Good low/mid level card

Doing research for my little brother.

I have him Morrowwind for Christmast last year, but I guess things haven't worked out too well at home.(he never studies... :>)

Anyways. I'm to bribe him now, as all good older brothers should, with somethign cool. He begs of my dad to replace his stupid 8 meg ATI graphics card. ... well so do I when I go home for Christmas.


Anyways. Morrorwind game at point here.

My brothers birthday is coming up in about 2 months. I'd love to bribe him with a nice graphics card(ok cheap... but better than that 8 meg ATI)


Are therea any cool bets? I was hoping for a ~50 dollar range NVIDIA. That blows goats over that 8 meg ATI. NVIDIA mostly because my hole family is inept, and wanted to get something that the driver download is ludicrusly slimple. Doing support here, I've found that NVIDIA rocks in that manner, just one download for pretty much 99 percent.

Anyaays, any recommendations? I have this computer with a GeForce 440mx 440, 128 meg, but I figure even those are older than something you can buy for ~50 bucks

Help the little brothers. Give me some advice. I'm not a hardware dude, but know you guys(and gals) are out there.

Actually the prices on the MX440 are still around 40-50 dollars. Another suggestion besides that card would be this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...125-140&depa=1
As for ease of driver installation, as long as the old drivers are properly removed, installing the new Catalyst drivers shouldn't be too difficult at all.

I'd just make sure that the motherboard could support a newer AGP card first.

*Edit*

Another suggestion would be the FX5200

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...164-029&DEPA=0

Quick, here's a 2 day sale on an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 for $43.99: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...130-210&depa=0

This one's nice too. Dad has it and it's more than decent even for Battlefield 1942. It's more than $50, but sweet.:D

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...135-141&depa=1

I baught my 9600SE for ~50 128mb

Plays, marrow wind great (probly), HL2 decently, D3 Decently, CS FLAWLESSLY

Yeah. I'd try to get that 5200, at this point just about anything you get is going to be a HUGE upgrade over the older 8meg ATI card. (I'm assuming a Rage Pro).

You might be able to find a 9100 at that price too, im not to sure. Its a revamped Radeon 8500, which is overall faster then the 5200, but lacks DX9.
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Completely off topic, but its been over a year since I posted here lol.

Buy.com is reputable and has a retail boxed Radeon 9550 for $60 with free shipping.

<http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...01&hdwt=0&sp=1>

I've been researching to upgrade from my 64MB Radeon 9100. (btw- I have Morrowind and find my Radeon 9100 to be inadequate) The Radeon 9550 seems to be the best bang for buck card out there currently. I'm getting it so I can play Doom III and FarCry. Don't let the numbering confuse you. The Radeon 9550 has the exact same architecture as a Radeon 9600 it is just clocked slower. Even so, it buries a Geforce 5200 and performs favorably if not better than Geforce 5500, 5600 and 5700 cards. I STRONGLY suggest that you DON'T buy an (SE) card. They only have 64-bit bandwidth for the memory and without getting to technical, the performance is essentially cut in half and the price difference is negligble.

The 9550 will absolutely slaughter your MX440 card and is overclockable (i.e. you can make it perform like a true Radeon 9600 or better) if you're into that sort of thing like I am.

Radeon cards below are listed in order of performance:
Core (MHz) Mem (MHz) Bandwidth
9550SE 250 400 64-bit (barely adequate)
9600SE 325 400 64-bit (adequate)
9550 250 400 128-bit (good)
9600 325 400 128-bit (better)
9600 Pro 400 600 128-bit (best)
9600 XT 500 600 128-bit (smokin)

Sorry about the novel, but I've been doing a lot of research and it helps me to write it down. There's a lot more I could have put about different manufacturers, bios flashing, etc. but that would be overkill.

One last thought:
All of this assumes that his computer which has "...stupid 8 meg ATI graphics card..." will support a pretty good card like this.

Maybe it doesn't.

Radeon 9550 and 9600 series aren't backward compatible to 3.3V signalling - hence, they neither fit into nor work on old mainboards unless 4x AGP support is there.