Help me help a friend buy a new graphics card!
 

I'm not looking to get a new graphics card yet, so I'm way out of the loop as to what's good. To make matters worse, it's simply confusing with low-end newer graphics cards being worse than high-end slightly older graphics cards and all that crap.

So, help me help a friend out :) :p

He's looking to spend no more than around $100 but get the best bang for his buck. This is what he approached me with asking me if it was any good, and I honestly have no idea since I've not been paying attention to the market at all.....

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...5453&pfp=srch1

So, is there something better? For a comparable price? What's the best bang for buck?

Thanks for the help :)

The best you can get for under $100 is a GeForce 4 TI4200. NewEgg.com has Radeon 9600 Pros for $111 which would also be a very good choice. I'd try to get one of the following:

NVIDIA GeForce 4 TI4200
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

All three of those can be found for around $100. The one you listed is a POS Deluxe SE, so don't bother with it. :)

-Lasereth

I have this card, it cost me $300 when it was new. So I am kinda irked that it's now only $100.

Anyway, it's a great card. For gaming I run UT2K4 just under maxed out (I turn off some of the foiliage and relefectors) and I can't see any lag. Probably on the order of 35-50 FPS.

The rest of my PC is: Athlon 2400+, 512MB SD RAM.

I also played the demo of FarCry (which seems to be the new defacto standard for resource hog) and it ran just fine, it was dull as hell. But, technincally the game ran OK.

Damn, it was never that high when it came out. NVIDIA's official price for the TI4200 was $200 retail. I bought mine for $140 OEM in October 2002, a few months after its launch.

-Lasereth

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...125-124&depa=1
how does that one compare to the GeForce 4 TI4200?

For those who don't want to click the link, it's a GIGABYTE ATI RADEON 9600XT Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "GV-R96X128D"

Seems he's willing to pay a little more if he has to - he'd like to be able to run UT2k4 maxed out.

If he wants to pay a little more, I'd recommend an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra or a Radeon 9600XT (like the one you linked) for around $150. For $170, you can get an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT which is a complete powerhouse compared to the aformentioned cards. After the $170 range, the only performance gain worth mentioning is the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro which can be bought for about $200. This is the best deal on the market right now, end of story, no discussion. The power and speed you get from a Radeon 9800 Pro for $200 is simply incredible. It's almost sad to see ATI get "ripped off" so badly by this deal.

-Lasereth

You know what's sad? One of my friends buying a 9800xt for about $400 like 2 weeks before the x800 came out. Now THAT'S sad !



/end of threadjack

$300 Canadian...