Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Is this one sufficient enough for me to get the good performance and shadowing? Or is there a better one that doesnt cost a whole lot more? Link, click here Give me some opinions please, cause I will probably purchase it today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
five Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Is this one sufficient enough for me to get the good performance and shadowing? Or is there a better one that doesnt cost a whole lot more? I am not really familiar with the current Nvidia cards, but for it to have such a good rating on newegg, I am sure that it is an excellent card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpup Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Is this one sufficient enough for me to get the good performance and shadowing? Or is there a better one that doesnt cost a whole lot more? Link, click here Give me some opinions please, cause I will probably purchase it today. i think that you would be in good shape with that card, but for my money, I would go with the ATI Radeon 9600 XT route. Same type of money, better performance, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brianbscotty Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Goldensuitcase, I have that very card and am VERY happy with it. Make sure that you have a free large power dongle, though. Great performance for the buck. And J-pup, you should read Tom's Hardware Guide, they preferred this card over the 9600XT. P.S. I think 3Dguru did too. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Author Share Posted April 28, 2004 Whats a FREE LARGE POWER DONGLE? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sq322 Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Please...leave the large dongles outta this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brianbscotty Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 You're scaring me here. (J/K) the power dongles plug into the back of your CD-ROM, Hard Disk, etc... They have 4 female pin connectors. The Nvidia needs one to function. It doesn't have enough power supplied through the AGP slot. The Radeon only uses a little connector, the type that plugs into your Floppy drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
five Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Power dongle (molex connector) from your power supply. If you don't, you need to pick up a y-splitter as well. However, for your video card I would use a molex connector that comes straight from the power supply. Use the y-splitter on a hard drive or something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Author Share Posted April 28, 2004 hahahahahha guys I have no idea what you are speaking of. I have never heard of a power dongle or a y-splitter. If you can, give me links to what I should get exactly and give me a brief summary of how I use each and what they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Author Share Posted April 28, 2004 Thanks for the splitter link FIVE. I will pick one of those up at COMPUSA today. as far as the DONGLE goes, which one should I get or does it realy matter and how is it used? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
five Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 as far as the DONGLE goes, which one should I get Alright, you don't have to buy a dongle. You're power supply inside your computer can only power so many items: cd-rom, cdrw, dvdrw, hard drive, floppy, etc. In order to hook up these items to the power supply you use a dongle. There are two sizes of dongles, one that powers the smaller devices (floppy, zip drive) and one that powers the larger devices (dvdrw, hard drive). If you get the Nvidia card you need to have at least one large dongle. If you get the ATI card then you need at least on smaller dongle. You don't need the y-splitter unless you are out of dongles. Anyways, that was a quick run-down, hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
five Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 If you are still confused after reading my last post, just open the side of your computer and look inside. You should see these connectors coming out of your power supply. If you really don't understand, you should probably just have the guys at CompUSA install the vid card. It's not that hard, but at least you'd have peace of mind about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Author Share Posted April 28, 2004 Ok, so a dongle can only handle a certain amout of things at once, right? All I have is a Dvddrive on my computer at the moment, so does that mean I would have to buy a dongle to compensate for the video card? Or do I just need to get the card and not worry about anything? Plus, my computer friend is installing it for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liamdaly Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 I have a similar question -- unfortunately, my computer doesn't have an AGP slot, so I was wondering what the best PCI card that's reasonably priced would be? I'm running a GeForce 4 MX440 right now, and getting decent enough performance from it. I don't really have the money right now to invest in a computer with an AGP slot, besides, except for that the computer is pretty good -- P4 2 gHz, 1 GB RAM. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brianbscotty Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 You should'n't need a splitter. If all you have is a DVD drive you should have dongles free. Plus donglecan actually be piggy-backed. If you pull the power cords (dongles) out the you'll see that one side is male, the other, female. You can plug two into one. Also, a question. Do you have an 8x AGP slot on your motherboard? If you don't then don't bother with that high-end of a card. I believe the card is backward (4x) compatible; you aren't going to get the eye-candy you want with it running in that mode, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kamasutra Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Please...leave the large dongles outta this rofl :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brianbscotty Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Liamdaly, My suggestion is to start with a motherboard purchase. There aren't many PCI cards that perform well. There are many motherboards that can suit the average gamers needs at around $50-75. Try Tigerdirect for some good deals. With your processor and RAM you should be able to upgrade at a fairly decent price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenDammit Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 there is about * * that much difference between 4x and 8x on a graphics card. Its not much that is noticable...any recent PSU will have enough connections to run a graphics card, two optical drives, and two hard drives. Having fans with molex connecters is great too, gives you room to piggyback and saves a lot of trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted April 28, 2004 Author Share Posted April 28, 2004 Brainscotty, to be honest, I cant even remember what model computer I have. I just bought it right before MVP came out. Its a DELL, dimension 2400 2.8 ghz 80gb 512 ram at the moment, I cant tell you anything more Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stecropper Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 Liamdaly, I too use a PCI Slot for my video card and have a similar 2.2ghz system with 1GB ram. I just went from a geoforce nvidia mx400 64mb video card to geoforce nvidia fx5200 128mb card. I was then able to max out all options on this game and it runs very smoothly. With the mx400 I had to turn a few of the graphics options off to have it work smoothly. Hope this helps ......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
five Posted April 28, 2004 Share Posted April 28, 2004 I was wondering what the best PCI card that's reasonably priced would be? I did a quick search on newegg and found a few higher end cards: XFX FX5200 256MB, POWERCOLOR RADEON 9200 256MB, and BFG FX5200 256MB. You can also look around yourself, if you'd like, just select PCI in the drop down menu for Slot Type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spitoon Posted April 29, 2004 Share Posted April 29, 2004 My old computer had only PCI slots, and I used to run HH2K4 on it at fairly high settings with an FX5200...I think you would be fairly happy with it, however, keep in mind that it will not run any newer games, especially FPS titles. Sports titles are not as taxing on vid cards as other games are, so you will get away with it for baseball, golf, etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liamdaly Posted April 29, 2004 Share Posted April 29, 2004 Thanks for the info... I think I'm going to go with the Powercolor Radeon 9200. I don't really need anything more than that, I don't run many newer, graphic intensive games -- the two games I play most right now are MVP and OOTP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpup Posted April 29, 2004 Share Posted April 29, 2004 Brainscotty, to be honest, I cant even remember what model computer I have. I just bought it right before MVP came out. Its a DELL, dimension 2400 2.8 ghz 80gb 512 ram at the moment, I cant tell you anything more I bought the ATI Radeon 9600 XT and it was simple to install. All Dell's have an AGP slot. All you have to do is remove the old graphics card and put in the new one. Again, for my money, I would buy the ATI. If you do go with the ATI, make sure and download the latest drivers ASAP. ATI recommends a 300w power supply, but I have a 250w and it runs with no problems. I don't think that you will be dissapointed with either one. Good luck and be careful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldensuitcase Posted May 5, 2004 Author Share Posted May 5, 2004 I bought the ATI Radeon 9600 XT and it was simple to install. All Dell's have an AGP slot. All you have to do is remove the old graphics card and put in the new one. Again, for my money, I would buy the ATI. If you do go with the ATI, make sure and download the latest drivers ASAP. ATI recommends a 300w power supply, but I have a 250w and it runs with no problems. I don't think that you will be dissapointed with either one. Good luck and be careful. JPUP, Apparently all DELLS do not have an agp slot. The 2400 model, which mine is, does not have a motherboard that supports AGP type cards:(. If I am wrong, let me know, but for the life ofm me, I couldnt find one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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