don't worry you can pick up a Raddy 9600 for a lot less than that (sapphire is good value for a crackin card) and still have enough left over for a decent case, I promise you. Trust Uncle Taw.

i did one just like it for a local guy only last week, 1.8g Celeron, onboard 64mb graphics, lots of RAM, good clean HD, games performing like a donkey with plague. Unistalled the onboard driver, chucked a Sapphire 9600pro in, disabled the onboard in the BIOS, set the vga boot to AGP, let XP pick up the driver form the cd, put DX9b on, tweaked the ATi panel for performance and application control in D3d and OpenGL, 10mins later the guy was playing his NWN and cooing over how smooth everything was and how good it looked, and no weirdness in the display.

the card cost just under 100quid which is well within your budget don't get the SE its cr*p, or the XT, not worth the extra money imho (but a good card) get the Pro. 9600. Ati Radeon.

@Taw, card is this the one you are talking about?

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

No Taw (hopefully) means this:

Sapphire ATI Radeon "The Beast" 9600 Pro All-in-Wonder 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI - Retail (GX-060-SP)
Don't sacrifice performance for the convenience of an all in one solution. Combine your worlds of Gaming, TV and Video together into one gripping multimedia tool for all occasions, SAPPHIRE enthusiastically delivers the extreme in creative power, THE BEAST RADEON 9600 PRO! With features such as: TV-ON-DEMAND?, THRUVIEW?, VIDEOSOAP?, support for DirectX® 9.0 and OpenGL, the BEAST series encapsulates all that your demanding media oriented intellect desires out of your graphics card!

- Powered by the RADEON? 9600 PRO visual processing unit
- Stereo TV tuner with 125 channels
- Intelligent Teletext on your PC
- Zoom & pan - zoom in on the action on-screen and choose your own close-ups
- 128MB DDR memory accelerates the latest 3D games
- Supports the new AGP 8X standard
- First to fully support DirectX® 9.0 and the latest OpenGL® functionality
- 128-bit floating-point color precision allows for a greater range of colors and brightness
- Bundled with Tomb Raider "The Angel of Darkness" and Pinnacle Studio 8 video editing software


Full Specification

Price: £131.25 (£154.22 Including VAT at 17.5%)
Overclockers UK


The Angel of Darkness

I would have to agree with my esteemed colleague () Taw. You current card won't run games terribly well. The Radeon 9600 is a fine card, and is good for the user who can't afford a Radeon 9800 Pro . I think that that card is ok, but it doesn't go into detail about some things eg. pixel shaders. Taw will give you a link, won't you Taw?

having just checked the prices, I go back on wot I said about the XTs. Try this FD, you should be able to get one of these mommas for just over a hundred American dol-lar things, and have some splurge left for a case out of your $150.

dam fine card for the money, dam fine.

AoD you are still weirding me out with that sig, I keep thinking it's a good looking chick and it's not, it's you

Edited by - Tawakalna on 3/8/2004 12:07:56 PM

My overclocked Radeon 9700 (340/310) is better!

I still think that a Radeon 9500 Pro with a new BIOS or a 9700 is the way to go. Especially since they should be cheap as they are no longer being produced.

The help has been appriciated Taw, Esq, Mustang and Aod. I am going this coming weekend to CompUSA to get the box, fan and card. I may have to holler if I don't get it all hooked back up right, Oh, wait, if I don't get it hooked up, can't ask for help It shouldn't be too hard. This in a way was similer to the project i wanted to do next anyway, building a computer. One other question, if, if, a processer upgrade is available for my Mob, at 2 years old, is it worth it? I am looking at 1.75ghz range, have 1.58 now. Thank.

Finalday

Hinneh / I / Bo / Mahar... /Keith Green\ (1953-1983)

It's not even 200MHz faster; the performance benefits will be negligible. If you want a better CPU, you will have to replace your MB, and possibly your RAM, if it isn't DDR.