Good Mid price range video card

[Aquaman]

I'm looking to up grade MB & video card and I was wondering what a good midrange video card would be.

I've had both ATI & Nvidia and I am not really a gamer (but play stuff like Age of Mythology and similar games every once in a while).

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[sisq0kidd]

Depends on what your definition on midrange is.

Under $150 - Nvidia 7900gs (rebates involved)
Under $200 - Used ATI x1800xt, Used Nvidia 7800gtx, 7900gt
Under $300 - Used x1900xt(x)
Under $400 - Are you sure this is still midrange?

At least that's what I would go for

 

[Aquaman]

I was thinking 250-300 new.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Machine350]

For that price range, you're best choices would be either a geforce 7950gt or radeon x1950xt 256mb. The performance for both cards will be very similar. Honestly though, if you aren't much of a gamer and if your max resolution on your monitor is 1280 x 1024, then you really don't need to spend that much. In which case, I'd go with a 7900gs or x1950 pro, for 175-200. Any of those cards will play year old games without a hitch.

 

[shadowofthesun]

Age of Mythology and similar games don't require a powerful GPU- you really won't need to spend anywhere near your present budget to get that kind of performance. I would agree with Machine 350 on a 7900gs. It really depends on the rest of your system, and the resolutions/ Image Quality you'll be playing at. I would even go as far as to recommend a 7600gt, if not for the fact that the 40 bucks you'd save is not worth the performance deficit. (a 7600gt is fairly playable in Rise of Nations:Rise of Legends at 1024x768 at max details with no AA- 25 fps acording to Tom's Hardware's GPU graphs).

The cards above are fairly future-proof; the 7900 at least will operate on newer and more demanding games than age of mythology.

If age of mythology is the only game you'll be looking at playing (or games from the same generation, ie. Age of Empires II) basically any card will be fine. The MS website recommends a 16 mb vid card; 256 would be way overkill unless you're looking at Vista compatibility.

Whichever card you choose, good luck on finding it and installing it