I can't play it on my rig, even with my great 6200 card. You are able to play it, because of the Intel 4 Pro 2.80ghz and your intel board is faster then mime.

Nice video of bioshock man, moving fast.

Look around on Craigslist in the free section. I've seen towers as new as Northwood P4s before near me (Philadelphia). Also, it wouldn't be too expensive to build a new super-budget pc.

(Can't post links yet but these are from Newegg)
ECS945TGCT-M/1333 - $43 - $10 MIR + $9 Shipping

Intel Celeron 430 (1.8Ghz, comparable to a late P4 but cooler and less power hungry) - $40

2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 OCZ Value Select RAM - $36.99 + $7 shipping

~$126

Reuse your Hard drive, case and monito, hopefully your OS. Add a video card of your choice (or wait a bit and do so, you could probably game a little better on the onboard GMA 950 than any onboard graphics from the early P3 era). You could splurge a bit for one or more of the parts as money allows. You could move to a dual core Celeron for about $20 more, or go better. A better motherboard and RAM would allow for more overclocking, which is basically more performance for nothing but a bit of time invested in tweaking things.

But that configuration as-is is nothing to sneeze at for as little money as it would cost. And if $126 dollars is a dealbreaker to move from a near decade-old computer to something more modern, you have more pressing issues to deal with than getting a graphics card.

Hey this is an awesome topic that I have been reading for a little while .... I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the power supply that is need for the Sparkle 8500gt... I have 200volt power supply in my pc right now... I'm not looking to play anything at full quality, considering I have been playing games with onboard graphics, but I would really like to try some of the newer games.... Also can the 8500gt play COD4?

Looking at your specs, thats pretty good. Also a 200PSU should be enough. I don't know the correct requiredment, but as i said i am guessing 200 should be enough.

You lived in the UK?

Nopers... I live in Denmark but I'm trying to get the 8500gt from the dollarshops.eu from a link that you told me about on Youtube I'm razy91 =)... The website dollarshops.eu says it will deliver the sparkle to Denmark but I still can't order it and get it shipped to denmark.

Took a while, but my mini ITX system is built, up and running.

I'll benchmark both it and the Sparkle 8500GT PCI tomorrow. I'll sign up for a blog to stick the results out for everyone to see and place a link here as well. In addition, I am waiting for the Albatron 8600GT PCI to become available, once it is out I am getting one for another mITX box and I will be able to benchmark it as well.

One question what does everybody use to record games and play them back.

If I use Fraps I always get no or low sound quality.

I use fraps when recording gaming vids for editing, sound is great. Maybe its somewhat dependent on your sound card?

Why can't you order from them?

direwolf007

Nobody can see it lol. You know there is a easy way to do it, when you open up gpu-z, look in the upper right corner , you should see a little black box, click it and you can copy and paste the info quickly.


Like that.

Fraps of course. But if you sound is low, just make sure your volume on your computer is high, or the game volume is high.

I know that. I wasn't trying to show you anything from CPU-Z or GPU-Z, they were just open on the screen when I took the photo. All I wanted to show was just the box itself hooked up to the TV

When I try to order the card they tell me my Address is not valid for there shipping area. =( but They have told me that they will be able to ship to Denmark soon.

Not bad.

I took my Sparkle 8500GT PCI and overclocked it from 459 core / 400 mem to 719 core / 452 mem. The VIA C7-D 1.5Ghz together with the card score 1,038 in 3DMark06.

Full review later.

Thats weird, i found this over at ebay:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_n...rce+8500GT+PCI

I read over here that "the GeForce 8600 GT default frequencies are equal to 540/1188/1600 MHz." This blows away the Sparkle 8500 GT in performance. Only problem is the Sparkle 8500 GT is actually obtainable, while the Albatron 8600 GT must be obtained by a vendor if we all ever want one.

Everyone click on my Newegg link in my previous posts and request the Albatron 8600 GT, so we can have the best possible PCI GPU.

I already sent my information to newegg, but its up to albatron now. I sent a email, but haven't heard anything from them. No telling when any of us will be able to get those new cards. I might have a good change of getting one in a few weeks or sometime next month, i will let everyone know about that very soon. But in the mean time, i am going to buy and test out the Diamond 2400 and Diamond X1550 to see which is a great upgrade from this great 6200 bfg card.

Btw, has hey Teklord and everyone else, is this what everyone was talking about before:

http://www.amfeltec.com/index.php?id=1&subid=5

Does this device allow you to use PCI-E on PCI slots systems?

Awesome find General, you could plug some awesome things into that. However, Albatron stated it can't guarantee all cards would work with it's ATOP and I am sure the same would apply to this. Worth a try nonetheless IMO.

2-5-0 USD ??! Holy crap. The price of that thing alone is more than the price of a new motherboard + CPU with a PCI-E slot.

i can operate a comp like an normal joe off the street but when it comes to parts...well its safe to say its like a car,it doesnt take much to drive but to fix it its another story.I play WoW or World of warcraft and the game says i meet all the minimal requirements but the game play is pretty laggy unless i'm in an enclosed area like a cave or something.I figured i need a new graphics card and more RAM...after a few days of research and googling.I've up graded the RAM to 736MB from 256MB.Now its the graphics card i'm stumped on.I cant seem to figure out what cards are compatible with an M925 mother board from ECS.Using CPU-Z i've learned my graphic interface is AGP 2.0 with a max transfer rate at 4X.I figure i could upgrade the RAM to a Gigabyte but i need help with a new graphics card,if u know which ones are compitble help me plz or if u need more inof just tell me cuz i have all the info on it...it just doesnt make much sense to me

You can start with checking this link to Newegg. Most of the AGP cards listed are compatible with 4x and 8x. You don't have to buy from there if you don't want but the list will give you a start.

Be aware that more powerful graphics cards might require a better power supply than you currently have so you might have to get a new one.

Hey guys, found this:


http://www.maximumpc.com/article/new...on_sli_problem

Date posted july 12, 2008. Thats a interesting look card, because the ones shown on the site looks completely different.