Shopping for Video Card

I am shopping for a new video card for my desktop that was custom built for me years back. I run mxo on it and it could use a boost.

My motherboard is an ASUS VIA KT400A. My current video card is a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. I have 768 MB RAM but I know it is expandable to 1 GB. I run XP Pro.

Where should I start looking for a video card that is compatable with this motherboard? How do I know what is compatible with my motherboard? What is a good vid card and spec that I ought to look for? I really want MxO to run like a dream.

You really need a new computer as that Motherboard is AGP only (nearly all new Video cards are PCIe and the technology you are buying is already 7 years old), and you really need more than 1GB ram at a minimum.

But in the interests of helping you with what you have, you will need to buy an AGP 8x compatible Video card.

The ATI 100-435065 Radeon 9600 Pro is probably the best card you could get and it will cost you around US$190.

What is your CPU? Even with extra RAM and a new CPU you won't be able to run most new games on high-quality.That card just can't manage it.

To run MxO like a dream you will need at least:

Intel Core 2 duo

1.5 GB RAM

an nVidia 7950GX2 or better (SLI setup or multi GPU card) with 512MB VRAM

phi wrote:

You really need a new computer as that Motherboard is AGP only (nearly all new Video cards are PCIe and the technology you are buying is already 7 years old), and you really need more than 1GB ram at a minimum.

But in the interests of helping you with what you have, you will need to buy an AGP 8x compatible Video card.

The ATI 100-435065 Radeon 9600 Pro is probably the best card you could get and it will cost you around US$190.

What is your CPU? Even with extra RAM and a new CPU you won't be able to run most new games on high-quality.That card just can't manage it.

To run MxO like a dream you will need at least:

Intel Core 2 duo

1.5 GB RAM

an nVidia 7950GX2 or better (SLI setup or multi GPU card) with 512MB VRAM

Hmm. I am not very knowledgable with this side of computers, so bear with me. And I appreciate your help.

A new computer is not in the cards for me for a few years, so I am going to have to try and get the best I can for this system.

My processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+. If high detail is not an option, I can live with that. But as of now, the lag is tremendous and I would like to PvE seamlessly with the box spawns and missions.

Well to get things running smoothly I suggest:

• buy an ATI 100-435065 Radeon 9600 Pro
• buy 1 GB of RAM
• install them.

Also what speed is your internet connection?

Get these things sorted out then we can tweak your config settings to give you the best performance for your system.

This is 2 of my small systems spliced together. I've had real good MxO experiences with a very very similar rig, although I don't play with super useropts. This will run MxO fine.

(All prices from Newegg)
Motherboad: Asus P5B-VM SE : $74.95
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 4600: $119.99
RAM: 1GB : OCZ Value Series DDR2 667 : $18.99
Video Card: EVGA NVIDIA 8600GT : $74.99

Grand Total: $288.92

Does this meet the phi's approval XD

LtCmdr_Tsusai wrote:

This is 2 of my small systems spliced together. I've had real good MxO experiences with a very very similar rig, although I don't play with super useropts. This will run MxO fine.

(All prices from Newegg)
Motherboad: Asus P5B-VM SE : $74.95
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 4600: $119.99
RAM: 1GB : OCZ Value Series DDR2 667 : $18.99
Video Card: EVGA NVIDIA 8600GT : $74.99

Grand Total: $288.92

Does this meet the phi's approval XD

No problems with that system as a whole... but the video card is no help in this case, because the EVGA NVIDIA 8600GT is a PCIe card.