Best Budget 3D Video Card?

Heyas,

It's been a while since playing SOF2 and all those other good shooter games, I'm thinking of getting back into it but I would definately need to upgrade my graphics card to meet the minimum requirements of all these new games.

Could anyone recommend a good budget 3d card which wouldnt cost an arm and a leg? Ideally I would want to spend no more than $100-150 usd.

From what I've found on the internet, the Nvidia Geforce 6200 series is one of the better budget 3d cards. Would this card run ok playing Doom 3 and other more recently released games? Also, can anyone suggest any other models?

Cheers

 

I use the Nvidia Geforce 6200 as my "budget" card. Works well for games like Half Life 2.

 

Cheers, do you know how it performs with other more recent games like Doom 3? Even if it ran well at 1024x768 I'd be happy Im not that much of a hardcore gamer

 

Doom 3 runs ok on the same machine. Not perfect, or as smooth as HL2, but at least acceptable.

 

Cool. I've been looking into it a bit, and the 6600GT looks promising aswell and has received good reviews. I figure it's probably worth spending a little bit extra so I wont have to upgrade anytime soon, we'll see...

 

if you can only use AGP, i would go 6600GT AGP video cards.
they are pretty cheap now, you can get them for less than $150

 

Yep, the 6600GT is a really good card.. Its what I have on my computer. Nothing so far could slow it down.

 

Yeh Ive got a fairly old m/b so AGP is really the only option. The 6600GT definately looks good.

What's some kickass games you can play these days? (preferrably shoot em ups) I wish SOF2 released a newer version that was cool.

 

you can play all of them just not with all the eye candy turned on

try BattleField 2, Far Cry, Doom 3, Chronicles of Riddick, and Half Life 2

 

I have the 6600GT with 128 Mb. It is great. I've played Halo no probs, on AMD 64 3000+, 1.8Ghz, 2Gig DDR.

How much RAM do you have? That can also make a difference, and so can your Mobo and processor. I guess it is no matter, the video cards do what they do, but having at least 1 Gig of RAM will always help, no matter what video card you have.

 

We have the same computer

 

It's pretty fast, eh? I am looking for dual core next spring.

 

I just got an upgrade of that. 3200+ AMD X700 RAEDEON PCI-E 256MB

 

Whoohooo! That is even faster. You are 2.2 Ghz processor? My buddy has that on a agp board, but it seems a wee bit more snappy than mine. Your vid is comparable but for one thing: TWICE AS MUCH RAM!!!

I have an ASUS A8N SLI-Deluxe board, ASUS GT6600 128 DDR3, AMD 64 3000+Processor, 2 ATA Hard Drives: Maxtor 60 and WD Cav 80. Thats the weak spot in my setup.

Still, the first time after boot, DreamWeaver takes forever to load, about twenty seconds, butr after that it loads in 2 to 3 seconds, max.

Windows explorer is instant. I was running Media player earlier, and then checking e-mail, and it stalled for 5 seconds at least, same when I clicked to open e-mails. That isn't great.

Sometimes it seems wicked, other times, Windows still seems to balk. I haven't tried any 64 bit Linux yet, I would like to check that out.

 

I am on the same motherboard On 160gb Maxtor. I am planning on upgrading ram soon by adding another 512 ram ddr on top of the currect. The processor is 2.0ghz, I think 3400+ would be 2.2