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Would I notice any difference ?

steveinspain

steveinspain

steveinspain

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586
Location
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Recently I asked if I needed a fancy graphics card - mine cost me £50, and as I don't play games, the general concensus was that it was fine for me.
However, recently I have seen a fair few second hand cards being sold off on other forums or wherever and am curious - for general use, internet browsing and photo editing etc would I see ANY difference if I bought a second hand card for around £50, and if so what sort of difference, and what cards to look for ?
I don't have money to burn, but am interested - also, is noise something that has to come with a better card - mine has no cooler, and I am not keen to add to the noise my pc makes...
 
OK !
I had asumed a better card might show some improvement over a cheapie, however small, but you both say no, so no it is !
In that case there must be a huge number of you who play games given the cost of top graphics cards and the number of posts in this part of the forum..!
Maybe I should try playing a game one day to find out what I am missing..
 
The only benefit a new card would give you is slightly improved Vista Aero performance, GPU based computing programs (e.g. as folding@home or Badaboom) and ofcourse games.

If you ever want to the the plunge and give gaming a try I can recommend a few brilliant games that will run on a modestly specced computer and give you an idea how much fun PC gaming can be. Such games include: Roller Coaster Tycoon, Call of Duty(2,4), Civilization 4, Half Life (2), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Midtown Madness 2. I'm sure many other people can recommend classic games that will run on your rig and give you a great taste of PC gaming.
 
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Even if you had on-board graphics, for internet browsing, upgrading to a graphics card would be a complete luxury. What are your full PC specs? A RAM upgrade might suit your needs better, especially with RAM being so cheap right now.
 
steveinspain said:
PC specs are Asus P5Q pro mobo, E8400 wolfdale, 4gb ram, powered by a Corsair 650w PSU running XP pro
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That's a very good spec if you ever decided to get into serious gaming, i.e. everything else is in place & ready to go :)

What cards are you looking at for around £50? Curious if really offering a benefit over what you currently have. But ATIs 4670 for slightly more is a proven excellent card (up to a certain res).
 
I saw an Nvidia 8800GTX GT and another that I can't remember the name of - I know nothing at all about graphics cards so have no idea if it is even half decent..

I'll take a look at portal later, and thanks for the replies guys !
 
Yeah the size/res does effect it.

In general the bigger your monitor the more pixels it has so your graphics card has to draw more.

e.g.
22" - 1680 x 1050
24" - 1920 x 1200

I'd say what you have is more than fine for what you do. If you want to try a game (I'm struggling to think of any without violence) then I'd also cast my vote with Portal. It will run on the system you have so you can test the water before thinking about buying a new card for gaming.
 
The 8800GTX are good cards. They do run quite warm though, with temperatures of 80 degrees being normal. Not sure what this means for there long term survival. (I just had one that developed a problem)

In terms of graphics well they are 2 years old, but are top of the range cards. They would be complete overkill unless you are using something intensive. As for noise, expect them to have a hefty fan on them to keep them cool.
 
Allattar said:
The 8800GTX are good cards. They do run quite warm though, with temperatures of 80 degrees being normal. Not sure what this means for there long term survival. (I just had one that developed a problem)

In terms of graphics well they are 2 years old, but are top of the range cards. They would be complete overkill unless you are using something intensive. As for noise, expect them to have a hefty fan on them to keep them cool.
Click to expand...

This one comes with an accelerator or something - some after market cooler thingie - are most cards noisy then ?
 
The other one I saw was one of these -
Sapphire X1950 Pro + Arctic Accelero S1 passive cooler (PCI-E) at 30 quid
However, I really ought to try a game or two first I guess..!
 
ffallic said:
Try portal :)
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+ 1 for portal, really good fun.

Also try roller coaster tycoon 2 (i got my copy for about £7 from a local game reatiler) I have waisted days playing this i love it. the GFX are not great but its fun none the less!

to download demos get "steam" its free and has loads of demo's to try + you can buy your games from them too! (although for big games they are over priced most of the time, unless you get the weekend deals)
 
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