Curse

Cult_Of_One · Mar 30, 2005, 06:25 PM // 18:25

I have a 4 yr. old machine and can't afford to go out and buy a new one so I'm doing what I can to upgrade so I can play GW without too much hassle. Here's what I have:

800 Mhz AMD Duron processor
250 watt power supply
512 mb sdram(upped from 64, woot!)
Hercules Prophet MX II 32 mb AGP bus video card.(uses Geforce2 chipset and isn't cutting it anymore.)

About the only thing I see that this machine supports is an Ati Radeon 9200 series card. Not sure about other manufacturers...Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanx in advance.

Loviatar · Mar 30, 2005, 06:37 PM // 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cult_Of_One

I have a 4 yr. old machine and can't afford to go out and buy a new one so I'm doing what I can to upgrade so I can play GW without too much hassle. Here's what I have:

800 Mhz AMD Duron processor
250 watt power supply
512 mb sdram(upped from 64, woot!)
Hercules Prophet MX II 32 mb AGP bus video card.(uses Geforce2 chipset and isn't cutting it anymore.)

About the only thing I see that this machine supports is an Ati Radeon 9200 series card. Not sure about other manufacturers...Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanx in advance.

that power supply scares me

with a higher video card it will be marginal at best and fail at worst

and it is old which pushes it much closer to the edge in any case

figuring that money is a big factor here there are 2 basic choices

get a good power supply that you can put into your next computer you buy knowing whatever it replaces in the new achine it is an improvement

then taking the just removed power supply and putting it in the old pc knowing it will handle the load of the old machine nicely

the other is to go to the local computer store and buy whatever cheap 350 watt supply they are pushing this week

if the latter and there are several brand choices

pick them up and compare the weight

in this case heft is usually better quality unless the company added some cheap iron weights inside to make you think it is better

Darkmane · Mar 30, 2005, 06:46 PM // 18:46

If you have AGP-- An affordable good card would be one this one:

Geforce 6200 AGP

If you have PCI-- An affordable good card would be this one:

ATI 9200

Hope this helps..

Its always better to get the most memory on the card you can.

He's right about the power supply, I suggest this one:

OCZ 520

Its is a top brand and can grow with your next system.

Loviatar · Mar 30, 2005, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkmane

If you have AGP-- An affordable good card would be one this one:

Geforce fx 5200 256ddr

If you have PCI-- An affordable good card would be this one:

PCI xfx 256 meg

Hope this helps..

Its always better to get the most memory on the card you can.

STOP ON 5200

EVERY without exception EVERY game magazine or net review says to stay away from most 5 series nvidias and ESPECIALLY from the 5200 in any version

as one person said i have finally come to the conclusion there are some cards tha no amount or ram can save no matter how low the price is

it is low for a reason in this case you dont even get what you pay for

Nascent · Mar 30, 2005, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

STOP ON 5200

EVERY without exception EVERY game magazine or net review says to stay away from most 5 series nvidias and ESPECIALLY from the 5200 in any version

as one person said i have finally come to the conclusion there are some cards tha no amount or ram can save no matter how low the price is

it is low for a reason in this case you dont even get what you pay for

>_> but I adore my 5700...

Loviatar · Mar 30, 2005, 07:14 PM // 19:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nascent

>_> but I adore my 5700...

and i had a 5600 ultra which i was very happy with

i got that when my GF4 4200TI fried the ram and the company was out of 4200s and replaced it with the 5600 ultra

as they said most not all

but everybody does agree on the 5200 to stay away from

Darkmane · Mar 30, 2005, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

and i had a 5600 ultra which i was very happy with

i got that when my GF4 4200TI fried the ram and the company was out of 4200s and replaced it with the 5600 ultra

as they said most not all

but everybody does agree on the 5200 to stay away from

Well I don't agree with you, my wife's 5200 has been working fine.

However I did concede to your whim simply to show I am versatile.

Next time instead of only 'disin my suggestions---

Feel free to dis my suggestion- but give one or two suggestions of your own; So I can search for just as many websites and posts of people that have had problems with the ones you suggest. And then say there are so many people that have problems with that! .. dont' buy it! Instead I'll post nothing as a suggestion and Troll the thread with obscure posts.

Oops I lied .. she's only got a Ti 4200 In there.. so I guess I do not have personal experience with a 5200 however, I still think if your going to voice your opposition to my suggestions at least suggest some of your own.

Loviatar · Mar 30, 2005, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkmane

Oops I lied .. she's only got a Ti 4200 In there.. so I guess I do not have personal experience with a 5200 however, I still think if your going to voice your opposition to my suggestions at least suggest some of your own.

if i didnt have a suggestion for something i still felt that of every reviewer of the card who panned it they couldnt all be sour grapes

the 4200ti is a very good card that served me well til it fried the ram

and no it was never overclocked as that was specified in several parts of the manual as warranty breaking

not a lie just a number slip........close enough for govt work

and this is a mouse built to government specs

Devil's Dictionary · Mar 30, 2005, 09:08 PM // 21:08

I have a 5200 with 128MB. The words in which I can describe this *thing* are not appropriate on a PG13 forum.
It's always better to buy highest cards from a previous generation than lowest cards of the current generation. As a proof, my FX 5200 is barely better (performance-wise) than my Hercules GeForce 2 GTS I had before.

Lansing Kai Don · Mar 30, 2005, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

and i had a 5600 ultra which i was very happy with

i got that when my GF4 4200TI fried the ram and the company was out of 4200s and replaced it with the 5600 ultra

as they said most not all

but everybody does agree on the 5200 to stay away from

Actually I completely disagree, two of my systems have the 5200 in them and have not had ONE problem. That's right never a problem, ran games fast, the graphics detail wasn't the greatest but for the price it was a bargain. I would completely recommend the card, in fact I did in another post. And as for the system in discussion, I agree with a new video card... don't care which one but if you buy one with an external molex connector you will need a new PSU. If it doesn't you probably won't, the 800Mhz athlon if I remember right doesn't soak up that much wattage. It matters how many peripherals your running and what PSU you have, you may be able to skimp buy on this one. But I wouldn't recommend it unless it has a fuse and explicitly tells you that it has a redundant fault circuitry (basically if the fuse doesn't blow another mechanism... not going to go into detail unless you want me too, will keep the PSU from frying your other components).

Lansing Kai Don

Darkmane · Mar 30, 2005, 09:52 PM // 21:52

I'd just like to add that --

The reason I am suggesting yesterday's cards is because:

1. Today's cards although nice, they are still kinda pricey. He's looking for something to play guildwars, which runs on my crappy integrated video.

2. These people that are asking for video card advice are not planning on updating their computer. Performance wise, yesterdays cards are going to operate better on older machines than 'Todays Cards' as they will have diminishing results because the pc is simply not powerful enough to accomodate the new technologies. -- To put it simply, They may experience a performance drop with todays video cards because the pc will become his new 'bottleneck' for performance.

Striker Shardale · Mar 30, 2005, 11:16 PM // 23:16

I love my FX 5900. You could easily get a nice computer with all the right parts for GW for about $800

Cult_Of_One · Mar 31, 2005, 06:46 AM // 06:46

Ok, so getting a new power supply sounds like a great idea, and would cetainly give me at least a few more options for video cards. What do I have to know about replacing Power supplies? I assume I'd want to keep the dimensions about the same...more watts the better? Or is there a such thing as too much? Thanx for all your help people.

Lews · Mar 31, 2005, 06:55 AM // 06:55

Woa, FX 5 series... stay away.

For cheap agp, get the 9600 XT, its around 85 bucks, maybe 100 or so, and is a killer.

An OCZ power supply will be good though.

Your system kinda sucks though, I mean, can't you just like save up 500 bucks and get a cheap 3000 xp, 9600 xt, 1 gig 2700 system, with 450 ps? Very cheap, will be a lot better.

Lews · Mar 31, 2005, 06:55 AM // 06:55

The more watts the better, sort of. Try to get one with alot of pins too, iirc. Just get a thermaltake, antec, or ocz, that's all I know about power supplies, lol, and I know those 3 companies have quality ones.

Sin · Mar 31, 2005, 07:07 AM // 07:07

The low cost non "pro" ATI 9000-9600 series cards are like buyin a celeron processor. I can't find the link but many many many bench tests done out there. They usually deliver less than half their pro counterpart and, for instance, the 9600 performs below an 5200fx. Yea I saw all the negative posts here about the 5200 but I don't have agp so if invidia only one to make a decent performance pci graphics card I can get around the corner, they got my business.

Seeing how the poster has a 800 mhz processor i'd get as much video card i could get to "offload" the graphics so the processor is being used as little as possible for them, thus less lag from game and network processing waiting for the processor to finish some graphics function.

Cheers

vas moon · Mar 31, 2005, 02:24 PM // 14:24

I have a machine that uses the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (pci) and it work great. Never had a problem and GW looks sweet on it.

Lyta · Mar 31, 2005, 03:09 PM // 15:09

There is one detail. Nvidia cards are way more CPU related than Ati cards.

So even if you find a good graphics card the result may be dissapointing on your pc.

Many games are CPU related and a better graphics won't help here. So whatever you do it would be best to upgrade the CPU 1st and then the graphics card.

For the power supply you should calculate with 80% so your present 250W should be able to deliver 200W constantly.

Your system uses less than 80W and the newest and biggest graphics card need about 100W. An Ati 9600XT will use less than 50W. So a new power supply is probably not needed. If you get a new one 350W is enough, more is a waste - except you have in mind to use it later in a new system.

PhineasToke · Mar 31, 2005, 03:11 PM // 15:11

There seem to be a lot of biased opinions here regarding video cards. One of the benchmarks I have tried to use for customers over the years is how good is their system and how much they can spend in relationship to the quality of their system. Not everyone who will be playing GW has the latest and greatest system, and most are probably going to be 14-18 years old using their parents hand-medown computer. If you simply go by the minimum requirements for the game, no matter what "the reviews" say, almost ALL of the video cards under $100 will be more than adequate for the game.

Some of you have personal tastes that are reflected here. But most of the players are handicapped by older equipment that probably needs replacing. Buying a mega-dollar video card to put into a system worth $50 isn't the answer. Spend what you can, but try to save for a better system, you'll need it for future games.

Cult_Of_One · Apr 01, 2005, 05:46 AM // 05:46

Thanx for all the input people. I found a GECUBE ati radeon 9250 256mb AGP video card for $76.00. It supports AMD duron processors and I do believe it only requires a 250 watt power supply, but if I'm wrong so be it, I'll go get a new power supply I guess. And hopefully now I'll be able to start saving for a dream machine. ONLY 27 MORE DAYS!!!! Man, I can't wait to get addicted to a new game!