I need help finding a video card too...

Hi everyone...I know very little about video cards and am utterly confused with whats out there. But I need one because playing GCII is a little difficult with my on-board memory. Heres my system specs:

AMD 64 X2 4200+
960 megs RAM
PCI Express slot available

I will not pay more than 100$ on a video card. What kind of card would work best for GCII, and other games like Civ IV?

Thanks!
8,293 views 4 replies
Reply #1 Top
GC2 and Civ4 aren't particularly demanding beyond needing support for DX9--most mid-range and up cards from the current or last generation can handle both games fine.

With PCIe, a $100 limit puts you right in the middle of the mid-range for options. NewEgg has a Radeon X1650Pro for $99.99 (there is a $10 rebate though bringing it down to $89 at the moment). That's about the best you're going to find for under $100. If you're looking to go lower, they have X1600s and some nVidia cards as well, though most of those are GeForce 7300s.

Personally, I'd sooner go with a card of an older generation that's in the 600 or 800 series (or better) than one of a newer generation that is not. The 600 series cards from both companies are the standard mid-range models, and performance-wise (though not necissarily feature-wise), the last generation's 600-series cards are often superior to the sub-600 cards of the newer generation. In practical terms, a GeForce 6600 is faster than a 7300, and a Radeon X800 is faster than a X1300, though all other factors considered the prices are similar.
Reply #2 Top
thats a nice card for that price, and unless your willing to double and half your price range, i'd just go ahead and buy that one

nice find kryo
Reply #3 Top


Thanks Kryo for the help, I really appreciate it.

I found a GeForce 7600GT 256MB at New Egg for 99.00 after rebates....is that a better card than the X1650?

The reason I ask is because I looked at Wikipedia and it said that the 7600GT was marginally better than the X1650.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814141043
Reply #4 Top
I found a GeForce 7600GT 256MB at New Egg for 99.00 after rebates....is that a better card than the X1650?


Good find, I hadn't seen that one. The two are comparable cards. Due to architectural differences (The Radeon's texture units are grouped into 'quads'), the Radeon's performance can vary from a little better than the GeForce to a good bit less, while the GeForce uses a more standard approach and so should be more consistent in performance. Without real-world performance numbers in front of me, I'd say it's a toss up, but nVidia does traditionally have better drivers so that is one thing which may point towards the GeForce being a better buy.