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Whats the best video card to get on newegg for $30-55ish?

N

niwi7

Golden Member
Building a computer for a friend who NEVER plays games

all he needs it for is to have up AIM (maybe a few at once), internet explorer, limewire, and windows media player

we want to spend 500 or less and already have a hard drive and cd drives


im thinking like amd 2600, 50ish dollar nforce2 mobo, dual 256 ram (512 total), but what video card should i pull?
 
get an nforce2 with integrated graphics.

h**p://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-138-234&depa=0
that's a biostar with integrated geforce4 mx (piece of crap) on the board, for 65$. So you're getting 50$ mobo + 15$ video card basically, saving 15$-40$.

If you want to search for more, search newegg Mobo's for NForce2 IGP chipsets.

I did the same sort of thing for my brother, and it works perfectly for him and save a whole lot of money.
 
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Text, rember onboard will take graphics memory out of your system memory, unlike a discrete video card
Click to expand...

But you can choose how much to use.

I've built a few computers using the onboard; most of the time I set it to use 4 MB of RAM in BIOS. When I build a computer with 512, that leaves 508 for the OS /apps. Negligible.
 
he wants a card with 2 monitor ports so he can do dual monitors


what is the 9200se like compared to the gf4 mx400 ???
 
Originally posted by: niwi7
he wants a card with 2 monitor ports so he can do dual monitors

what is the 9200se like compared to the gf4 mx400 ???
Click to expand...
For a non-game machine, it seems like the 9200se or gf4 mx400 are way more than he'd need.
On my non-games, dual-monitor machine (for example) I use the built-in video and also an add-on ATI XPERT 128 -- which I paid $12.50 for on clearance. The setup works great for me.
I'd go with built-in video/audio on the mobo and add whatever video card is on the clearance table at officedepot. The two combined should cost around $75.
Note that I'm a non-gamer on a tight budget.
On the otherhand, tv-out is a feature to consider. If it's something he'd definately use, then go for a card with vga + tv-out which should be around $50-$65 for the card -- or less with rebates (check "hot deals").

EDIT: eh, forget all that... I'd go with this for $32 shipped (dual vga-out + svid-out) or that one linked by Schadenfroh, which has DVI (for $39+$3=$42 shipped)
 
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