HELP : Whats the best GFX Card for under 250 pounds ($495) ?

[Lord-Bandu]

Im lookin for a very good GFX card for gaming. Now , I know very little about whats good and whats not. Most of the online reviews just confuse me .

The Card can not be over 250 sterling or 495 dollars.

The GFX card CANNOT be PCI as I have AGP (whatever that means lol)

EDIT - My system specs are-

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz
Windows XP
768 MB RAM

[dreadlordnyax]

ooo i'd love a $500 video card...dunno what the best one for you is, but when you figure it out, i'd suggest newegg.com, they have great prices.

[Lord-Bandu]

Forgot to mention Im from England


Edited 1st post for System Specs



EDIT-

Im probably gonna spend abit less on a GFX card and up my RAM aswell.

So far im looking at -

Sapphire Radeon X800 XL - around 160 - 180 GB pounds

Geforce 6600

Geforce 6600GT

[dreadlordnyax]

i just got a 6600GT, newegg has it for ~150 (dollars)

[Lord-Bandu]

hows it play? eg. on next gen games like HL2 , Farcry , Doom 3 , Quake 4 , FEAR etc

[dreadlordnyax]

alas, i dont have any of those games it runs bf2 nicely, but bf's graphic's engine is a little out of date, so...
i've only had it for like a week, anyways, and i haven't been doing much gaming (week before finals) i haven't had a chance to really test it out.

but if you're willing to spend $500, or even like $300, i'd go for something better, though, you could get a lot better card if you got that kinda money to spend.

[Leviathan]

I've ever seen a Point Of View GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP video card sold for less than 480 USD...

[Ipodzanyman]

A Geforce 5200 FX isn't all bad, I got it for 80 bucks

[sh4d0wl0rd]

Er... For HL2, FEAR, FarCry etc.???

[Leviathan]

I seriously doubt a GeForce FX 5200 GPU-based Video Card could make either F.E.A.R. or Far Cry running properly, even though the user would have set his "Visual Settings" to the lowest... On the other hand, I know such a Graphic Card can get acceptable performances in Star Wars Battlefront II...

[Ipodzanyman]

I meant for games like BF2, EAW, etc.. It's really hard to find a good-cheap AGP video card, most of the cheap ones are PCi Express....

[Leviathan]

Ipod', the "cheapest" Graphic Cards you can get in online or physical stores must be those based on nVidia GeForce 6600 / 6800 Graphical Processing Units, without a doubt...

[Moving_Target]

Ipod i got a GeForce 5200 also... i need a new one.... and some how it lets me play battlefield 2! lol!
Bandu if want to spend all your money get the Nvidia 7800. Out of your choices id go with the 6600.

[RDST]

I say if you are going to spend some money on a nice card then go for the Nvidia GTX 7800. For the money youl get the best core clock and the most pixel pipelines (around 24, thats about double the amount of the 6600) The card will allow you to play all games with incredible fps. The 7800 will also allow you to play future games (like Unreal 3 games).

The X800 is good but won't allow you to play games like BF2 at high specs and ok fps.

Also even with a exceptional card you cpu is still bottlenecking everything. While 2.66 is fairly good but it still won't run games like HL2 or Source games well. Also the more RAM the better but anything over a gig is really un-needed.

Also may I suggest http://www.newegg.com . If you don't use this already then this is the best site to buy tech from (much cheaper than anything else found my speakers for $50 dollars less at newegg.)

Like I say go for the 7800.

[Ipodzanyman]

MY Geforce 5200 FX got old and I bought a Geforce 7800 GS OC (SWEET), Top line for a AGP video card, they are probably going to make it 512mb soon(dangit)....

[rebel_scum]

I got a GeForce 5500oc and i cant run FEAR/far cry

[Leviathan]

Off-topic : Ipodzanyman, Gainward belongs to those Specialized Companies having designed and released Graphics Cards based on the nVidia GeForce 7800 GS Graphical Processing Unit, as stated on both the two following web-addresses :

• http://www.gainward.net/products/produc ... ucts_id=48
• http://www.gainward.net/products/produc ... ucts_id=29

PS : rebel_scum, you should have guessed that an nVidia GeForce FX5500 Video Card could not have allowed you to run requiring video-games such as F.E.A.R. or Far Cry, and that's why I'd like you to post more "constructive" messages on GameToast Forums, in the future...