Graphics card help for eMachine T5026

[kat1974]

good morning everyone....1st post here and I have a huge favor I need to ask of any of you.

I am not very computer savvy, but I know my way around a PC and I bought an eMachine T5026 earlier this year from Best Buy. The kid that sold it to me said that I would be able to play all these awesome PC games on it and guess what.....I can't because he failed to tell me that it came with no graphics card, just a chipset!!!!

So now I have all these games like Blackhawk Down, etc. that my hubby and I want to play and no card to play them on.

I going back to Best Buy to get a graphics card and I wanted to know that out of the three I have listed here, which one would you all recommend, or is there another one I could get for a price that won't break my budget. Thanks!

The cards I am interested in are below:

PNY Verto GeForce FX 5500 128mb DDR PCI Graphics Card
VisionTek Xtasy RADEON 9250 128mb DDR PCI Graphics Card
BFG 3DFuzion GeForce MX 4000 128mb DDR PCI Graphics Card

Thanks again for your help.

Kat

 

[Supra]

I'd recommend the PNY FX 5500 since its the only one that supports DX9, the other 2 only support DX8. Its too bad you got fooled by best buy and didnt even get a computer with an AGP slot.

 

[kat1974]

thanks!

I do have another question though....the IT guy at work said that he had a graphics card that he would give me out of one the Dell's here at work that was ordered and put in later once the PC arrived.

I have it here at my desk, and it looks like it came from the Nvidia corporation, but that's all it says. How do I look up which card it is?

 

[raybay]

You may have trouble, as the T05026 machines with which we have worked slow down significantly when you add an outside video card. We find difficulties in attempting to disable the onboard video.
Because of the processor, and the limited motherboard, you will never have good gaming on that motherboard.
This board is crippled in some way. It also has a very high failure rate. I suspect the motherboard will fail in over 50 percent of the T-5026 machines within three years.

 

[Great1122]

Been Around 4 years.

Been around 4 years my motherboard still works but still I can't play any of the new games on it like call of duty 4. could anyone help me which one can i buy. If you read this i know this thread is very old and hasn't had a reply in over 2 years. Well here it is 2 years later. So can anyone help??!!??

 

[raybay]

Do yourself a favor, and install a used or new motherboard by MSI, Asus, FoxConn, or other. Just about anything you do with the eMachines motherboard will finish it off. It cannot take the stress of the changes.

 

[captaincranky]

This board is crippled in some way.

The Emachines T-5026 carries an Intel 915GAG MATX motherboard. Emachines punked us proud owners by omitting the PCI-E X 16 socket altogether. (Just an ugly black row of holes where the socket should be). The "genuine Intel" versions of the 915 chipset boards carried PCI-E X 16. Lame to be sure. I never could figure out the logic behind that. Maybe they didn't want to overtax the Bestec 300 PSU.

Soooo, a PCI graphics card is all you could install. You would of course, have to upgrade the PSU, that's if the original hasn't failed already.

On the upside they did keep the SATA drives. You win some, you lose some.

It also has a very high failure rate. I suspect the motherboard will fail in over 50 percent of the T-5026 machines within three years.

Again, I must stress that mine is over three and a half years old and still going strong. Since the T-5026 was discontinued over 3 years ago and I haven't seen many, if any T-5026s in this forum that have failed, well you get the idea.

As to gaming with it, as long as you confine yourself to Spider Solitare and Scrabble, you'll be fine. If this doesn't suit your needs, by all means it's time to go for a new computer.

Historically speaking, in the year or two before these machines were released, a computer with an AGP socket required a substantial investment.

kat1974, in which Best buy, in what corner of the known world, did you actually manage to find a T-5026 ????

 

[raybay]

The T-5026 was actually built by eMachines Tri-Gem... and were plentiful for a while. You are "luckier" than most to have it last so long. The motherboards are not actually built by Intel. They are Intel designs which worked well, but these in eMachines were built under license by then Tri-Gem of Korea. There are 27 boards Tri-Gem built or modified, and nearly all of them have incredibly high failure rates...

If you take those 27 boards and compare them with the industry as a whole, they have the highest failure rate in the entire industry... There are 7 of these boards that have/had failure rates above 65 percent in the first 27 months.

 

[captaincranky]

I going back to Best Buy to get a graphics card and I wanted to know that out of the three I have listed here, which one would you all recommend, or is there another one I could get for a price that won't break my budget. Thanks!
Kat

OK, IMHO the worst possible thing you could do, is go buy anything else regarding your computer from Best Buy.

Your original sales person is either ill informed or an outright liar. The Intel chipset in your T-5026 is obsolete and discontinued.

If you want to go for a graphics card you can try www.newegg.com . At this point I'm sort of wondering if these cards you speak of are even avaiable at at high traffic marketer.

The missing PCIE X 16 socket is a sore spot for me to be sure, but there are numerous reasons that a T-5026 is not really a decent computer with respect to playing most modern games.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Err cap, I don't think she even cares now.

@Great1122, raybay's advice is sound. I'd say ditch it all and keep only the disk drives (and the case, if you like it). A new mobo, CPU, PSU and RAM can be had for $200-$300, and will offer far more upgradeability and reliability than your current parts.

 

[captaincranky]

Um Rage, don't forget an OS

PS: I just read the date. It explains why kat was able to find a T-5026 at Best Buy. But I refuse to accept any culpability for resurrecting this thread.