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I havent gotten a new video card in a couple of years so i could use some help as far as whats new and good. Any recomendations as far as a good video card thats not too expensive? Or what chipset is good these days? Thanks.

nvidia 5700 ultra and later.....very good chipset

9800 all the way. It is alot better deal and F'ing fast. I would have to say that the 9800 is the bestall aorund card with the perfect trade off of power and price

Actually, you may want to wait a little longer to buy one. The big "hubbub" in the Gfx card race is which card (NVidia or ATI) is more DX9 compatible. This will directly affect which games you will get top performance from. Valve/Half-Life 2 is officially supporting ATI. They claim that NVidia doesn't support DX9 per the standards. Yet, Id/Doom 3 is officially supporting NVidia. Id's announcement was just days ago and the report I read didn't really specify a reason. Regardless, I'm sure you can see why waiting will be a good decision.

The only problem with the brand new video cards coming out is the price. I really dont have a lot of money to spend. The most i really am looking to spend is about $150. Any suggestions for that price range????

radeon 9600 or nvidia 5200 are good budget cards

Originally Posted by SneakyPenguin radeon 9600 or nvidia 5200 are good budget cards

I would say that the 9600 would be the best bet. I try to stay away from "big Comp." (ie. Nvidea and Intell) I have found my 9000 that i got over a year ago to still be able to run anything out there with moderitly high settings. Ati and Amd are 2 companies that i like alot. The both have the best trade off of price and power.

Originally Posted by SneakyPenguin radeon 9600 or nvidia 5200 are good budget cards

The Radeon 9600 and the Nvidia 5200 are not even in the same league. The 9600 would absolutely destroy the 5200 as the 5200 is a budget card, the 9600 is a performance mainstream card. A card from Nvidia that competes with the Radeon 9600 is a 5600/5600 ultra. The GeForce FX5200 is NOT a replacement of the Ti4200.

Without a doubt go with a Radeon, the Radeon 9600/9600 pro would be my first choice for a card at around and maybe a little over 100 dollars. I would go with a Radeon this generation for games, next gen comes out in a couple months and its anyones guess what will be the card to get then. Here are a couple of links showing current generation card comparisons, I just chose a game at random.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphi...-charts-12.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showd...=1910&p=19

Here are some ~$100 cards for you from newegg. They should be around what you are looking for.

Radeon 9600
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu....289&depa=0

Radeon 9600 pro
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu....291&depa=0

You might also wanna wait a couple months if possible, the next generation of cards comes out soon and it might be wise to wait for those.

After searching around and looking at the reviews at newegg i think the 9600 is the way to go for me. Unless i wait a couple of months and wait for when the new stuff comes out so everything else will drop in price.

With ATI 9X00 series you can't go wrong. Supposedly there's problems with NVidia and HL2 so I'd wait a bit if you're considering Nvidia. But for now (even though I love NVidia, it kills me) gotta recommend ATI just cuz they're rollin out quality cards

I have a 9600 and it is amazing. I only paid 70 for it after rebates.

i moved from a 3 year old laptop with intergrated graphics, to a 9800 pro 256mb. i nearly cried it was so beutiful.

i got a 9600XT a few months ago with the halflife2 coupon. couldnt be more than happy with it. no framerate issues whatsoever.

just be careful though, if you have a Via KT400 chipset on your motherboard, you can only use the card up to 4x AGP. something about a voltage problem. If you have a Nforce board, you wont have any problem at all. had to learn that the hard way.

Yeah i heard about that issue with the Via KT400 on newegg. Im looking at getting a Nforce board with my new setup i heard their better anyway.

I just picked up an awesome board. It a Shuttle AN35N Ultra based on the nVidia nForce2 chipset. I have to admit, I love this board. It's my second Shuttle board and the first is still kicking (Celeron 366)! I highly recommend this board. The layout is great for a SOHO case, plenty of RAM support (up to 400Mhz DDR), 6 USB ports, 6 channel Audio, etc, etc, etc... Can you tell I am happy about it?

Oh, and whatever you do, DON'T buy ECS motherboards! G-A-R-B-A-G-E!!!

Originally Posted by SneakyPenguin i moved from a 3 year old laptop with intergrated graphics, to a 9800 pro 256mb. i nearly cried it was so beutiful.

haha!

I went through a which card is better issue and found that the ATI cards for the past year or two have been better than Nvidia's. I got a 9200 SE 128 MB vid cards for a great price at bestbuy and it worked better than the FX fifty something hundred that nvidia put out.

I've been looking around for a video card too. My motherboard is only AGP 4X, so should I stay away from 8X cards?

Depends what type of mobo you have sandwiches.

Originally Posted by sandwiches99 I've been looking around for a video card too. My motherboard is only AGP 4X, so should I stay away from 8X cards?

People will say that there really is no such thing as 8x. In most tests the performance increase is minimal if any - also running cards on 8x has been known to cause problems.

If you are gonna spend big bucks I suggest you wait until pc express comes out and get a pc express board and vid card which ATI will be offering soon.