Need some advice on upgrading..

[chris330 0]

Hi,

Currently I use a 2GHz processor and a Radeon 9600 graphics card. I'll be buying my own new computer soon with a bigger processor but between now and then I'd like to buy a graphics card with a bit more bang for my buck to speed up my games. I play a game called Battleground Europe and my FPS can drop to sometimes as low as 5! Only when looking at large amounts of buildings does this happen so I'm guessing it's the graphics card which is the bottleneck (please do correct me if I'm wrong).

Obviously upgrading the processor is out of the question because I'm buying a new computer but I could do with some advice on what graphics card to buy. I have no knowledge at all of the current market! I don't even know the difference between AGP and PCI! So could someone please give me a good recommendation for a decent graphics card which will give me a few more FPS without breaking the bank. I'd be most thankful.

Cheers,

Chris

[Gisen 0]

If you have a quick look at sites like Tom's Hardware you can see some comparisons of various different video cards for different prices. It's best to go on facts like x card gets Y FPS in Z game with such and such components than people on this forum saying

"I have a ubertek 6421 cpc464 and it si teh pwnzors!"

Having said that; in terms of cards; PCI technology is oldest, then AGP, and PCI-Express (or just PCI-E) is newest.

[chris330 0]

Thanks for the reply! Just one question though, will the five year old computer I use have a PCI-Express slot?

I suspect not but could use some advice on that one.

Thanks again for your reply.

[Gisen 0]

The answer is: it depends. Just look at the motherboard manual.

[Shashman 0]

It's highly doubtful that your 5 year old motherboard will have a PCI-E slot.

If I were you, I'd wait til you have this new PC to get a better graphics card. No matter what graphics card you were to get now, your CPU would cause a bottleneck, i.e the power of the new graphics card would be lost as your CPU wouldn't be able to keep up.

Save the money, endure your current performance woes until you get your new PC, and use the saved money then, to get a better graphics card.

[kronzky 5]

Questions like this is what we have the PC Discussion Thread for. So please continue the discussion there.