Need a new graphic card

A GeForce 4 or a GeForce FX or pretty much any of the Radeons will run good for games. The GeForce FX I heard is overkill on them, but it rules like no other Don't upgrade to Windows 2000, its a crappy OS, stick with either 98 SE or XP. Hope I helped ~ Tyler

 

I'd look into the radeon 9800 or the Geforce FX 5600 they seem to be the two dukes of earl these days.

Any of their "lesser" siblings should be fine too

the radeon 9600 or geforce fx 4200 or something.

www.newegg.com has good prices on all these things typically.

 

yeah, stay away from Win2000 and Win Me (lol)

XP is the way to go probably

also, how much RAM you have?

it's a great factor in gaming believe or not

Upgrade Ram - Upgrade OS - Upgrade Video Card

you'll need some $$$ man!

 

I say upgrade it to 98 SE, personally I think its one of the best OS's to have for gaming, but I run XP and its good too (cept it gives black walls on some games...).

 

Well, you could open your case and look at the actual stick of ram, or there is some other complicated way that I forgot

 

When you boot up your machine, it does the memory check first thing, "xxxxxxx bytes ok". Memory comes in certain size of blocks so you'll have something close to 64 or 128 or 256 or 512 mb's. Where it gets hard is judging what kind of memory you have 'cause you have to get the same kind for the upgrade. You could always take your unit to the local computer store and have 'em install some more though.

GF4 Ti4200 seem to be the best budget card around, cheap ones are about $90. To see your current one, look in Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager - Display Adapter.

Also, go for WinXP as soon as possible. 98 is pretty lousy OS.

 

Considdering you're running slow in games, and you're looking to play CS and stuff, I'd say you should make sure you have enough RAM first, then look into video cards, then OS. Ultimately for CS and the like, Windows XP, 512mb of ram, and a Geforce4 with 128mb ram is best at minimum.

You can get by cheaper on '98 to avoid upgrading that, and just go with 256mb of ram and a geforce3 64mb or equivilent.

 

it seems as if your running an archaic system... so make sure your mobo can handle the 512 of ram your going to put in there. if it wont.... it might not boot... or it will only use what it can "see" i have a tabor 2 motherboard and i can only stick 384mb of ram on it.

just something to check on.

 

Follow this path:
Start > Settings > Control panel > System > Performance(tab)
(It should be on the "General" tab also).

 

currently the radeon 9500 will give you the biggest bang for your buck, but if you're thinking of playing HL2 or Doom3 you should save up more and get a bigger card.

 

I prefer the very stable Windows 2000 OS over any other Microsoft OS. I don't see how you can say that 2000 is "crappy" and then recommend XP. XP is very similiar to 2000, and in fact, XP is built on the same kernel as 2000. Here are some studies that show Windows 2000 significantly out-performs XP in many areas, including gaming.

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q4/os/index.x?pg=1

http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/10/29/011029tcwinxp.xml

 

Unless you are going to be playing the newer games like Splinter Cell that require DirectX 9 compatability, you will be fine with a Ge-Force 4 64mb or 128mb.

 

I would also like to add that no matter how good video card you have, and no matter how much memory you have. If your cpu is ,,old" then it will bottleneck the system and it won´t be able to supply the video card with all the data it needs to use it to it´s fullest potential.

What are your specs exactly?

Current video card?
Current memory?
Current cpu?

It´s really a waste to buy a fancy video card and stick it in a box with inaduqate cpu.

 

Actually, I have a few friends who have gone through the whole Windows 2000 scene...not pretty! They got some of the best stuff out there in their computers and Windows 2000 crashed sooooo many of their games its not even funny. I got one friend who is running 98 SE, he has the best setup out of ALL of us! 98 SE is the most stable OS for gaming. As for XP, I game on XP, yes, but I'd rather not. I would actually like to have 98 to game on, but other than gaming (which I kinda do a lot of, but not too much) I prefer XP due to its amazing features.

But all in all, those are my opinions on those OSs and my run-ins with them, I can't speak for everyone else that uses them.

Also, what someone said about your motherboard, make sure it can handle the amount of RAM you want! To make sure it can, I'd call the company who makes it or look it up on the internet and find out how much of what kind of RAM each slot can hold. I know my mobo can only hold 512 SD RAM in each slot.

I'm no expert on all of this and I'm only talking from what I know and what I have experienced, so don't go taking my advice like I'm god or something, do some research of your own too. ~ Tyler

 

Um...it might be cheaper to get a new computer, lol. If your going to wish to game half-way decent, you'll need a crap load more RAM, new CPU and probably a new Video Card. And if you need all that, your mobo is probably old as hell meaning you will probably need to get a new one.

 

Do you mean 256 MB of RAM?