graphics card advice needed

[crunch]

Having been away from the world of graphics cards for a while, I'm a bit out of touch and need a bit of advice.

I want a card with good 2D performance, I don't care about 3D performance as the work is either image editing, office work or surfing. At present I have an agp Radeon 9000 pro, but I'm upgrading to a pci-e board and I have little to spend - say £50 or less.

So in a nutshell, a pci-e card with as good or better 2D performance than the Radeon, passive cooling, less than £50.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Minstadave]

In terms of 2D performance (which I don't really understand as a concept) all cards built in the last 5 years will probably be identical.

Basically avoid Nvidia's Turbocache and ATI's hypermemory (best to avoid these shared memory cards, you don't want a GFX hogging memory bandwidth) and go with the cheapest card you can find

And welcome to the forums

 

[titaniumx3]

I'm not sure all cards have the same 2D image quality though. I have two geforce mx440 cards and both seem to give a slightly yellow toned and fuzzy image in comparision to the 9800pro and x1900xt I have. Though I think this only applies if your using D-SUB outputs.

 

[Tetras]

How about Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 256MB (£45.77 Including VAT), not hyper-memory, passive cooling and ATI

Won't be better at games than the 9800 Pro though.

 

[crunch]

Thanks,

I didn't think that it would matter much as far as 2D speed is concerned. I seem to remember that Matrox cards had the edge for 2D image quality, I will have to see if they are still made.

 

[crunch]

Ok, I've been looking around a bit and have come down to a standoff between the Nvidia 7300GT and the ATI X1300pro.

Assuming that each is equally fast for 2D work, if I did want to use it for a game, which would be the better card?.

 

[Tetras]

Prolly the 7300 GT, especially if it is a DDR3 version.