Looking to upgrade?

[Lord Darkblade]

I recently purchased a computer (or rather my parents got me one for Christmas/Birthday), it plays older games well (Unreal 2 = silky ), however putting in things like fear seems to tax the machine even on 640x480 . What I would like is a graphics card to get me reasonably upto date (£200 limit probably), not looking for top end graphics from stuff like FEAR however something that will do well in stuff like CS:S and UT2K4 would be nice.

Currently its a Compaq 1639:

AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 3700+
1GB DDR SD-RAM
2 SATA 160GB drives (7200 I think)
NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6200SE Turbocache 256MB
(PCI-E x16 slot)
3 PCI Slots (1 free)

Its nothing spectacular but its a start, any thoughts?

 

[chaparral]

Go for a leadtek or OcUK Geforce 7800gt £211 including VAT

 

[Vogon]

You are looking at something like:

PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC) @ £152 inc vat

Thats as fast as you are going to get for sub £160 and should serve your needs admirably.

Next step up is a Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-102-SP) around £225 inc
Or
Gigabyte GeForce 7800 GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) & Quake 4 Bundle - Retail (GX-017-GI) at around £225 inc

Any of those will blow your 6200 into the middle of last month

Just be sure it is a PCI-E slot you have

 

[foxxx]

Get the cheapest 7800GT you can find OcUK or leadtek. dont go lower than that if u want it to be new, x850 will be a huge improvement but in 1-2 years there will be a few games it won't even run.

BTW is that a compaq sr1539?

 

[Lord Darkblade]

No its the 1639 Specs
(only linking because there does not appear to be a purchase option on this site, compaq don't do direct sales).

Its not a top of the line machine (not dual core or anything special) but it was fairly cheap (<£400). Now the real question is which is better, the 1800 or the 7800? Ok its probably a loaded question but is there a "winner" in this generation or is it a toss up again?

 

[ACESHIGH]

X1800XT is qiucker than 7800GTX & at its current price is an awesome deal (though out of your budget).

Of the 7800GT & X1800XL - both offer similr performance, depending on games tested.

 

[The Running Man]

definately take the 7800GT over the x850...

bit of a tossup between the GT ad the x1800xl though...

 

[AsLan]

All the cards listed will be great, but looking at the machines specs you may need to add some more memory as well.

 

[daviec]

There's nothing wrong with his machine specs except the graphics card. 1Gb will be fine for now. 2Gb would help in some games but 1Gb isn't going to hold him back.

 

[AsLan]

My mistake, I was going on the linked spec (512Mb) not the first post.