Help me recommend ~$150 vid card for a Athlon XP 2500+

bigshooter

Platinum Member
Oct 12, 1999
2,157
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I normally buy whatever is the best bang for the buck video cards at the higher end of the video card spectrum, but in this case I need to keep the budget down. I built my roommate a SN41G2 about a year and a half ago and he was fine with the onboard graphics until now. He wants to turn on all the pretty stuff in AOE 3 and some other games he's checking out so I need to find him an actual video card. I was thinking of a 6600GT, but is there something else that should be just as good around $150 price point? If we can keep the price down I'll have him pick up a 1GB stick of ram as well, I'm guessing the dual channel memory controller only really helped with the onboard video anyways. Anyways, should I just have him get the 6600GT?

Thanks
 

glorygunk

Senior member
Aug 22, 2004
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yep...6600gt will do the trick, anything better will most likely be held back by the CPU. 6600gt's should run about $100 these days, so you'll have the space to buy ram
 

rugger29

Member
Jan 3, 2001
196
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Well, I'm not sure how much it helps, but I actually just bought an XFX GeForce 6600 256MB (PVT43KUDF3) from Newegg. $119 + $5 shipping.

I was actually having issues with the new Civilization IV game. (there's some major bug that affects people using radeon cards). Then I figured, well... even if it does start working, exactly what kind of 3D can I expect out of a Radeon 7500? So I decided it was time to finally upgrade.

I did a little research checking out the specs and benchmarks and this card seemed to provide excellent bang for your buck. 256mb RAM, DirectX9, Shader 3, very decent overall speed.
 

Rogue 2

Member
Jan 8, 2005
154
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I have a 6600GT with an AXP 2500+, and with 1GB of RAM everything works fine at 1024x768 with no AA (or 2xAA) and some other unnecessary features turned off.. that's with BF2 anyway.. and I get perfectly playable frame rates. So yeah, I'd say the 6600GT is along the right track. You'll get more play out of it before it becomes obsolete, compared to the regular 6600.
 

CraigRT

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
31,440
5
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My 9800Pro always ran well with my Barton 2500 too.. you can find them for ~$80 on FS/FT (occasionally)