Hi can someone help me what to choose?

[Cyper95]

Hello i need a new graphic card and more ram but i dont know which one to buy and how much more ram i should get.
Graphic card i currently have is a nvidia geforce 7300 le
and i currently have 1 gb ram.
(My pc is an hp pavillion)

 

[Dr Super Good]

What is your graphic interface?
if AGP then a 7800 is about the best.
if PCI-E 1.0, get a low range geforce 9 card.
if PCI-E 2.0, then a geforce 200 low range card will do.

I would aim for 4 GB of RAM if possiable, however 2 GB would be a good start which should hopefully be an additional module.

 

[Deleted member 157129]

There's not much point in getting any more than 3GB if you're running a 32-bit rig. I would assume you do. As for manufacturers, I'd go with Corsair for RAM and XFX for graphics. Never had any trouble with them, works fine. Heard eVGA is good for GPU as well.

Depending on what you need the upgrades for, and how much space you got- not to mention your PSU- I don't think it would be necessary to go for a GeForce 200 series card, look in the 9000 range- alternatively you could go for a Radeon card, which is generally cheaper and performs decently (though not entirely as powerful, usually).

 

[Chief-Oblivion]

For real, I just have a Nvidia GeForce 4000 and it still works amazing for me. My computer's speed is godlike in games as well as anything else.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Chief-Oblivion , I feel sorry for you. Your card does not even support shaders 3.0, I doubt even 2.0. Infact it does not nativly support DX9 let alone 10 and the to come 11...
Its 7 years old, so I highly doubt modern games will even run on a geforce 4 graphic card as they all need full DX9 support or better.

Try playing WC3 using 8* AA (if that supports it which it may not) and see if it still runs godly. For comparision modern graphic cards can run WC3 with 16*AA at HD resolutions at 60 FPS with only the occasional dip caused by poor map design (this is stupid to even mention as it is logical hardware 6 years later will be barly loaded when playing a game).

Yes I know this comparision sucks, but it would be crule asking you to use HDR and AA at the same time in a game like TES oblivion and comparining framerates as your card does not even support HDR in the first place (lack of modern shader model 3.0).

Yes they are decent and served my brother a good 6 years of use that type of card, but he even got tired of how slow it is compaired to modern cards.

I recon for a mear 40-50$ you could get something leaps and bounds faster than that card (with more future proof support). However I doubt AGP cards are even made anymore (as a rough guess you must use one)

 

[Chief-Oblivion]

Apparently I gave the wrong model =/ Mine is only 3 years old

NVIDIA GeFORCE MX 4000 3D FUZION

(Woot, 500th post.)

 

[Dr Super Good]

Nope, still old as heck.
Only AGP 8x (all modern cards are PCI-E with the better ones being 2.0 supporting).
Only DX 8.1 supporting.
Only 128 MB of RAM (msot cards now have 256 or more).

 

[Chief-Oblivion]

The box says 2006 and where the hell did the last 3 years go...? I remember buying this fucker brand new D:

 

[Deleted member 157129]

You've been fooled. A 4000 series nVidia card is really old. My older computer (at least 5 years now) has a FX 5~~~ Ultra, and that's pretty old as well. It doesn't exactly run WC3 smoothly in 1920x1200 resolution. (Err, can't recall if it even had support for that resolution.)

 

[Chief-Oblivion]

, dunno but mine can run warcraft just fine even with youtube up or any other programs. I have also gotten WoW to work on this without troubles soo.. =/

 

[Deleted member 157129]

That doesn't really make sense, but I ain't gonna argue with you.

 

[Kercyn]

The thing is that W3 or WoW don't have many requirements when it comes to the GPU power. Especially W3, which is like, dunno, 8 years old?

 

[Dr Super Good]

So could my brother's old PC. Still did not mean it could even start supreme commanders.

All modern hardware can run WC3 with max AA and AF with no slowdowns at all at any resolution. The only time it ever lags if if too many complex models are used (in which case WC3's graphics become unstable) (due to geometry rendering having a O(n) efficency to a degree). Most maps in WC3 which do lag are due to excessive processor use, if the processor is capped, FPS get dropped as each frame has an additional processor cost to rendering as well as the conventional graphic time cost and as WC3 is single threaded this cap has not rasied as much as one would like to have seen.

Thus yes, a geforce 4 will run the game perfectly at normal resoltions but only because the game is not graphically demanding. High resolutions have higher pixel quantities, so the texture handling part of the graphic card is worked harder and the GRAM requirements rise (due to larger buffers). SC2 will not even run on any care older than top range geforce 7 cards or newer, thus do not even bother trying to start it if you have a geforce 4.

 

[Deleted member 157129]

Aye, though if he's got a GeForce 4 it's unlikely his other hardware is any good either.

 

[Cyper95]

i was considering a Geforce 9600 GT since its not too expensive and should be good enough for my requirements

 

[BlargHonk]

It's a good card, but if you don't have a PCI-E connector, then get a HD4670, fastest card without a PCI-E connect: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855

9600: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127434

Thought, at that point you might as well spend $10 and get a HD4850, with almost 50% more performance: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127414

Uses a 6 pin too.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Any card not using PCI-E 1.0/2.0 is not likly to do well in modern games. They might have umpteem billion transistors and frequencies never heard of before, but still will have problems running games well. Do not underestimate the traffic between CPU and GPU.

Every render instruction has to be sent from the processor to the GPU through the interface. On top of that all textures have to as well, and god help you if you run out of GRAM as then all the texel information has to transfer on top of that which will really grind your visuals to a halt. As you guess PCI-E is 2 times as fast as AGP*8, atleast. On top of that most modern cards are PCI-E 2.0, which is another 2 times as fast as PCI-E 1.0.

All in all I am saying AGP 8* will bottleneck your visual preformance, no mater how big or powerful a card you stick in. Thus why nvidia has not made any recent cards which support AGP.

BlargHonk, the card you linked is also PCI-E 2.0, thus if he can use one he certainly can use the other.

 

[BlargHonk]

No, if he doesn't have a PCI-E Power Connector he can't use the 4850 or 9600GT, but can use the HD4670

And I just put the 4850 because it was $10 more with the same pin requirements (not same watts though)

 

[Reaper2008]

HD4670 is gread, I have it on my PC, and it's 3 times faster than nVIDIA 8800, which lagged a lot (for me at least).

It's the card I suggest, and it's price here in greece is 70euro, so it's cheap too.

 

[Dr Super Good]

8800 lagging?

Outside D2 this is foighen to me.

 

[BlargHonk]

:O

4670 3x better than a 8800GT?

Where did you get your facts -.-

4670 is about equal to a 8800GS, or 9600GSO (Rebranded 8800GS :/ )