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Spec me a cheap PCI-E video card

Kingy

Kingy

Kingy

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Leicester
Hi,

What is the best cheap PCI-E graphics card to go for?

I'm not interested in 3D performance but I would like to get the best card I can.

It needs to be passively cooled, with VGA, or VGA to DVI converter and ideally have graphics memory on board.

I've seen the BFG 6200 LE, the Leadtek 7100 GS, BFG 7300 LE, and Leadtek 6200 all under £35 on OcUK. Which of these would be best?

What exactly is this 'TurboCache' thing all about? It sounds like marketing crap for having a graphics card but still using system RAM, is this right?
 
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turbo cache is marketing crap the best budget card imo is
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 Hyper Memory 512MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail around £40inc vat
 
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No, Turbocache/Hypermemory are fancy sounding words that basically mean that your graphics card uses your system memory, rather than it's own dedicated memory. Which it subsequently doesn't have. So Kingy, you were right. ;)

Any of the cards mentioned in your post would be roughly the same and fine. Just go with the cheapest. :)
 
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naffa said:
No, Turbocache/Hypermemory are fancy sounding words that basically mean that your graphics card uses your system memory, rather than it's own dedicated memory. Which it subsequently doesn't have. So Kingy, you were right. ;)

Any of the cards mentioned in your post would be roughly the same and fine. Just go with the cheapest. :)
Click to expand...

Do any of these cards have *any* memory on board? I'm sure I saw turbo-cache affair that said it had 64MB on-board, but needed 512MB RAM to get it up to the marketted 256MB? Having said that, I can't find it for the life of me now... :(

I only really want to put on image on a screen, and having decided to get a Gigabyte DS3 as the mATX boards don't clock, realised that the DS3 dosen't have integrated graphics... :(

I'm starting to think that this Oc'ing lark is more hassle than it's worth. I may well become the only living soul not to overclock a C2D... :p
 
Hm, not sure if it is of any use to you, I am using the MSI 6200 128MB card from OCUK. I believe it is Turbo Cache also, but has 128MB of its own RAM, so unless you are gaming, you wont notice. It is passive to (no fan). I have clocked it from 350 to 375 Core and 640 RAM. Seems to play Counter Strike 1.6/Zero fine at between 70 - 100FPS @ 1600x900.

I am using it to the 8800 GTS 320MB cards come out, so I am "making do" at the moment. Its not a terrible card though, it certainly does all windows tasks fine, and runs 2 monitors @ 1680x1050 perfectly ok.
 
Dark_Angel said:
Hm, not sure if it is of any use to you, I am using the MSI 6200 128MB card from OCUK. I believe it is Turbo Cache also, but has 128MB of its own RAM, so unless you are gaming, you wont notice. It is passive to (no fan).
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the card that Naffa has linked to? It looks ideal bar the fact that there's a fan pictured... :(
 
mattx2 said:
turbo cache is marketing crap the best budget card imo is
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300 Hyper Memory 512MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail around £40inc vat
Click to expand...

What is that card going to do with 512MBs of memory? Even the 128MBs of real onboard memory is overkill.

Turbocache/Hypermemory cards do have memory onboard, it varies depending on the card, but they're usually on a ridiculously narrow bus (64bit for most) and it supplements its memory bandwidth by using the PCI-E bus to nab some system memory. The cards are so underpowered that its unlikely they'll actually fill their onboard memory, its the extra memory bandwidth that turbocache/hypermemory tries to address.
 
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