Upgrade/compatibility question

[jaysus]

I've got the following setup, and the display has gone wibble- most likely candidate being the graphics card. I was planning on upgrading soon anyway so I'm trying to decide whether to buy a cheap second hand card or spend £100 and get a new card. If I get a new card, will it be compatible with my existing setup? If so, which one shall I get?

AMD Athlon X2 4200
4GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce 8600 GTS (pci-e)
XP Pro

Help appreciated.

 

[jaysus]

Will look for something cheap and cheerful to tide me over then. Thanks for the advice.

 

[jaysus]

At the moment I'm in the process of trawling ebay each day looking for a cheap second hand card, but its getting boring already. I've been looking at the option of getting a cheap new card, and it seems to be that I'll have to spend a minimum of £40 (inc p&p.)

For that I'm looking at either a Geforce 210 512MB, Radeon 4550 512MB or a Radeon 4350 1GB. Which is the better option, or is there a fourth option I've not considered?

 

[jaysus]

While I remember, someone mentioned about PSU bottlenecking. I've currently got a 400W Corsair PSU.

 

[jaysus]

Yours has a 30amp 12v rail, so it will limit what Gfx card you can run, so check beforehand.

Cheers, will do..any idea how I check though? I can't see anything on technical specs to say whether or not they'd be alright with my PSU. Or is this just something I need to worry about with more powerful cards? If so, thats not a problem - when I do upgrade to something more powerful I'll be going for a 600W+ PSU.

tbh the 8800GT was an amazing card to have on its own i have 2 x 9600GT's and half the time they only just match up to a single 8800GT

Nice to know, but I can't see myself getting one for £40.

I'm getting bored of the ebay game now, so if someone does have advice on what the best card I can get for £40 (inc p&p) is I'd be grateful.

 

[jaysus]

I've been doing some more digging, and I've narrowed it down to this choice:

ATI Radeon HD 4550 512mb vs nVidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB (or possibly 1GB, for a couple of quid more.)

I can't see a huge amount of difference between the two. Advice? Please?