What gfx card do i buy?

[JudgeC]

The PCI-e slot on these ASrock boards are physically 16x slots that run at 4x in terms of bandwidth.

Yes, that is what was trying to say, although not very clearly. I assumed that the card had to have 16x bandwidth available, but this is obviously not the case, as your link to the Asrock site shows.

Sorry to the OP for any confusion caused.

As for going for an 8800GTS, it would be a good idea if he was thinking of upgrading his Mobo+CPU some time soon, otherwise it will be wasted on his current system. It will be massively CPU bottlenecked, not to mention only having 4x PCI-E bandwidth available.

 

[Cairnsey]

The difference between pci-e 16x and 4x is only roughly 10%. Also, if he allowed himself a budget of ~£200 he could get an 8800gts and e2140/60(MM). Obviously overclock the C2D and, as the french say, et voila.

Then, when needs be swap out his DUAL-VSTA for a nice X38 motherboard, go quad core etc.

Or...

Stick to your budget of £150, buy a 8800gts (I've seen a few go for ~£150 recently on the MM), see if the CPU holds it back too much, if not, great. if it does, simply buy a budget C2D.

 

[ACESHIGH]

I think, considering your system & budget that an X1950Pro is the best choice for you.

I would go for the OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB, which is priced really well, performs very nicely & the 512MB of ram will be good to have for some current & upcoming games.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-064-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=404

 

["andy"]

I play mostly first person shooters old and new. eg. medal of honor series, fear, farcry etc.
I was looking at the x1950, I see it's 82 quid. I have about 150 quid to spend, is it worth paying the xtra 70 quid for something better?

for 150 notes you could get a x1950 and a retail e2160 from overclockers

at stock it will still be loads better than a 3.2 prescott and even on the budget asrock board you can pretty much be guarenteed that it will clock 2.3ghz ( see thread in the motherboard section )

would play most things with ease aslong as your not at a super high res or wanting the very latest games to run at the very best settings