Need new graphics card for under £50.

[Got EpOx]

I Recently bought the EP-4SGM8I. It had a terrible onboard graphics controller called SiS661FX. So i have decided to buy a new graphics card, ofcourse now i'm finding it difficult to find something good for under £50. Please help.

Games to be played on it:
Counter Strike 1.6
Flight Simulator 2004
maybe a little Half Life 2 (depends on graphics card)

Possible products:
Connect3d ATI Radeon 9550 256MB DDR TV-Out DVI 128 Bit Retail Box

[aghastpumpkin]

Under £50 isn't going to get you anything that will play the most modern games well, though I'm sure you knew this. But for the games you have put up there, what springs to mind is something like an FX5500. A friend has an FX5500 and it certainly handles Half-Life 2 okay. I don't know how demanding the other two games are, but I'm sure a FX5500 would be an okay solution.
There is an XFX GEForce FX5500 with 256Mb of memory on eBuyer for a smidgen over £50.
XFX FX5500

[GrahamGarside]

You should be able to get a 9600pro for that from ebay. If you want it a new card then I think you can get a Geforce 6200 from scan for about that but the site isn't working for me at present.

[Got EpOx]

Ok, what if i bought a 9550 then flashed the bios to make it a cheap 9600pro. Is that risky or does it usually work out allright?.

[calgar]

mmm, for that sorta price tag the X300 hyper memory cards look pritty good, no z mode compression tho.

[GrahamGarside]

they're pci-e though

A 9550 would probably do, you can use softmod drivers to run it as a 9600, or better still you could try and find a 9500pro on ebay, they go for £30-40 and can mod into a 9700

[Got EpOx]

Cool, i might do that.

[Got EpOx]

So i have the onboard SiS 661FX. Do i disable that after the installation of the new graphics card or do i do it before?, what do i do?

[GrahamGarside]

It's likely installing a card in the agp slot will disable it

[Razorfish]

I got a connect3D 9600XT 128MB, Please PM me.

[Got EpOx]

How does the ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb compare to the 9550 256mb. Note: Both are Connect3d.

[GrahamGarside]

The 9600XT will be a fair bit faster, the amount of memory makes little to no differance with these cards, the faster core and memory of the XT puts it ahead quite easily.

An actual 9500pro would be a differant story though, by default it wouldn't be as fast as the 9600XT, but if it's one that unlocks to a 9700 then it would be a lot faster

[Rondog]

What speed does a 9700 Pro run at?

[GrahamGarside]

I think it's 325/620

[Rondog]

Originally Posted by GrahamGarside

I think it's 325/620

Is the core 325, and the mem 620? Thats kind of lame. My 9600XT is faster than that.

If the mem is 325 and the core 620. Well, i'll shut up. LOL My mem is faster, by 5mhz, and my core is 50mhz slower. I have work to do.

[GrahamGarside]

it is core/mem but the 9700 core is a better core than the 9600XT, it has double the pixel piplines and I'm not sure how many but it has more vertex units too. Plus does the 9600XT have a 128 or 256bit memory bus?

[Rondog]

My GigaByte 9600XT is 256mb. And it has a 128bit memory bus.

What difference does a 128bit and 256bit memory bus make anyway? I know a 256bit bus would be better, but why?

[GrahamGarside]

Quite simply it just has double the bandwidth, this means that textures and frame buffers can be read and written quicker. It has the largest impact at higher resolutions and when using FSAA, at 1024x768 a 128bit bus will still be playable, but when moving into 1280x1024 and when using FSAA you really need a 256bit bus

[Got EpOx]

Thanks for your advice Graham and co.

[keithwalton]

the ati 97/9800 series (not se) line of cards have 8 pipelines and 4 vertex shaders, and run from ~300mhz (bog standard 9700) to 412mhz (9800xt) as said they also run 256bit wide memory controllers.
The 9600 series effectively has half of all that! 4 pipelines, 2 (could be 3) vertex shaders, and 128bit memory wide bus (therefore half the bandwidth for the same speed).
In reality a 9600 would have to clock at double the speed of the higher series just to be as fast!

The x800 series cards are a different kettle of fish the core is much faster (16pipes, 6vertex) but memory bus is the same just abit faster (~1ghz, vs 730mhz)

The new r520 is going to be much of the same, 24 or 32 pipeline core, lots of vertex shaders, and a smidge faster ram. I do wonder if it will be 512bit wide as memory b/w does still hold back cards as a x800 is rarely ever twice as fast as a 9800xt, 50% is more like it.