Need honest opinion on what video card to purchase

[Ldyvamp]

Hello,

I am looking for an honest opinion on what video card to purchase for my system. Here are my specs: Dell Dimension 2400, Memory 510MB, Chip Type Intel (R)82845G Graphics Controller. I have Windows XP Installed. The games I own are: The Sims 2, Nightlife, University, Pets and Seasons. My spending limit is $100.00 or less & I would like to get the most bang for my buck in this price range. I hear ATI is good but crashes on some systems. This is why I am giving you as many detals as I can about what I own. (If more are needed, please let me know). I have no idea on what to look for and am appealing to other consumers out there who know more about this than I do. I am hoping to avoid any potential problems with my game once the new card is installed. One question I have is, do you take the old card out and just plug in the new one? Any help would be greatly appreciated as your answers will, of course determine the outcome on which one I will buy.

Thank you so much & I look forward to your feedback!

Ldyvamp

[pandasan]

Do you know what kind of motherboard your PC has?

Also~ would be a good idea to upgrade your RAM (memory) with only 512MB RAM even with an awesome video card your game will not run much faster (and with a budget of $100 you won't be able to get a video card with high memory of its own)

For the best deal on computer hardware, newegg.com is the best place to order from! I have ordered all of my PC hardware components from there and have saved tons of money by doing so. I'll browse the site and see if any in your price range stand out to me, but I will need to know what kind of videocard slots your pc's mobo has on it. If you don't know, it can probably be looked up at the dell site.

[Nokomys]

My personal opinion is to go with NVidia cards. On my old system I had an old NVidia 5200 and on my new system I have a Radeon 9250. My graphics were SO much better with the old NVidia. I want it back... my hubby, who uses my old system now, won't give it up! When I have some extra money I'm going to change to an NVidia card.

Sorry, but ATI Radeon sucks!

[Diva1108]

Thats too bad cause dell makes like all their laptops with ATI. How are the HP laptops with the Sims 2 games? Does anyone know?

[Diva1108]

Im getting a new HP laptop for only $758 and it comes with windows vista home and a free upgrade to 1gb of Ram, free upgrade from 80gb of hardrive to 120, built in webcam AND a Nividia GeForce 7400 256mb graphics card. My dell Inspiron laptop sucks, Dells suck period now. HPs are sooo much better, I advice Ldyvamp to switch to them. It also come with free wireless internet connection great for downloading custome content on the go. Batterlife is pretty good and all the reviews says gaming runs really fast.

[miros1]

Apparently, nVidia has finally got their problems fixed.  I just upgraded my drivers (GeForce 5500) and no more stuttering, stray triangles, or blue accessories.

[caffeinated.joy]

Personally, I love my ATI card (on my pc). I have an nVidia on my laptop and it gives me nothing but grief. but that's just my opinion. Ultimately, the decision is yours. So many people will give you a different point of view, so the best thing you can do is research the cards you're interested in and go from there.

[cellshaded]

I hope this information works.
I have used, for my desktop pc, the eVGA 7600gs 512mb
Works perfectly, and with my 1.5gb ram it runs most games on highest settings(I am not taking pixel size into consideration, since I normal run all games on default screen resolution that the game runs in.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2219521&CatId=1826
That's for the card, manufactered by eVGA, the one I have installed on my desktop.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3139541&CatId=1826
Same card, but manufactered by NVidia themself, same price, but I still prefer the one manufactered by eVGA since, if I am not mistaken, eVGA guarantee is not voided by overclocking, that is, if I remember correctly.

Looked up some images and info to tell if the dimension 2400 is agp or pci express, couldn't tell if it's pci express or agp, so just in case, giving you a link for the agp version of the card, by another manufacter that I don't know though.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3053805&CatId=2234

Hope that helped.

[Ashk]

I like ATI better than nvidia as well.  With my old nvidia card I had more problems than I could count.  Always needing to tweak this or that.  Just make sure that with whatever card you get your computer can support it.

[socurious]

Thats too bad cause dell makes like all their laptops with ATI. How are the HP laptops with the Sims 2 games? Does anyone know?

I use an HP laptop with Radeon XPress 200M graphics.  It seems great to me.  I don't have any problems with game speed or anything (I did have a spikey boob issue, though  :blob6:).

[Ldyvamp]

Thanks for all the input everyone! I'm still a little undecided. I have one more resource to check and then I'll have to make a decision. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Thanks again!

Ldyvamp

[phoenix_risin]

I had a Dell Dimension 2400. Years ago. It was a pretty ncie system.

 I had a Radeon 9550 with 256 MB on it.
 Mine ran a AGP card.
If yours does as well you can get the card for like 50 or 60.00 I never had a bit of issues with it took fabulous pictures and showed great detail


You can go to http://www.crucial.com and scan and it will tell you if you have a AGP or PCI or PCI E slot for your graphics card.
Just make sure to check nd know what type you need.
I am pretty sure it will likely take a AGP. but be sure to check.

i have always used ATI cards. I have only recently went with a Nvidia So far so good with it. It is a Nvidia 8600.

[cmk1356]

I have dual 256 NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS cards on my laptop, which is the computer I play Sims 2 on with all expansion packs, and I'm pretty sure it's a wonderful graphics card.  I'm really happy with them and the performance.

[xoJessi]

I'm kinda torn... but you can figure out for yourself. In my opinon it's a toss up between.

Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia or Nvidia

you get the picture. lol