whatever works" would be the simplest answer.

There is a Steam account installed on the PC and she was playing with Audiosurf, but the dumb on-board graphics just couldn't hack it. The specs on that mention "Pixel Shader 3.0" would be handy.

My plan is to spend some cash in putting something better in, but take into account the lack of spare PSU power and old CPU it is pointless spending too much. Some graphics cards are just not going to like such a lower powered old CPU there.

Yeah - I know... vague. :D
 
I knew I had written it down somewhere... currently the onboard graphics is a ATI RADEON Xpress 200 whatever one of those is. I believe it is powered by a drunken pixie with a biro.
 
Can't upgrade the whole system yet as not enough cash around. This is more of a "make do for now" system. As it is, most of the parts were free\second hand with the only new part being the hard disk.
 
6400 v 6500 - I'm guessing that the 50% price hike from £40 to £60 is not really worth it on this old PC. That 6500 is not going to be 50% faster - or are those extra cores likely to make up for some of the weak CPU?

Thanks for your help guys :)
 
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