Require Advice For New Graphics Card

[Jooee12]

Hi, i'm just wondering if any of you know where I can get a cheap graphic card with 256+mb on it. I'll post my system specs below but i'm kinda new to the pc tweaking thing. Only thing I've ever upgraded is my RAM. I'm just really not sure what kind of graphics card would be compatible with my PC, and yeh I know, my pc is ancient....

Here's the specs anyway,

Dell Dimension 2400
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.06ghz (2 CPUs)
1022mb RAM

I currently have a "Intel 82845G Graphics Controller" Bare in mind that I'm on a budget, so the cheapest possible would be prefered please

Any help on what would be a good new graphics card to get would be great, thanks for your time,

Joe

 

[AlbertLionheart]

which country are you in?

 

[Jooee12]

which country are you in?

England, however it may be cheaper to ship from america because of the current exchange rate, seeing as its so good for us brits!

 

[AlbertLionheart]

if you do that, beware of the costs of dealing with customs clearance!
You need to peer into the guts of the thing to see what sort of available slots you have - you should have 2 or 3 PCI slots and a single AGP slot.
The agp slot is the one to use and somewhere your paperwork will tell you what sort of AGP it is - probably 8x. On this basis, something like the following would do for you. If you are anywhere near Rugby I could give you the name of an outfit that would help you if you don't want to do this yourself.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119716

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

@Jooee12, you have only PCI slots. Therefore, your best bet is this card.

 

[pdyckman@comcas]

It may be that installing a PCI slot Video Card may not increase your performance. I really don't think that you would notice a difference.

 

[samjohnson]

No he would indefinitely notice a difference. I had a Dell E310 with only PCI slots and integrated graphics. So I got a Geforce FX5200 and was able to play battlefield after that. So I would definitely go with the card that rage found for you.

 

[Jooee12]

It would make quite a different I think because I need it for work on a xbox 360 game project and to play battlefield 2142 aswell. Problem is mainly that the engine I've designed has a particle renderer that is too high for my video card to handle...

Thanks for the suggestions, they've been really helpful.

 

[samjohnson]

If you want to play 2142 you would need a PCIe x16 slot. No PCI graphics card is going to play 2142.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The 6200 is able to play BF2, so I don't think it'd have problems with BF2142. Just don't expect it to look very nice.

 

[Tedster]

wrong forum. Please post next time in the audio/visual forum.