What Card Right Now

D

dsp fan

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Going out to get a graphics card tomorrow, which one should i buy i am happy with 100 - 250 pounds but not sure what i get at the higher price, everyone mentions the radeon 9600XT ???


A few HCPC buffs please respond to save me the searching trouble. Running Xlobby and a bunch of DVD's with a little hi definition stuff, interested in VGA output mainly but DVI at some stage in the near future.

thanks a bunch :lease:
 
Nvidia 6600 GT (probably isn't available on AGP yet) @ £135ish, 6800 vanilla @ £175, 6800 GT @ £270.

If you aren't playing any games then grab something cheap (sub £100) from ATI or Nvidia, you should have no problems at all. Anys of the above card, or indeed a 9800 are just a waste of money for that purpose.
 
If you aren't going to be playing games and therefore don't need mega horsepower then the vanilla Radeon 9600 is the best of the cheaper options and is fine with DVD and TV-capture mpg/avi playback.

It has VGA, DVI and s-video out ( and if you solder-up your own lead you can get RGB-SCART out which is far superior to the s-video out ). It's also fanless ( so no noise ). It comes in a 128Mb or 256Mb option but the 256Mb offers little improvement over the 128Mb so get the cheaper of the two. It currently costs about £70.
 
Radeon 9600 is the best of the cheaper options... It's also fanless

Thought I'd better point out that not all Radeon 9600's are fanless, though if you do go for one do make sure you get a fanless one.

Mark.
 
9600 non-Pros are the fanless ones, or for something a bit more powerful the 9600 Ultimate has a small-scale heat-pipe based cooler.

However, it seems that for HCPC purposes the 6600GT is probably going to be best especially for people who don't want to mess with FFDSHOW to tweak PQ, but as Daneel pointed out it's not out yet, the PCI-e version is pre-orderable while the AGP flavour isn't expected before the end of November .. so if you need one NOW then it's not an option.
 

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