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I want to upgrade my graphics card a bit but I don't have a whole lotta money to spend it on. Just spent $550 on a 3ghz hp, a gig of ram and a 250gig hd. (Can finally store spare anime episodes on my drive now lol) Right now I have a geforce fx 5600. Not a bad card but by todays standards it sucks. I'm looking to spend around $200 maybe a little more. Anyone have any suggestions? I saw the geforce 6800 has come down in price since the 7800 came out, so i'm hoping other cards have come down as well, just not sure what I should be looking at really.
BTW Schultz i'm playing on unrest again. Now that i'm gonna have a new computer that can actually play eq2 i'll probably stay playing. Bringing a rl friend over too. What's your character name? Mine is... of course... Cidien. Don't ever see Skik on so I figure you're playing an alt.
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My char's names are Skik (50 Zerker) and Gnomis (43 Inquisiter) but acutally JJ and myself are not playing EQ2 ATM we been hitting up WoW ever since EQ2 expansion which really screwed pre expansion world content with the new combat changes.
But i would recommend a 6800 series card.. ;o)
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so uh...what realm you guys play on in wow?
uno...dos...tres...el shoompo
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A 6800 card costs about $350 still, don't have that much to spend. I'm thinking a 6600gt. I'm playing eq2 kinda waiting for the wow expansion to come out 'cuz I know i'm going to want to play a blood elf when it comes out.
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bah, i find so many people that play, but on one that plays on my realm, stormscale.
uno...dos...tres...el shoompo
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Get a 6600 GT OC from BFG. I just bought one and its awsome. They're about $200.
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One more question. What's the difference between agp, pci and pci express and such? And why do there appear to be like 3 different manufacturers for some cards? Seems kinda strange.
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PCI = one all normal cards use like sound cards, network cards, additional cards.
AGP = Advanced Graphics Port, it was what allowed video cards to have higher transfer rates above what PCI could do so that you could get faster video cards now AGP is hitting its upper limit of what it could do so then comes
PCI Express = PCI express right now is twice the speed of what AGP can do. At the moment you don't need PCI express but thats where all the future cards are going and pretty soon graphics cards will need more then what AGP can give them.
and there is 3 different manuactures and more is because ATI, Nvidia will license there chipset to card manufacturing companies which then they will build there card around the chipset. They can also add features etc to the card. like BFG generally Overclocks the chipsets on the card straight from them so you don't have to play around and do it yourself. some will also put more Video RAM onto the cards to make em faster etc.
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Im not that big of a Video card wiz, but I do know that AGP is faster than PCI but PCI Express is faster than AGP and PCI. Hope that helps.
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Does it really matter which one I buy then other than speeds? A card that's agp or whatever should be compatible with any computer? I've heard a few people who have had compatability issues with cards and I really have no idea what the reason for the problems were. Just wanna make sure I buy a card that works lol.
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a PCI Express card wiill only work in a Computer that has a PCI Express port
AGP card will only work in a motherboard that has a AGP port.. Most motherboards except brand brand new models that are now coming with PCI Express ports..
PCI you probably won't even see one of these video cards around.. these where avaiable back in the 3dfx Voodoo card series.. ;o)
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pci cards are sought after quite a bit for secondary cards for multiple monitors. right now an agp radeon 9200 is going for around $75 new, and the pci version is going for just under 100.
Right now, agp will hold out in the newer games, but dont expect the godly preformance from them. PCI X is, along with 64bit CPU's are getting more and more standered...i played the fear demo the other day, and i had to use the low graphics settings on it...sad (my comp is an AMD xp 2800, 1gig duel channel ram, with a Asus Radeon 9600xt)
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One more quick question. How do you find out how much cache your computer has w/o looking it up on the internet? 1) I'm curious how much this one has and 2) The new computer i'm getting said it has 8kbs (is that even possible) but when I looked it up on the net it said it had 2mbs which is more than I even hoped for. I looked all over the system information on this one but can't find anything.
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what exactly you needing to know.. your asking about cache size but then your giving a transfer speed size of something.. are you wanting to know Memory or k2 cache on your processor?
