Graphics card Advice

[Garcian Smith]

Mr Puggsly said:
The other day I actually bought a video card for my computer. I'm also running a Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM.

I bought the BFG 9800 GT. It runs about $130. I didn't want to spend too much, just looking to do some PC gaming.

So far I tested CoD4, Unreal Tournament 3, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Lost Planet, Dirt, Bioshock, and Zeno Clash. All of them are playable on high settings, but some I put on medium settings. Perhaps you can play newer games if you buy a $200+ card.

You should take it back, because you got ripped off.

Click on this link. It's a comparison of high-end graphics cards using a synthetic benchmark. I've highlighted the card that you bought. Now look upward several inches until you see, "Radeon HD 4850." You'll see that the 4850 has about a 33% performance increase over your 9800 GT. Well, it's also only $100. And furthermore, you overpaid for a 9800 GT in the first place.

Seriously though, if you're running a P4 with 1 GB RAM, you'll be bottlenecked by your CPU and RAM long before your video card. (Not to mention something like your hard drive, which - even if you got a WD Raptor or something back in 2005 - will be slow as molasses compared to a modern $50ish HDD.) If you have the money, you really should build a new system.