Looking for a new video graphics card/processor whatever you call it

Ok. I have a shitty intel integrated graphics card, and I want a new one. I have a dell 4600c thinline with a 80 GB hard drive, and a pent. 4 2.66 GHz processor. I am looking for the best video card money can buy. I want the best without paying ridiculous amounts of money, but still would be powerful enough to play some of the top games today, if not some of the games soon to come out later. I prefer nVidias, because I've had some good experience. If you have any suggestions otherwise, I am open to them. THanks. :)

If you want the best money can buy then you need to get only a few hundred dollars. Something like an ati x850 or a geforce 6800. I have a 9600 all-in-wonder and it supposedly runs the top games decent enough. But I am dead broke and cant get a new motherboard to try it out because I have no agp port(got it as a gift) But maybe get a card in the $200 range. Most of them are decent enough and can run up to Doom 3 on normal graphics.

Mkay

is there anything extra I have to get besides the video card? I have a firewire card in one of the expansion ports already. There's another port, but I dunno which is 32-bit and 16-bit or something like that. Which port does the card need?

For the top of the line graphics cards, you'll need an AGP port. It's usually above the PCI slots, and the slot will be back further than the PCI ones, as AGP cards are longer and bigger.

ok, I think that's the one that.s free. The firewire card is in the short one. since the dell 4600C thinline is so thin, It only has one of each port lol. It doesnt even have a serial port.

Just go to Best Buy. They got 256MB GeForce 5700 for $119. That's quite good enough to fool around with gaming. WARNING- the problem with Intell Integrated Graphics is that there is no AGP slot to put it in. You will need a new Mother board also!
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so from what i hear it's going to cost me some money..

Just go to Best Buy. They got 256MB GeForce 5700 for $119. That's quite good enough to fool around with gaming. WARNING- the problem with Intell Integrated Graphics is that there is no AGP slot to put it in. You will need a new Mother board also!
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That is not true!

I have worked on plenty of motherboards that have integrated Intel graphics but also have an AGP port. I have also seen them without. You might not need a new motherboard. My suggestion would be to open your case and look. Look for a brown slot above your PCI slots.

If you have an AGP port then the card I would suggest is the MSI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB/256bit or 256MB/256bit. Then all you have to do is update the BIOS with the Radeon 9800 XT BIOS and you have a much more expensive card for free. However, you must have a card with the R360 core and Samsung memory.

I don't think that card is over $200 right now. It is one hell of a deal.

That is not true!

I have worked on plenty of motherboards that have integrated Intel graphics but also have an AGP port. I have also seen them without. You might not need a new motherboard. My suggestion would be to open your case and look. Look for a brown slot above your PCI slots.

If you have an AGP port then the card I would suggest is the MSI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB/256bit or 256MB/256bit. Then all you have to do is update the BIOS with the Radeon 9800 XT BIOS and you have a much more expensive card for free. However, you must have a card with the R360 core and Samsung memory.

I don't think that card is over $200 right now. It is one hell of a deal.


The Brown one is free, I saw that after cleaning the dust outta my PC. THe white one is being used by a FireWire card. What do you mean I have a much more expensive card for free, From what I understand, I can get a Radeon 9800 Pro, then I have to install the software which im sure Windows does automatically. cuz it does whenever new stuff is conencted to it. Whats an R360 core and Samsung memory, I have no clue. Do you mean RAM memory? My computer is a full out dell, and I dont think anything is is Samsung in it lol. Im good with software, but not so good with hardware.

What I am talking about is the fact that you can buy a Radeon 9800 Pro and make it a Radeon 9800 XT which is a much faster video card just by flashing it with a new BIOS. The thing is that most of the new Radeon 9800 Pro cards have the R360 core which is the same one on the XT version of the card. Granted you have to buy a 256bit version of the Pro card.

So in a manner of speaking you buy a 9800 Pro, but you get a 9800 XT.

Ok, so I buy the 128MB/256bit Radeon, and flash it with a new BIOS. I know what the BIOS is, but what do you mean flash it? and how do I flash it with a new BIOS?

PS, there are two 9800s here that I did a search at BestBuy for. Which is better?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?qs=radeon+9800&mipp=25&type=page&sp=Relevance&cp=1&sc=Computers&uq=radeon+9800&id=cat12085

Flashing the BIOS means you overwrite the current BIOS with a newer version. You need a software utility that will erase the BIOS and write the newer version on the video card. Most manufacturers have the newer BIOS and utility on their website for download.

Just be careful you use the correct BIOS and flashing utility. If the write process has problems and corrupts the BIOS, you'll pretty much have to buy a new video card. The BIOS tells the card how to function on the hardware level, not the software level like video card drivers.

if that were to happen, would the place I bought it from take it back if I went to return it? I wouldnt think so.

Polygon- of course open the case and look at what you got 1st. That's primary. I do forget that there are some folks who don't know to do that.http://www.emotipad.com/newemoticons/Big-Smile.gif
Roundheadedkid- don't mistake the BIOS of the video card with the BIOS of the motherboard or you'll be all goofed up.

Since fooling with video card core BIOS sounds alien to you just buy a card that you can plug in and GO with. For what you are going to use it for you can find one to do that since you're looking for gaming rather that doing CMYK color separation for pre-press or doing special effect for a movie studio. Expect to pay $2500 and up for a pro card. Otherwise $150-400 should cover anthing some wheezy game engine can throw at you. Have a gig of RAM too- 512MB absolute minimum.
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So the amount of RAM is affected by the new card also? this is getting to sound expensive.

Sorry for my inexperience with hardware, its the software I'm alot better at.

Okay, maybe I can help put things into perspective for you so it's not quite as confusing.

When you are looking for a gaming machine or any machine for that matter, you have two options: buy it already made (Dell, HP, E-machine, etc.) or built it yourself. When looking at a computer you must start with one thing. Just like building a car for performance, you need to decide what exactly you want out of the machine. Do you want a high-end gaming machine (usually expensive to build) or a run-of-the-mill "it's enough to get the job done" machine?

When building a machine, you start with these items:

Motherboard
This will determine EVERYTHING about your computer. From what processors you can run to which video cards you can use and how much RAM it can have. It will also determine how much of anything you can put in it such as how many expansion slots it has, etc.

When buying a motherboard, you need to focus on what processors it will support, what speed graphics cards it can handle, how much RAM it will support, and what kind of hard drives it will support. These four items make up the majority of your speed and efficiency. Also helps to look at things like what the BUS speed of the board is (how fast data is transferred between components via the motherboard).

Processor
This is next on the list. You want something that's fairly current and won't burn a hole in your pocket. Again, performance means more expensive. Decide what you want and what the motherboard will support. You can always buy a processor that isn't the fastest one the board will support. You can always buy a faster one to upgrade later if you bought a board that will give you some expandibility. You don't have to buy the fastest processor the board will handle - it's not a requirement. There is a lot of new technology and it comes out FAST. Constantly newer and faster things on the market in the computer industry, so don't feel obligated to buy the newest $900 processor to play the newest games (although it's not a bad idea :p).

(eg. Pentium 4 3.4gHz 800mhz BUS for example - and is it the server version or a version you can put on your motherboard? Usually server versions have a larger L2 and L3 cache but won't work on end-user boards).

RAM
This is your computer's scratch pad. It's where all the data the processor stores when it's using it or coming back to it to use it. The data comes and goes in a hurry and the more RAM you have, the more space the processor has to work with. This typically means your PC will not only run faster but more efficiently. 512mb is generally the current minimum standard these days with most motherboards supporting over 3gb of RAM or more. Again, make sure when you buy your motherboard you know how much RAM it supports and WHAT KIND of RAM it supports. Just like anything else there are different kinds of RAM and capacities of RAM modules. Be sure you know what kind the board requires and what capacity you're able to put on it. Some boards don't care if you mix and match RAM module capacities. Some they have to be the same on each module.

(eg. 256mb, 512mb, 1gb, DDR2100, DDR3300, etc.)

Video Card
Video cards can cost almost as much as the processors now that they're practically their own mini-computer on a card. They have different RAM sizes (it's RAM that only the video card uses for it's graphics processor and it's on the card itself. It's not the RAM you put on your motherboard.) and different speeds. 8x AGP I think is the current standard so you may want a motherboard that will support 8x AGP (AGP = advanced graphics port --- it's not the same as a PCI slot that you put everything else into such as your sound card). Newer technology is starting to bring out PCI-E (PCI Express) which is faster than AGP. Most motherboards don't support this yet, but they will soon. You'll need to decide if you want one that has AGP 8x or PCI-E. The PCI-E boards and graphics cards will cost a lot more since they're new, but they'll be faster. AGP 8x is the current standard I believe. The graphics card is one of the biggest bottlenecks when looking at playing computer games. You can have a fast processor and a lot of RAM, but if the graphics card isn't up to par, you'll have a hard time. Those three things make up the biggest chunks of speed in the PC when it comes to games. The only other one is hard drives.

(eg. 256mb RAM nVidia GeForce FX9800 or something like that.)

Hard Drives
Again, you have a lot of choices. Most boards now support SATA (Serial ATA) which is faster than your standard ATA (which is still very widespread). Some even support SATA RAID which is kinda like dual processors, but with hard drives - two hard drives act as one in a RAID 0 configuration so you have both drives splitting the workload. Most hard drives now are SATA (ATA 133 and ATA 100 are still very common though). Most current motherboards will have SATA so you might as well do that. Prices are basically the same.

(eg. SATA 8mb cache/buffer 7200rpm Western Digital 200gb hard drive).

I hope this helps put some of the hardware into perspective when looking to upgrade/build/buy a new PC. The first thing you need to do is look at your own hardware and determine what your motherboard will support before you buy anything. Dell should have a specs list of what it can handle or someone at their tech support should be able to tell you based on your model. Don't expect much out of pre-built's though - they generally don't have much if any expandibility.

Also, bear in mind this is for desktop PC's. Is the computer you have a desktop or a laptop? If you have a laptop, buy a new one. The graphics card chips on laptops are soldered to the motherboard and can't be upgraded. The only way to get something faster is buy a faster laptop.