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BF2 Video Card help

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DanielHerrmann

Member
My friend recommended that I come here to ask what everyone thinks.

I have a Dell Dimension 8600. 2.6 p4, 1g ram and a Geforce 4 mx 420, bought about 3 years ago.

I want to play Battlefield 2, and of course I need a new video card.

I am on a budget..... A tight one.

It appeared that a card I found on new egg for $52.99 would work ok:
Rosewill R62TC-64PX Geforce 6200 TC 256mb ddr pci express x16

What do you think... Will it work?

Secondly, does anyone know off the top of their heads if my motherboard even has PCI Express? I don't know what that looks like. My neighbor knows a good bit about computers (not gaming) and he went with me when I bought my monitor. It has cords coming off of it. He said the other was DVI, but it doesn't look like it will connect with the picture of the above card on Newegg.... ?

Are there any other suggesstions for video cards less than $100 that will work well with my system and run BF2.


Thanks for the help...
Daniel
 
you have agp. the best card under $100 is a 9800pro used in the for sale/trade section of forums or ebay for $90. you can play 1024x768 medium textures, lighting and max everything else no aa, average of around 50fps. a 6200turbo chache is about 3x-4x slower than a 9800pro
 
A buddy of mine gave me a gift certificate to newegg.... I kinda want to try to get one there.

Everything I looked at on ebay was JUST the card, none of the software or anything. How safe would it be to get one off ebay?

Another upgrade I have to make is high speed. I still have dial up and don't really want to try to download drivers.
 
Originally posted by: DanielHerrmann
A buddy of mine gave me a gift certificate to newegg.... I kinda want to try to get one there.

Everything I looked at on ebay was JUST the card, none of the software or anything. How safe would it be to get one off ebay?

Another upgrade I have to make is high speed. I still have dial up and don't really want to try to download drivers.
Click to expand...

well i've never dealt ebay but i've bought and sold about 8 times on this forum. as long as you deal with decent people or deal people with high positive "heat" you should be safe. as for newegg, for $100, a
9600xt is about $87
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102510
a 9600 pro is about $66
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102409
and a x700 is about $105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102584

here are somebenchmarks for you to decide.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page2.html

a x700 is not on the list but it's slightly slower than the 9800/9700 pro.
 
That 9600 pro that mwmorph recommended is probably your best bet for around 50 bucks. It should play it, you just won't be able to turn on any eye candy. However, it will be a big improvement over the geforce 4 mx that you currently have.
 
wow... Thanks a lot!

So having 256mb isn't a big deal? I'm just trying to understand all of this... Why are those cards better than the one that I was looking at?

If I went to macdonalds and won a $400 gift certificate to Best Buy and I bought the Geforce 7800... then I would have to get a new motherboard, right? Or can I even do that with a Dell?
 
you need a new motherboard, and then you would have to do a repair install of windows since you replaced he motherboard, then you would probably needa new processor since yours is probably socket 478 and i think all pci-e intel motherboards are LGA775.

memory dosent mean anything it's how well the card can use it. Memory is a lot like big tire on a car. It's like the difference betweem 195/65 goodyear integritys and 335/35 giant racing slicks arent going to make all that much of a differene on a civic, but on a race car, the difference bwtween those would be huge. A 6200 tc is like the ford pinto of the video cards, and adding wider tires(memory) will not make a difference. A 9600pro would be like a civic/sentra/camry, not fast but passable and the 9600xt is like a civic si. while the 9800pro/x700 would be like a 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS or GTx, decently fast.
 
Interesting.... although driving a ford pinto with huge racing slicks on it might be kinda fun... even if you couldn't get over 30mph.

So what would be a really really good agp card?

If I take a picture of the other cable I have when I get home y'all can probably tell me what it is, right?
 
Originally posted by: DanielHerrmann
Interesting.... although driving a ford pinto with huge racing slicks on it might be kinda fun... even if you couldn't get over 30mph.

So what would be a really really good agp card?

If I take a picture of the other cable I have when I get home y'all can probably tell me what it is, right?
Click to expand...

you should be able to tell by the color of the slot and the card, the mx420 is a agp4x card only. that, and that agp slots are usually brown with pci slots being white and pci-express slots being black and in sli cases, thge second pci-express slot will be usually blue(and yellow in dfi lanparty boards)
 
No, I mean the cable on my monitor. It has the normal cable thats hooked up to my video card now, and another one thats just wrapped around the base. My friend told me it was a dvi cable, but it doesn't look like it would fit with the dvi output on those cards....
 
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