Recs for replacing AIW 9600 Pro & SFF vid card

ixxxiiixiv

Junior Member
Feb 17, 2006
3
0
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Hello all,

Two questions:

1. What card would you recommend to replace my aging AIW 9600 Pro? My mobo can only take an AGP card, and it looks as though they're getting hard to find. I most certainly do not want to downgrade my performance, so I'm looking for improvement there, plus I want to get away from the crappy "dongle" system the AIW has. I don't really need the AIW stuff anymore, plus I'm willing to either go the ATI or NVidia direction. The 9600 has served me well, but time to move on. I think something in the $200 range would suffice.

2. My nephew has a Small Form Factor PC (one of those Everex machines Wal-Mart was selling a few months ago), and would like a better video card. Problem is, while I see lots of vid cards that are listed as "low profile" on such sites as NewEgg.com, you either can't tell from the pic whether or not the mounting bracket really IS of SFF-type, or whether or not the box includes a SFF bracket to swap out with. I've seen some really neat, affordable cards in the $50-100 range that should work nice, but would like to have some recommendations here from folks to see what they have used and have been happy with. Last night, I was able to get his Ages of Empires III game to work on the existing onboard video on the Everex; while playable, at times gets choppy.


Look forward to your comments.
 

ixxxiiixiv

Junior Member
Feb 17, 2006
3
0
0
thanks for the quick reply, CKXP! Since video cards come out so often, I can't ever seem to keep up on what's good and what isn't. That eVGA card looks like a winner. when I have the funds I'll grab it.

Regarding the Everex, indeed it is an RS2800. There was a Leadtek on Newegg's site with heatsink only that had good reviews for around $65. Thought that might work well, but again, I can't tell whether or not it will actually fit in his machine. It's all fine and dandy for the cards themselves to be "low profile", but if the bracket isn't, it's pretty much useless in an SFF machine.