ATI Graphics Card for Guild Wars use.

[Littlekurt39]

Hello i have a.

Dell Dimension 2400
Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz
256 MB RAM
40 GB hard drive with 25+ GB available
Intel intergrated 82845G video graphics
2 open PCI slots
1 open RAM slot

This Computer is mainly used as a homework/family computer, but i would like to play Guild Wars on it. So i need to upgrade my video card because mine will not play it.


On the guild wars site it says its MINIMUM graphics card is

"ATI™ Radeon® 8500 or NVIDIA® GeForce 3 or 4 MX Series Video Card with 32MB of VRAM"


On the Guild wars site it says its RECOMMENDED graphics card is

"ATI® Radeon® 9000 or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 4 Ti Series graphics card with 64MB of VRAM"

My questions are...


I notice thare are other brands of Radeon chip graphics cards...as in others besides ATI...Will those work with guild wars as long as the Radeon number (i.e 9250) is sufficient?

Which graphics card would work well with my computer? Any recommendations...?

Also what are some good online computer websites besides CompUSA?

THanks
Littlekurt

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Well, the way it works is there are multiple vendors that make graphics cards... ATI & NVIDIA make the chipsets (they make their own cards too), and the vendors use the chipsets on their cards, so yes, ' match the numbers as you said'... the actual vendor of the card doesn't really matter.

assuming that you are running Win XP, I would recommend also upgrading your RAM to at LEAST 512MB total...

What is your budget for this?
Does your computer have an AGP or PCI Express x16 slot, or just PCI slots?
Where are you located? If in the US, I would recommend NEWEGG.

 

[Littlekurt39]

I would like to possibly add another stick of 256 MB RAM. I currently have 256MB DDR SDRAM at 333mhz

I know my motherboard does not have AGP slots. I am assumming that i have standard PCI slots, but how can i check to make sure it is PCI and not PCIE slots?

I live in the US and i would like to keep my expenses in the $75-100~ish range...including a stick of Ram and a video Card, if possible.

In the end, i would like to have a computer that runs Guildwars on normal settings with a RAM upgrade

Also, i am not limited to only ATI Readeon. A NVidia Geforce type video card would work as well.

Thanks
Littlekurt

 

[aliasaid]

you have an old computer so i'm pretty sure you don't have pci-express..

you can get cpu-z to make sure.. google it..

as for pci video cards.. you don't have much variety...

but one of these will do for now.. (i'm surprised guild wars has such low requirements...)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102522

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130255

and definitely add at least another 256mb stick...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146220

 

[Ridlyn]

Get atleast 512mb of ram in that machine for gw, and something like the fx 5200, but thats the mininum i would use for gfx. But if you get a gb of ram with the fx 5200 and you'll be able to almost max it out on 800 by 600

 

[battlewarden]

I heard "Galaxy" graphic cards are also decent and stable...you might think about buying those.