which graphics card ??

[fox]

have posted this on pc forum but nobody bothered to reply so thought i would ask here as most people seem to be knowledgeable in these kind of things :)


i just bought the sims 2 thinking it would be ok with my graphics card as it has 64mb memory but its not, the graphics look really bad and it runs slowly. i read on the box that it needs a TnL card which mine isnt. it says on the box it supports geforce2 and above but i didnt know which one to go for as i've never really bothered with graphic card upgrades as the only other game i've ever played on pc is deus ex and the first sims.

i spoke to place i bought it from who said i need to buy an agp card whatever that means and they've recommended geforce4 or nvidia fx 3200 - this means nothing to me...


basically i need an agp card with 64mb graphics which supports TnL (minimum for game is 32 but i want 64mb just in case) - nothing really expensive though, £50 at the most.

if someone could advise me which one to buy i would be VERY grateful....



these are the cards that the sims 2 support so would have to be one of these

ATI RadeonTM series (7000 or better)
Radeon 7000/VE series (non-T&L; requires 2.0 GHz processor)
7200, 7500
8500, All-In-Wonder 8500
9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
X300, X600, X800


Nvidia® QuadroTM series
Quadro, Quadro2, Quadro4


Nvidia® Geforce series (GeForce2 and better)
GeForce2
GeForce3, 3 Ti
GeForce4, 4Ti, MX 420, 440
GeForce FX 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950
GeForce 6600, 6800

[Mephistophan]

Hey Twatrash!

Thought I could be of some help with your problem.
I work in a certain nationwide-chain store which specialised in Computer and console software and games and although not its speciality, does happen to sell a few graphics cards for the PC. Seeing your problem, I reckon I could suggest a solution to your problem.

First of all T&L refers 'Texture & Lighting' which alot of new modern graphics cards can do. Basically it offloads some of the processor work which the graphics card does itself [if am correct].

This store also sells a very small range of graphics cards [well one type!] and seeing as they don't really sell much [because we don't even ut it out on the shop floor!] they tend to be very heavily reduced in price. A fellow work mate of mine purchased the same graphics card a few weeks ago and has told me that it is absolutely amazing in term of capability and value for money. If anyone knows anything about games, they'd know that a graphics card costing less then £70 and can run Doom III on insane graphics would say that this GPU is amazing.

I've just looked into it and seeing as your computer can allready run the game, I'm guessing this graphics card should be compatible with you motherboard too, but please make sure you double check this prior to making any commitment. Another point to make is that although the cost of the GPU is above that which you are prepared to spend at the moment, I'm sure that you will see that a small increase in your budget will see a huge differece in the quality of the product you recieve.

The graphics card has an onboard memory of 128Mb, which although more than you want at the moment, also speaks volumes as you won't have to upgrade for a very long time.

I'll put some links at the end of this page to help you look into this if you are interested. I must stress that you do look into these before buying the said graphics card for compatibility. If you do wish to purchase this graphics card, just nip down to your local Game store and if they don;t have it, you can either be very pushy and request they make a store transfer [and take my word, they can do it] or just purchase from this website, there return policy on the software they sell from the website is that it can be returnd to any store within 10-days with a reciept, but I'm not sure how a graphics card would fit into this so do look it up.

I hope this posting is helpful to you as it is my first. In fact, I registered to the site just to make this posting!


http://shop.game.net/ViewProduct.aspx?cat=10404&mid=321219
http://shop.game.net/ViewProduct.aspx?cat=11204&mid=322388

[fox]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your help. Was good of you to register just to help me, thanks a lot.


Had a look about on the site and found this http://shop.game.net/ViewProduct.aspx?cat=11204&mid=275830 which is exactly what I want and it's only £30 - it's out of stock though. Sure I'll be able to find it on a different website though.

Reason I don't want to spend that much is because I don't usually play games on PC as I have a ps2, xbox and gamecube already and so far have spent £40 on the game and £50 on a RAM upgrade so another £50 is the most I would spend as at the end of the day I wouldn't be getting these upgrades if it wasn't for this bloody game !

Thanks a lot for your help. If only your colleagues at Game were all like you :-)

[manav]

Nice to see that people are spending much more time on their posts here.