Ultimate cheapass video card?

plasticbathmonki

plasticbathmonki

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Howdy all,

I'm looking to upgrade my archaic graphics card (NVidia 6600gt 256 mB) with something alittle more...modern. It's an okay card, but newer games are starting to push it to its max limits. So, basically I'm look for a quality card that costs less than $100 and has at least 512 mb and PCI-e x16. Thanks for any advice! :)
 
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Tom's Hardware is a good resource for this kind of thing. They have a monthly "Best Video Card for the Money" segment. Here's the latest edition.

It's going to be pretty difficult finding a 512MB graphics card under $100 unless someone makes you a deal on a used one.
 
I would strongly suggest going for the XFX/EVGA 8800GT. It's a little less than 200, but you may be able to find it for ~160AR if you go on slickdeals.

I know it's out of your price range, but it'll save you a LOT of money in the long run. It matches the $400/500 8800GTX in some tests. It offers the best price-performance ratio.
 
Yeah, that's PCIE x16. PCIE 2.0 is one of those new standards, but I really wouldn't worry about it too much unless you're really into these things.

9600GT is a pretty good deal too, might be better for your situation unless you plan on running Crisis at full.
 
No, no Crysis for me. just trying to get to a point where I can run even lower end games easily. I've tried to play Hellgate and Tabula Rasa with my 6600, and talk about muddy....
 
Yup, go for the 9600GT if that's the case. It'll be great for those games (although not at max).
I'd estimate medium on Hellgate - 8800 might boost it to high. Your call if that's worth the additional $80 and more future proofing. I'd say either is a great choice.
 
I recently made a similar jump when I needed to move from 6800 AGP to a budget PCI-E card and I narrowed my choice to the following:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+50001312+106791921+4027

The forum keeps improperly converting the link to a referral and screwing up the destination. After you click on the link, if you remove the amp; from the newegg url, it should return the results. Basically it's the filtered search results for MSI geforce 8 series video cards in the $75-$100 dollar range.


Newegg has these MSI 8600 cards for about $70 after rebate and you get The Witcher PC game for free(add them to your cart using the combo deal further down the page).

At less than half the cost of a decent 8800, I purchased the MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail.
It only has 256 MB but was GDDR3 and had a pretty high clock speed. It's still relatively new but I have no complaints so far
 
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