I need a good, cheap graphics card

doughboyX

I need a good, cheap graphics card. (wow, I wonder how many threads there have been that look like this.)
I want to be able to run games like Morrowind, Guild Wars, and Doom 3, but without leaving a hole in my wallet (which is currently a jar. :P ). Like, $150 max. All suggestions are appreciated.

Here are my computer's specs, if they are needed to recommend a graphics card. :rotate:
Windows XP Home Edition
Dell
Dell Dimension DIM3000
Intel
Pentium 4 CPU 2.8GHz
1.25 GB RAM

It's not a real powerful rig, but it gets the job done.

jmdbcool

What kind of graphics slot do you have? Is it a slightly older system with an AGP slot, or do you have PCI Express? This is important.

EDIT: Because a quick google search for Dimension 3000 tells me that there is NO agp/pci-e slot, which would mean that you can't upgrade the graphics.

doughboyX

Oops, forgot about that! It has a PCI slot. Not Express, but just PCI.

FreddyD

doughboyX wrote: »

Oops, forgot about that! It has a PCI slot. Not Express, but just PCI.

There is a Geforce 5200 for the PCI slot. Anything more than that is probably going to be a waste since it will be severely bottlenecked.

webguy20

Yea, your pretty much fucked. you COULD probably scrounge a mobo that could use all your existing hardware with an AGP or PCI-E slot. But between that and the video card your probably lookin 200 at least.

cctex823

http://microsource-store.stores.yahoo.net/vid-inno-fx5612pc.html
http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-VisionTek-VisionTek-Xtasy-9100-128MB-PCI-Retail-Box-Powered-by-ATI-s-RADEON-9100

doughboyX

Well shit. I guess I should start saving. More suggestions still appreciated.

cctex823

If it's cheap you're looking for...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069609642&name=PCI

doughboyX

cctex823 wrote: »

If it's cheap you're looking for...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069609642&name=PCI

Shweet! Thanks man!

urahonky

Save your money sir. With a PCI card slot you aren't going to get anything decent. Upgrade your mobo in the future and get a better one. It's worth it in the long run.

doughboyX

urahonky wrote: »

Save your money sir. With a PCI card slot you aren't going to get anything decent. Upgrade your mobo in the future and get a better one. It's worth it in the long run.

Hmmmm... I could do that... but that'd be pretty expensive too.

urahonky

doughboyX wrote: »

urahonky wrote: »

Save your money sir. With a PCI card slot you aren't going to get anything decent. Upgrade your mobo in the future and get a better one. It's worth it in the long run.

Hmmmm... I could do that... but that'd be pretty expensive too.

Better than upgrading it 2 - 3 times a year. But that's how I think of it... and I do most of my gaming on my PC. Your situation is probably different than mine.

doughboyX

well, my situation is pretty different. I do most of my gaming on consoles, and play PC games only on occasion. And usually if I want to play PC games, I use my family's pimp gaming rig. But that rig is running Vista, and the PC games I play (the majority of which were designed to run on XP or older) are a bit glitchy when being run on Vista. So I want to use this comp for XP gaming, but it needs a graphics card. *takes a breath* Yep, pretty different.

scootch

I play hella old video games on my vista rig without an ounce of problem. maybe you should look into fixing that problem instead of spending money on your dead-end system.

doughboyX

Well, I think it's that little bar on the right side of my desktop, ya know the one with the clocks and stuff? I think that's what's causing mah problems. I should probably just try to adjust the settings on that.

But thanks, I think I'll just end up doing all my gaming on that comp. Hell, I would be stupid not to.

scootch

you can just turn the side bar off completely... see if that helps.

doughboyX

Alright, I'll try it. thanks man.

BTW, you said you were running some hella old games on your vista comp. Like, how old? Would Doom or Doom 2 run on it? (those were made for '95, incase you didn't know)

scootch

fallout... 1997


I'll give doom demo a whirl here and report back.

doughboyX

doughboyX wrote: »

Alright, I'll try it. thanks man.

BTW, you said you were running some hella old games on your vista comp. Like, how old? Would Doom or Doom 2 run on it? (those were made for Win '95, incase you didn't know)

EDIT: Oops, I was just tryin to edit that first post, but accidentally quoted myself. Sorry, I'm kinda new to these forums.

Daedalus

The best PCI graphics card right now is the Radeon X1300/X1550 (essentially the same card with a different name), if I recall correctly. Which is about as powerful as an old Radeon 9700 (ain't the progress of technology wonderful?) and should run stuff like Morrowind and Half-Life 2. It will cost you $100, which is excessive (you could get a PCI-Express card that's at least twice as fast for the same money) but them's the breaks with old slots.

If you want to run anything current-gen, you need essentially a whole new computer. Or rather, you need a new motherboard to go with a new graphics card, which also means you need a new processor and RAM (the old ones won't fit) and probably a new power supply and case (Dell's are non-standard). Save your monies. Or shift to console gaming; your call.

scootch

aight, I tried doom shareware, it will only run if you use doom engine replacement...
www.doomsdayhq.com seems to work perfect with vista. I only tried the first two levels.

doughboyX

The Warlock wrote: »

The best PCI graphics card right now is the Radeon X1300/X1550 (essentially the same card with a different name), if I recall correctly. Which is about as powerful as an old Radeon 9700 (ain't the progress of technology wonderful?) and should run stuff like Morrowind and Half-Life 2. It will cost you $100, which is excessive (you could get a PCI-Express card that's at least twice as fast for the same money) but them's the breaks with old slots.

If you want to run anything current-gen, you need essentially a whole new computer. Or rather, you need a new motherboard to go with a new graphics card, which also means you need a new processor and RAM (the old ones won't fit) and probably a new power supply and case (Dell's are non-standard). Save your monies. Or shift to console gaming; your call.

By now, I have no idea what to do. I think I'll just game on the other comp, but if I decide to get a graphics card for this comp, I'll consider that one.

doughboyX

scootch wrote: »

aight, I tried doom shareware, it will only run if you use doom engine replacement...
www.doomsdayhq.com seems to work perfect with vista. I only tried the first two levels.

thanks! :winky:

Daedalus

Old DOS games (doom was released way before Windows 95, dude) usually have some trouble running on modern operating systems. If the makers of the game were nice, they probably released the source code a long time ago so people could update them. id does this, for example, so you can download modern Doom engines like zdoom or whatever and run just fine on modern computers. Duke Nukem 3D and Descent have undergone similar treatment.

If the makers of the game were dicks (or later went out of business, whatever) and it won't run in XP/Vista, you need to mess around with DOSBox to get them to work. DOXBox is essentially a DOS emulator. It works, but it's a bit of a pain to set up. The last game I needed to do this for was Daggerfall.

doughboyX

The Warlock wrote: »

Old DOS games (doom was released way before Windows 95, dude) usually have some trouble running on modern operating systems. If the makers of the game were nice, they probably released the source code a long time ago so people could update them. id does this, for example, so you can download modern Doom engines like zdoom or whatever and run just fine on modern computers. Duke Nukem 3D and Descent have undergone similar treatment.

If the makers of the game were dicks (or later went out of business, whatever) and it won't run in XP/Vista, you need to mess around with DOSBox to get them to work. DOSBox is essentially a DOS emulator. It works, but it's a bit of a pain to set up. The last game I needed to do this for was Daggerfall.

Alright, I'll try out DOSBox if I need it. Also, I actually have Ultimate Doom, which ran on DOS or '95.

Daedalus

doughboyX wrote: »

The Warlock wrote: »

Old DOS games (doom was released way before Windows 95, dude) usually have some trouble running on modern operating systems. If the makers of the game were nice, they probably released the source code a long time ago so people could update them. id does this, for example, so you can download modern Doom engines like zdoom or whatever and run just fine on modern computers. Duke Nukem 3D and Descent have undergone similar treatment.

If the makers of the game were dicks (or later went out of business, whatever) and it won't run in XP/Vista, you need to mess around with DOSBox to get them to work. DOXBox is essentially a DOS emulator. It works, but it's a bit of a pain to set up. The last game I needed to do this for was Daggerfall.

Alright, I'll try out DOXBox if I need it. Also, I actually have Ultimate Doom, which ran on DOS or '95.

Because the edition you bought came with DOOM95, a replacement Doom engine (I guess these are technically called "source ports") like the ones I was talking about, designed for Win95.

DOOM95 is vastly inferior to zdoom, though. Try plugging your WADs into that.

doughboyX

Whoa, I'm kind of confuzzled now. So yer sayin that:

Ultimate Doom uses a Windows '95 port of the original engine
and ZDoom is a better engine [than the '95 port]?

If that's what yer sayin, I understand that. But I'm not exactly sure how to change which engine the game is using. And WADs are like Doom mods, right? Like with custom levels and visuals and stuff?

Daedalus

doughboyX wrote: »

Whoa, I'm kind of confuzzled now. So yer sayin that:

Ultimate Doom uses a Windows '95 port of the original engine
and ZDoom is a better engine [than the '95 port]?

If that's what yer sayin, I understand that. But I'm not exactly sure how to change which engine the game is using. And WADs are like Doom mods, right? Like with custom levels and visuals and stuff?

WADs are the data files for Doom. You've got a file in your Doom folder right now called Doom.wad (or perhaps DoomU.wad, since you have Ultimate; I forget all the different names). It has all of the Doom data in it. All the other files there are either save files or files for the game engine.

You can download replacement engines for games like Doom, Quake, Descent, Duke3D, (etc. etc) where 1) the developer has released the original source code and 2) somebody has taken the time to create a new, improved game engine. These are called "source ports". ZDoom is a source port. So is Doom95. There are also many others.

Doom95 was created by Microsoft to show off DirectX, back when Windows 95 was new, and basically hasn't been updated since then, so it sucks. Go download and install ZDoom. Read the readme. Put your Doom.wad file where it tells you to put it. Play the game.

doughboyX

Okay, thank you. I'm not extremely savvy with this kind of stuff, as I'm a console gamer for the most part.

Daedalus

doughboyX wrote: »

Okay, thank you. I'm not extremely savvy with this kind of stuff, as I'm a console gamer for the most part.

Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere. I learned most of this source ports crap when me and a friend of mine bought some surplus computers from our school and were trying to figure out how to get them so we could play Doom against each other in his basement.

Man, I don't even want to know what you had to do to get networking set up in the DOS version. Thank god for source ports.

doughboyX

Heh heh, thanks alot man! I'm playin DOOM like it's 1995! Yipee!

On another note, I feel kind of stupid because I've actually dealed with things like this before when I was trying to get Marathon to run. :P