A little help from the PC Gamers

[scrappysphinx]

Hi guys, i generally don't play games on the PC (apart from Championship Manager 01/02 and Age of Empires Rise of Rome) as i have my PS3 for that but i fancy trying Fallout 3 and i don't like the controls on the PS3.
I am basically looking to upgrade my graphics on my current desktop rig to play it smoothly and wanted some recommendations on what sort of card i'd require.

My current setup is an Acer T180 which has:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 3800+ rated at 2.01Ghz
2GB DDR2 Ram
nVidia Geforce 6100 nForce 405 Integrated Graphics
Realtek Integrated HD Audio
Windows XP Media Center 2005 SP3

At the minute this system will load the game but walking around or looking round the map it stutters like crazy.

Ideally i don't really want to spend more than £50-£60 (i was looking at a radeon HD 4670 PCIe for £54 at a local store but they haven't got any in) as i don't really want to play many games on the PC but i'd like to have decent settings so can anyone recommend anything?

Thanks

Mike

 

[StrontiumDog]

Any from here should be quite sufficent for your needs:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?page=1&store=2&cat=215&subcat=2489

 

[Justin]

it pains me to say this but the ATI cards at £50-£60 will do the job (don't expect to turn on all the bells and whistles) i prefer the nVidia cards, but they are more expensive

 

[Kin Hell]

For the price of the 9600GT's, it's your best bang for your buck. Shame you don't have an Intel DUO CPU. You'd get twice the FPS from the 9600 over your 2Ghz AMD affair.

In a nutshell, your AMD CPU is not going to throw enough polygons at the graphics card & JuvUK is right RE the ATI cards. If you stay with the AMD, perhaps the cheper ATI solution is the way to go. You'll need a 16x PCIe slot on your AMD mobo & be sure your PSU is upto the job.

Kin

 

[scrappysphinx]

Thanks for the recommendations guys, after having a read around a little although the 9600GT kin recommends is the better card i think i'm gonna wait for the local store to get some more Radeon HD 4670's in.

They are within my budget at £54 and every review i've read says i'll be able to achieve high settings on Fallout 3, apparently it will also play The Sims 3 that the missus wants to play too so that pretty much swings it for her.

The bonus part too is that the card doesn't need any extra power so even if my PSU is not the best all should be fine.

Mike

 

[Kin Hell]

Good luck Mike.

Charlie

 

[tokyoracer]

Kin is right, I very much prefer ATI personally and you get a hell of alot of bang for your buck on them cards. I used to have top flyte HIS X1950's Crossfired and god was it good!

Best of luck, do bare in mind ATI drivers arn't always great with certain ATI cards (there is a 3rd party option though).

 

[Harrison]

The 4670 is definitely a great card for the price. However, if you could stretch to £70 the much newer 5670 is a much nicer card (DX11 if you are considering installing Windows 7 at some point).

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190132

 

[Nathanieltolbert]

Do not bother with the 5670. The effects that DirectX 11 relies upon for making games run better, mainly advanced PS and Tessellation run very poorly on the 5670. Honestly if you are going to buy a Radeon video card, stick with the one you are looking at. If it suits your needs, no need to buy a stronger card. Most of the reviews I have read state that to get usable DX11 performance you need at least a 5770, and even that card isn't the fastest at it. I would recommend waiting until DX11 matures more before buying a card that supports it.

 

[Kin Hell]

^^^^^^

Brilliant advice. Just to add Mike, with your HW configuration there, you'll also have a better gaming experience under WinXP than Vista.

Kin