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My apologies if this topic has been previously covered. The thing is, tech stuff moves so fast it is hard to know what is available from one month to the next

Okay, this weekend I'll hopefully be going out to replace my video card. I'd like to get a new system but that is not currently an option so instead I'm looking to somewhat extend the life of my present machine.

I have a 4 year old Dell P3 with a 1 G processor. I bought a second hard drive and I have 300 something of RAM. My video card is the original that came with my computer (some variety of NVidea). Sorry if I'm a bit vague, I've been trying without success to locate my exact system specs.

What I want to do is purchase a decent video card that will improve performance over what it is now. However, I don't want to spend a huge amount of cash (under $100 Cdn, preferably under $60 Cdn). One, I don't see much point, since I want to replace my system sometime. Two, I don't want to buy anything that will cause my motherboard/processor to self-combust

So, my question is, what do people recommend?

Radeon 9550.

[QUOTE=Rookierookie]Radeon 9550.[/QUOTE]

Thanks.. but the Radeon 9550 sells for about $200 Cdn. That is four times more than I ideally want to spend.

As I said, all I'm basically looking for is a card that will be an improvement on my four-year-old NVidea. I'm figuring I should be able to get something low key, but significantly better than what I presently have, for under $100 Cdn.

Cheap card

I'm enjoying a Nvidia 5500 right now, and it can play with some of the more demanding game without problem... Doom 3 comes to mind, though your cpu may not handle that...

Incidentally, you'll want to open the box to see if you have a AGP slot... You don't want to buy a card with an AGP interface, and open the box to find a lonely column of only PCI slots... My brother blew $80 this way. Of, and yes, I still tease him about it

You may even end up getting a card than can move onto your next pc. When I bought my new p4 (a year ago) I did it in pieces, holding onto some of my older componants from the previous pc 'til funds were available... This isn't an option if you want to keep the old one for networking or something, but you might give it some thought.

The bad news is that you may not see much improvement with any change... The bottleneck right now is your cpu...

Good Luck!

@ Stramoski,
cheers! I appreciate all of that info I'm actually seriously considering an Nvidea GE Force FX 5200 right now.
A friend got one for a system similar to mine, and apparently she noticed a significant difference...

Thanks.. but the Radeon 9550 sells for about $200 Cdn. That is four times more than I ideally want to spend.

As I said, all I'm basically looking for is a card that will be an improvement on my four-year-old NVidea. I'm figuring I should be able to get something low key, but significantly better than what I presently have, for under $100 Cdn.

The cheapest Radeon 9550 are at about $57 USD.

I'm looking for a new graphic card too!

I'm gonna get rid of my Radeon 9200 and I'm looking for something better for a reasonable price. I could get a second-hand GF T4200 for a good price, what do you think about that? What other graphic cards are from the same quality/price range?

Oh, I almost forgot:
Asus A7V8-X motherboard
AMD 2,2GHz cpu
512 MB RAM

And a fantastic, unbeatable integrated soundcard