Decent Graphics card for around €100?

[Shane Farrell]

Lookin' to get a graphics card that will let me enjoy some FPS action on my PC.

Any suggestions? I heard that theres a good card for less than €100 that can support Half Life 2....is this true?

[TimTim]

See if there is anything in the 6800 range, ever since the 7800/7900 came out it should push the price down a bit.

[johnmd]

a PCI-E 512meg AGP for just over the €120 if I remember where I saw it I will update,

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=316341

or you can go for a standard agp in the region of €150

here is the product view it here, http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318040

[TimTim]

a PCI-E 512meg AGP for just over the €120 if I remember where I saw it I will update,



Make up your mind, it can be either pci-e or agp not both.

Although the one he linked to is PCI-E so unless you have a newish pc, i'd say agp will be for you.

[Dub45]

Is the rest of the PC up to gaming apart from the card consideration?

[Shane Farrell]

Well it has 630MB RAM (combination of 128 + 512, I know that should be 640, but it says 630 on specs)

And 2.6Ghz Intel Celeron.

I'm not mad clued up on computers but I know it's a tiny bit weak.

And there may be a change in plan.

Looking likely that I'll have €1400 to spend on a laptop. Any suggestions?

It'll be mainly for music production, but I love me games! :D

[johnmd]

that I would recommend esp for music, is a powermac, but the thing I hate about lappies is the tinnie sound coming from the onboard speakers and the limitation of upgrading, though the newer lappies are coming out with pcie onboard means you should be able to upgrade the graphics

[Shane Farrell]

Yeah laptops have got their problems alright. I'd go for a desktop but I need the mobility of a laptop for gigs. And the feckers are so expensive :(

[TimTim]

Ah man, the celeron is a pile of poo don't even consider it.

You should be looking at a pentium-m minimum.

Although some people hate them, have you tried dell? I personally have had a dell laptop and its suited me perfectly. And something higher up the scale xps :) could easily take on a decent desktop pc for raw power.

And johnmd, if you got a powerbook, what games would you exactly play? They are a bit thin on the ground last time I heard.

[Shane Farrell]

Those specs I was saying with the celeron is my current PC. I'd be lookin' for something much better for my new laptop.

I was looking at the XPS on the dell web site. Everytime I configured it, it was above €1900!! Which is just too much. At most I want to spend €1500.

If I had €2000 I'd buy a decent-ish laptop for music worth around €700-800 and get a nice PC for €1200 for gaming and the like.

I could just wait another few months and do that though....but I'm sooo impatient.

[johnmd]

I made a reference to it as it is solid for audio production,, dont think there are many games for the mac. now back to the matter in hand, possibly you would build a system a lot cheaper than the dell XPS. now I can tell stories about this brand but I won't. the best ultimate gamer pc is going to be one with dual rpocessing such as pentuim M which are real power hugry beast or you can go down the road of my fav brand amd these generally outclock pentiums, I personally only use AMD's in my machines, your looking at using corsair or geils mem chips at ddr2 533 mhz possibly using the sli for graphics and top it off using sata 2 HDD a 500 gig one will set you back about 250 from komplett.ie

[Shane Farrell]

I was looking at Alienware for a gaming PC and it seems to be much better and cheaper than the one I configured on dells site.

What about Alienware then? Any good?

[johnmd]

but considering that you can self build to the same specs as alienware at a fraction of the cost, but if I remember right it was alienware that introduced us to modding and water cooling if you decided to tweaked it to the extreme, one of the best and reliable M/B is Foxxconn

[Shane Farrell]

Ok if I decide to build it with stuff from Komplett could you give me some advice?

Like to start with, the barebones, what should I go for?

[TimTim]

AMD X2, with a gig of ram and a nice gfx card.

Thats what I'd start off from, AMDs are cheaper and perform better then intels

[johnmd]

maybe you wanna check out the specs and see if it worth it.

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 ULTRA-D, nF4 Ultra, Socket-939,S-ATA, GbLAN, Fw, PCI-Ex16

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939, 512KB, BOXED w/fan, I started with a mid range cpu due to high price of thef x and fx2 chips but if I had the dosh I would go for the fx2 chip

Sapphire Radeon X1300 512MB DDRII, PCI-Express, Tv-Out, DVI-I,

Maxtor DiamondMax 11 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
total cost to these will be about €700

all of these can be purchased in Komplett.ie

for the memory I would goto shop4memory.com

2Gb DDR PC3200 Value CAS3 Dual Channel kit - GeIL matching pair €180

top this off with a decent case with plenty of cooling say in the range of €150

another €250 to €400 for a great 19 to 20 in monitor