Please Help!!! Urgently!

[KnowNothing]

Ok here goes, I like to play mildly hardcore games, ie. COD, Flight Simulator, e.t.c. But I play it on a 5 year old machine, I know its a bad idea and frankly a bit stupid but I cant help it...I have some money that I recently recieved and I would like to upgrade this pc...The pc I am currently using is a Gateway 866 a.k.a POS...The tech specs are here. The video card I want to get is called the ATI 9200, most if not all of you might burn me with rants about how it sucks but thats the one I would like to get, Ive seen reviews of it and I hear of people playing UT 2k4, and Doom 3 and stuff, on mildly good graphics...Anyway, Im not going to play those types of games on here, just games like COD and FS...I play those on poor quality on my Dell 2400 with a 64mb integrated GC...I found out that Pricewatch has VERY cheap merchendise and found alot of very cheap 9200's...The point of this thread is to ask if the 9200 is compatible with my system...And also, which card should I get off of pricewatch because there are many different ones. To answer the second question, please go to pricewatch.com and search for "RADEON 9200 pci 128MB"

EDIT: Instead of helping me pick out from all of those on Pricewatch, just help me pick one of the first and second cards on that list. I didnt look at the price of the others that well .

Thanks alot in advance and please help me,
Knownothing

 

[Trotter]

The link to your specs won't work for me.

Check to see if your mobo has an AGP slot.

 

[KnowNothing]

No, my MOBO does not have an AGP slot, it has what looks like 4 pci slots, they are white, and AGP slots to my knowledge are black...But the card is pci...

 

[Mr. Switch]

since your computer has no AGP slot, you must purchase a PCI card. I don't know if the Radeon 9200 ships in PCI, but its worth the look. if the 9200 doesn't ship in PCI than a GeForce FX 5200 PCI is your best bet.

Before you slap this "new" video card, you need to know a few things.

many gateway mobo's integrated video is PCI. If not, than you will need to go into your bios and disable AGP and enable PCI video. i have worked on a computer in which it had PCI onboard video, and in order to install a new AGP card, i had to go into the bios and disable PCI video. if you don't disable PCI, or AGP (whatever your old card bus is) than your new card won't work.

un-install your old video drivers.

Upgrade your RAM. buy another stick of 128 or 256 MB of SDRAM. your are probably running under PC133 or PC100. if you do this, your fps in COD and FS will incrase dramaticly.

EDIT: if you are going to purchase this new hardware, you MUST see if your power supply meedt the demands of the video card. gateway is noctorius for underwhelming PSU's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[KnowNothing]

Ok, just to clarify a few things, yes the 9200 is pci...This pc was given to me by a friend, and has been slightly upgraded, I am running windows XP on 384mb of ram...The ram speeds are different, one is pc100, and the other pc133...one is 256mb and another 128..However I might buy matching ram with more memory...And according to the support site and my current knowledge the pc is completely PCI...I just want to know if any of the two cards that I am aiming for are compatible with my system.

Current Config:
Processor
Intel Pentium III, 867 MHz
133MHz external bus

BIOS
Intel Corp. WL81020A.15A.0005.P04.0008221347 08/22/2000

Memory
Upgrade
383MB physical
90% free resources
2 memory slots, 0 free (256+127)

Video
Upgrade
Graphics Adapter: Intel(R) 82810E Graphics Controller
Screen Area/Colors: 800x600 pixels, 16 million colors
Monitor: Dell 311154

Drives
Upgrade
C:\ (NTFS) 38154MB total, 16451MB free
D:\ CD-ROM/CD-RW or DVD Drive
E:\ CD-ROM/CD-RW or DVD Drive

Network and Modem
Upgrade
(net) SMC SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI (SMC1211 Series)
(net) Broadcom Broadcom 4211 iLine10 Network Adapter
(net) Microsoft Direct Parallel
(modem) BCM BCM V.90 56K Modem

Operating System
Upgrade
Windows XP SP2 (Windows XP 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2)
Original setup date: 9/6/2003
DirectX Version: 5.03.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
SWAP FILE DISABLED
File cache managed by Windows

Browser
MSIE 6.0; 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322
Proxy: No proxy set
HTTP level: direct 1.1, proxy 1.0
Scripting version: 5.6.0.8820

EDIT: I have a 90-Watt Power Supply Revision 2 [Part #6500510]

 

[KnowNothing]

I'm going to upgrade to 512mb of ram since thats the max this MOBO can handle...According to Intel...

 

[KnowNothing]

Please anyone, help me out...Im so lost on this...

 

[McKlaxxhammer]

OMG, i would suggest starting with the mobo (and CPU) then upgarding the g-card and ram. Itll cost you too much for such a little increase in proformance. and pci is a thing of the past. noone should use it anymore. you probably can't even use DDR ram without upgrading

 

[KnowNothing]

This is a temp cpu that I am upgrading, Im not gonna go all the way with this thing, its just gonna cost me 70 bux, I make that in a month with my allowance so that price is fine for me, I just need to know if the vid card is compatible...

 

[McKlaxxhammer]

well, i just found out that it is available in agp and pci, so you are in luck.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/radeon9200/index.html