Graphics card

[chris7811]

Hello, am considering upgrading my monitor from a crt to a Acer AL1916W 19" TFT Widescreen.

I currently have onboard graphics and will need to upgrade to a card that will support 1440x900 pixels.

I am interested in buying the Sapphire Radeon 9550 256MB DDR graphics card.

Will this card run the required resolution?

Also I belive that this card can be overclocked, as I read this on a review page:

"This card is essentially a clocked-down and locked version of the 9600 PRO. Its GPU is locked at 250MHz. By flashing the BIOS you can remove this lock and turn it into a 9600 PRO which runs at 400Mhz"

Is the statement true?

Thank you,
Chris Adams

 

[PZEROFGH]

You can OC any video card. If it isnt for gaming then that video card will be suitable for you, but if it is then it sucks . I would recommend the 6600GT for the lowest, and 6800GS mid range and 7800GT high range.

 

[reggie_da_man]

If it isint for gaming then don't overclock/flash the bios and risk ruining the card. If it is for gaming I wouldn't recommed that card. Get a 6600GT or higher. 6600GT is roughly $150USD.

 

[Kitire]

120$ on Newegg =D.

 

[reggie_da_man]

All the better. Thx.

 

[chris7811]

This 6600GT Card, is it made by Sapphire? I typed it into Froogle and came up with many different types!

Are you talking about the 128mb or the 256mb?

I'm not really that interested in games, want it mainly for DVD's and watching TV.

But I may want to play the SIMS and some racing games eventually.

Cheers for your help,

Chris Adams

 

[Apokalipse]

no, Sapphire makes ATI cards. the 6600 GT is an Nvidia card

and it will run at resolutions up to 2048x1536 depending on your monitor

 

[chris7811]

Can I just add, I have an AMD Sempron 3000+ processor, I have read elsewhere on this forum that running a higher spec graphics card with this would not show the benefits and 'bottle neck'.

Is this true?

Thank you,
Chris Adams

 

[Apokalipse]

no, that is not true.
you will see a significant performance increase in games, depending on the card. the CPU will only bottleneck the video card when it is under really high load, but even when it does, a faster video card will still give you better performance