I don't know. He does drive an 81' DeLorean though. RC: is there any way of checking without having to open up my computer?
OK, that's good to know. You should have more (and better) options if your MB supports PCI-E. So I guess the next question is how much are you looking to spend? I'm not familiar with each and every card from Nvidia and ATI, but I can find some good info if you could help me narrow down the list. For example, the budget cards from ATI and Nvidia are the X1300 and the GF 7300 GS IIRC. They can only put up 20-30 FPS at 1024x768 (no AA) for most of today's games (FEAR, Quake IV, BF2, etc.), but you can get a X1300 Pro for about $90 at newegg and a 7300 GS for about $70. Then you can go up to a X1600 Pro ($110), a X1600 XT ($149), and the new 7600GT ($190), all under $200 and each performs quite nicely for most newer games (maybe around 2-3 times the FPS over the budget cards, allowing for higher resolutions and/or AA if you don't need 60 FPS). Then apparently you'll have the X1800 GTO at around $250, and the 7900 GT at about $300 (great performance for the price, as I mentioned earlier, although still $300). There's multiple price ranges as you can see, and each range has a nice card to pick from considering the price. I didn't even bother looking for any "older" cards either (a lot of GF 6xxx cards from Nvidia, or the ATI cards that don't support SM 3.0). If you have a certain price range in mind, I can narrow the list down and give some good benchmarks for each card in that range (like how 2 cards perform at AOE3 or something).
I guess all I really want is a card that lets me play Civ. IV without the floating eyeballs I get now coz of my current video card. My gaming habits on PC are pedestrian, when I can spare the time I'll play. However, I don't want to have to update my card yearly with the release of some cool RPG or strategy game. So I want something that can handle games 2+ years from now. I'm looking to spend $150-200. Of course if there is a super deal out there I would consider paying a little more. Thanx RC. ...is Ebay a good place to find bargains. What should i look for?
While I'm not sure of the exact requirements, I wouldn't doubt it if even the lowly 7300 GS I mentioned earlier could play Civ 4 (although not sure how well, but much better than your Radeon 7000). That said, if you wanted to then play something like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or some other game coming out soon (maybe like Diablo 3 or Gothic 3?), you'll probably run into some problems. In the $150-$200 range, the X1600 XT and the GF 7600 GT would probably be the cards to look at I guess. From what I read though, the 7600 GT seems to be a real nice card for the price, and not only does it outperform the X1600 XT (seemed to average about twice the framerate is some of the tests I saw), it also seems to stick with and even perform slightly better than the X1800 GTO from ATI. The next card up in price that would easily perform better would be the 7900 GT at ~$300, although that seems a bit too much out of your price range. Here's one of the reviews that compares a bunch of cards (including the X1600 XT, the X1800 GTO, and the 7600 GT): http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/geforce-7600-7900/index.x?pg=1 (check pages 8 and on for game benchmarks) On the systems I saw, the 7600 GT seemed to play games like Quake IV, Half-Life 2, FEAR, Battlefield 2, etc., at 30+ FPS (sometimes 60+FPS) at 1024x768, all with something like 4X AA and 8X AF enabled (takeing those off will help the framerate a lot I imagine if you're fine without these features). And according to this link: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=256305&st=0 The 7600 GT is listed under the "high-end" cards for playing Oblivion, which means you'll be able to play the game with all settings enabled (assuming the rest of your PC stacks up well I guess). So it seems like the card should be able to play some demanding games at more-than-acceptable framerates, especially if you tweak with the game settings a bit. As for eBay, I suppose that could be a place for bargains. To be honest, I've yet to try to purchase a video card myself (although I'm planning on doing so very soon), so I'm not very experienced in the pros and cons of buying a card via eBay as opposed to a site like newegg. Last time I looked, I didn't really see much of a difference between the prices at newegg versus the prices that the same cards were fetching at eBay (if anything, they may have been less at newegg). FWIW, while I'm not promising anything, I guess prices for the 7600 GT might drop slightly in a few weeks considering it just launched, not to mention it will get some competition with the X1800 GTO pretty soon. Still, you can get an overclocked 7600 GT (580MHz core and 1500 MHz memory vs 560MHz and 1400MHz) from eVGA for ~$190 at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130283 That already seems like a great deal as it is.
