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I'm looking for a good graphics card that can run games like EaW or CoH 2142 on high without lag, right now, I'm thinking of getting the Geforce 7600GS 512mb AGP, and looking for some advices, I have a friend that has a Radeon 9800pro, and it handles games like EaW on high with no prob, so, is the geforce 7600GS a good choice?

Moved To Technical advice Forum.

If your MB can handle PCIx then I would suggest finding a card like that 'cause everthing is going to that standard and doing away with AGP. Either way, get as much vid ram as possible. That handles the textures and such. i'm a little out of touch with the GeForce line, but I do like the 9800pro. If you could find one, that is a good choice. Or even the ATI x series, but those are pretty much gone to PCIx, though you might find some AGP.

I have a RADEON 9600/9700 and it can barely handle anything on this comp.

Sorry for the confusion, it's PCIe not PCIx. It is a PCI Express port. My 9600GT AGP was noticably better than my x300 PCIe I have now, (Played BF2142 fine at midrange settings, but x300 is choppy as hell on low, both have the same vram). I'm going on the assumption that 9800pro would run BF2142 fine at high. Thing is, with vista only games I think they would run sub par. Seems like they are more GPU intensive from what I heard. Since that is the new "standard" for operating systems (what a way for microsoft to get you to upgrade to a more expensive OS), I'm not sure if the 9800 or 7600 is going to support high res on soon to be released games. Vista so far is out of my league of expertise. Again, not to privy on the GeForce cards.

Well, the Radeon 9800 pro WAS a good card. I just got rid of mine - not because it didn't play the games I wanted it to, but it finally died after 4 years of dutiful service. If you have an AGP port on your system, the Geforce 7600 series (probably a GS for an AGP system) is a decent choice. More memory the better. The 7600 is a fast card (I just changed from my 9800 to the 7600 GS), and this card can handle MOST everything I throw at it with ACCEPTABLE frame rates. My old 9800 actually had better memory (faster with more memory bandwidth), but the Geforce 7600 that I have now seems to be on par speed wise. The nice thing about the 7600 over my old 9800 is that the 7600 supports Shader Model 3, whereas the 9800 only supported SM 2.0. This allows for much nicer visual effects on certain games including BF 2142.

Ultimately though, you should be looking for a few different things before purchasing a new video card. First, how fast is your CPU? As long as your sitting above the 2.2ghz, you should be fine. Secondly, how much RAM does your system have? 512 megabytes is pretty lean for todays games, and most games will run pretty choppy with only 512 MB. 1 Gigabyte is pretty standard and should run most games just fine - anything more than 1 GB and you're laughing - anything less than 512 MB and you have a paperweight. Next, what TYPE of videocard does your motherboard support? If it's AGP, you're pretty limited nowadays. PCIe (PCI express) is the defacto standard nowadays, and AGP has gone the way of the dodo - it's dead. You may still be able to find AGP cards, but you pay a premium price for support of a dead technology. A 7600 GS AGP card will run you approximately $40 more than the EXACT same PCIe card. If you have a PCIe port for video, you're in business, and should have no problems finding a new video card.

Now onto the card itself. Once you've figured out what your system supports you can purchase the card itself. A word of advice though. If you're buying the card to play games, stay away from anything LOWER than a Geforce 7600 series of cards or a Radeon x1600 series of cards. They just won't offer up the gaming goodness you desire. The cards I mentioned should run you just over $120 Canadian. Anything less (price wise) probably won't offer up the same sort of speed. A word of caution though - nowadays, manufacturers are selling cards with lots of onboard video ram. So you may see a card like the Radeon x1300 with 512 MB onboard video ram that is more expensive than a Radeon x1600 with only 256mb of video Ram. If you have the choice, go for the Radeon x1600 though - it's a MUCH faster, much more robust card even with only half the onboard ram.

One final note - you may (if you have a motherboard with PCIe) want to purchase one of the newer Directx 10 cards that are out there. Nvidia makes the Geforce 8800 Ultra (High end much $$$), all the way down to the Geforce 8500/8600 (dirt cheap, decent performance) Having the choice between the older Radeons (x1600 and up) or the Geforce 7xxx series, I would go for the newer DX10 cards if I were you. First off, you have support for future titles (mmmm Crysis), and secondly, if you decide on a MAJOR upgrade, you should have no problem selling these cards to someone else - as they are able to buy a newer technology, rather than one that's older and won't perform as well. If you have an AGP only motherboard, ATI is supposed to be releasing their newest cards in AGP flavor for the masses - the Radeon HD2500 and 2600 series are supposed to be released in PCIe AND AGP formats, so you should be ok for a little while there.

If you want to compare video cards, check out this site ---> http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php ... d1=&card2=

The site allows you to choose the cards you're interested in and directly compare things like speed, features etc. It also includes links on where you can purchase cards, as well as reviews for different cards - definitely worth checking out before you make your decision.

yeah thanks for the info,but the one thing I wanna know if that the 7600 GS is able to max some of this games, now that it is better than the 9800..

EJMM wrote:yeah thanks for the info,but the one thing I wanna know if that the 7600 GS is able to max some of this games, now that it is better than the 9800..

What are your system specs?? Here is my system - AMD Athlon Xp 2600+ (running at 2 ghz), Geforce 7600 GS, and 1 GB of Ram. I can't run BF2142 at max detail UNLESS I drop the resolution. I just have the game Autoselect my settings for me, and it looks great. (most settings are at medium except view distance which is at 100%) However in a game like Command & Conquer 3, I am running my Resolution at 1680x1050 (I have a 22" monitor), with all graphical settings on high, and the game looks great. For Half Life 2 Lost Coast (A tech demo for HL2 that supports High Dynamic Range Lighting and Shader Model 3.0), at 1680x1050, I average approximately 45 fps.

Every game is different, and depending on the type of system you have, each one will run differently - some better, some worse. For Battlefront 2, at full resolution with everything cranked, the game runs smooth like butter..

Post your specs here, and I should be able to give you an idea of how certain games will run..

If you're gonna go with Windows XP, I'd strongly recommend GeForce 7600 GT (that's the card I have, xD) it can handle EAW as if it was nothing, CS: Source, HL2, Call of Duty 2 and probably many other games without slightest problem. (Well, the SWBF-games are messing with me, but I'm quite sure the graphics card is not to blame for it, cuz when it works it looks absolutely fantastic and have absolutely no lag, it's just the fact that the games are crashing).

But if you're getting Vista, you'll need something better thatn 7600, I've heard (if you go with Nvidia) that the GeForce 7-series does not work with Vista, so you'll have to get an "8-series" card... I've heard the GeForce 8800 is quite awesome...
And there surely are some ATI-cards that are really great as well.

I'm no graphicscard expert, but, somehow I managed to rabble all that up. xD Well, there's probably a lot of people you can trust better than me when it comes to these kind of issues...

Mi comp specs are:

AMD Athlon 3100+, 2.2 Ghz, 1.5 GB of RAM and 400 of power and no, I'll stIck with XP until i get a new computer, are this specs good enough to run the games I mentioned or some of the games at high with no lag with the 7600GS?

You should have no problems at all... Your specs are better than my own, and I run all my games at 1680x1050 with no problem, so you shouldn't have any problem either... Battlefield 2 runs great, BF 2142 not quite as good, but still no lag (at least not from the video card) - any other game I have runs perfectly fine..

Like I said earlier though - you may want to wait a few days (I think the 30th). That's when the new Radeon 2600xt/2600 pro's come out. Direct x 10 compatible, and these cards should be priced between $175 and $250.. You'd see a HUGE gain over the 7600GS, plus you would also have the added bonus of having true HDMI output including both Audio and Video. If you have a High Definition display, this would be perfect for you..

I would suggest buying a 8600 GT. No. Wait. Buy 2, send one to dear old lase

swbf_lase wrote:I would suggest buying a 8600 GT. No. Wait. Buy 2, send one to dear old lase

The problem is that it sounds like he has an AGP system, and Nvidia doesn't have any plans to release the 8600 GT in AGP flavor..

Razorpig wrote:You should have no problems at all... Your specs are better than my own, and I run all my games at 1680x1050 with no problem, so you shouldn't have any problem either... Battlefield 2 runs great, BF 2142 not quite as good, but still no lag (at least not from the video card) - any other game I have runs perfectly fine..

Like I said earlier though - you may want to wait a few days (I think the 30th). That's when the new Radeon 2600xt/2600 pro's come out. Direct x 10 compatible, and these cards should be priced between $175 and $250.. You'd see a HUGE gain over the 7600GS, plus you would also have the added bonus of having true HDMI output including both Audio and Video. If you have a High Definition display, this would be perfect for you..

Thanks for all the advices dude, but I'm not really a PC gamer at all, just play some of it's titles, like 5 or so, so not in a hurry in upgrading to a direct X 10 Graphics card, or getting a Vista capable card until(as I said before) i buy another computer, the only reason I want a new graphics card is to play the games currently have on high or at least on almost high settings, so my final question is: Can the 7600 Gs handle Eaw, DoW, CoH, Bf 2 on max?, or how good can it take those games, at least tell me if it can handle the first 3 games on max WITHOUT lag, thanks

ALSO, one thing I've forgot to mention, is that I live in Vzla, and it's kinda difficult to find such new cards here, not at least for a while so...

Newegg.com then. Ya, the 7600 GS seems like a decent choice for your situation. Its going for $96.99 on newegg. Its gotten 5 eggs after 46 reviews so it seems like a pretty nice card!

But ya, make sure your next mobo has a PCI-E x16 port. If you want to go SLI then get one that has dual PCI-E x16 ports

I know personally, the next pc which I'm getting (Fairly soon ) is going to be SLI capable

By the way, what CPU do you have?

EJMM wrote:

Razorpig wrote:You should have no problems at all... Your specs are better than my own, and I run all my games at 1680x1050 with no problem, so you shouldn't have any problem either... Battlefield 2 runs great, BF 2142 not quite as good, but still no lag (at least not from the video card) - any other game I have runs perfectly fine..

Like I said earlier though - you may want to wait a few days (I think the 30th). That's when the new Radeon 2600xt/2600 pro's come out. Direct x 10 compatible, and these cards should be priced between $175 and $250.. You'd see a HUGE gain over the 7600GS, plus you would also have the added bonus of having true HDMI output including both Audio and Video. If you have a High Definition display, this would be perfect for you..

Thanks for all the advices dude, but I'm not really a PC gamer at all, just play some of it's titles, like 5 or so, so not in a hurry in upgrading to a direct X 10 Graphics card, or getting a Vista capable card until(as I said before) i buy another computer, the only reason I wan't a new graphics card is to play the games currently have on high or at least on almost high settings, so my final question is: Can the 7600 Gs handle Eaw, DoW, CoH, Bf 2 on max?, or how good can it take those games, at least tell me if it can handle the first 3 games on max WITHOUT lag, thanks

Short answer - YES - it should be able to run without lag with your system setup. The long answer is DEPENDING on the resolution you're running them at. If you're running 1280x1024 with everything cranked (Antialiasing, Anisotropic Filtering, and all the other options cranked to the max, you SHOULD be ok - although Battlefield 2 or 2142 will probably chug like a choo choo train..) If you set everything to medium on the Battlefield games with only a few options cranked up to maximum, it should run smooth as silk.. And to be quite honest with you - you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between medium settings and high settings in alot of these games. Far better IMHO to lower the settings to medium to get a better framerate so that what you CAN see is smooth and doesn't stutter...

As I said earlier though, wait a few days - by next week those DX10 cards should be on the market, and quite honestly, if you spend only 20 - 50$ more, you will see a HUGE increase in not only your framerates (less graphical lag), PLUS you'll be able to turn everything up just that much higher. And like I also said earlier - when you DO decide to finally buy a new computer, and sell off this old one, people will be that much more inclined to buy if they know that the video card it comes with isn't completely archaic (i.e. more than 1 year old ) Let's face it - if it was one of your friends who sold you this computer, wouldn't one of the key selling feature be the fact that it can play current games with no problems? Do your research and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Another place you might want to check to tweak your system for running these games is http://www.tweakguides.com/

they offer guides on how to tweak your graphics card for the best performance, and they also offer GAME SPECIFIC guides on how to get the best performance out of each game - check it out. Using their guides in conjunction with your new card (whatever you get) should yield you very nice results.

Its pointless for him to spend the extra money on something he can't use! XD

I can't think of a single AGP card that is capable of DX10. Probably because AGP technology is getting to old for the processing power it needs.

I also recommend Tweakguides as RazorPig had said.

Thanks guys, that's all I needed, when the time comes to sell my pc, then I'll see whats better, but for now, all I want is to play the games that I have and thats all, thanks though for the advices, and as I said before, I live in Vzla, and it's kinda difficult to find such new cards here, not at least for a while so...

swbf_lase wrote:Its pointless for him to spend the extra money on something he can't use! XD

I can't think of a single AGP card that is capable of DX10. Probably because AGP technology is getting to old for the processing power it needs.

I also recommend Tweakguides as RazorPig had said.

You're right. There isn't a DX10 card out for AGP yet. There WILL be one out this week as ATI/AMD is releasing the Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 cards in both PCIe AND AGP.

It really has nothing to do with how old his system is.. It has to do with the fact that MOST manufacturers refuse to make these cards in AGP format because MOST people have started to adopt PCIe. There is no noticeable difference in performance between AGP or PCIe yet. Any difference that you DO see in performance has to do with the motherboard chipset, CPU etc etc.. The fastest AGP card out there currently (until this weekend when the new Radeons debut) is the Radeon x1950 pro - it performs EXACTLY the same as the PCIe version - there is NO difference in specifications other than the type of port they fit into.

For those people who did purchase an AGP system, just before the PCIe surge, it is perfectly logical that they would purchase a new AGP card to extend the life of their system rather than buying a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and videocard... Why spend $1000+ when you can extend the life of your system by spending only $200 or so??

AGP has had its day, but for those of us who are unwilling, or unable to buy a new system in the near future, it's nice to know that there are still SOME manufacturers who are willing to support "legacy" technology. Unfortunately that support comes at a premium price, but that price is still FAR cheaper than buying a new system..

Just wait until the graphic card can't handle your games or the games you want. You save a lot of money through waiting until the prices go down

Razorpig wrote:PCIe (PCI express) is the defacto standard nowadays, and AGP has gone the way of the dodo - it's dead. You may still be able to find AGP cards, but you pay a premium price for support of a dead technology. A 7600 GS AGP card will run you approximately $40 more than the EXACT same PCIe card. If you have a PCIe port for video, you're in business, and should have no problems finding a new video card.

Sorry to bump this thread up, but how exactly do you determine which port your computer has? Do I actually need to peel my PC apart (my dad wouldn't like that obviously ) or is there some kind of program that'll tell me what I have? I have a Radeon X600/X550 card, which by the sound of it is very old by now, compared to the rest of my system specs which are pretty good. Of course, if it's old, then I probably have an AGP port, but is there another way to tell?