~Need Video Card Help~

Ok since I am rippleless and really would like to see for myself how nice it is with having nice waterfront land, I'm going to get a new video card. I am asking you wonderful technical people what will be the best for me. Something that won't be obsolete in a week and hopefully compatible with SL for a long time. Here are my specs, not sure what all I need to post but here is what I have:

HP 7935 running XP
AMD Athalon Processor
1.30 GHz
496mb Ram
Radeon 9200 Vid

If I need to list anything else please let me know. I don't know what new vid cards run, I bought mine less than a year ago for around $100, I'm looking to stay under the $150 range.

Thanks for any help!

You bought a 9200 for 100$? please beat the dealer...
I recommend buying a 6800LE or a 6600Pro/GT FOR AGP, newer Cards are all PCI-Express, this wont work on your Mainboard.

Christian

Visit newegg.com for cheaper prices then you would buy in any retail outlet, and while you're at it toss in another 512mb or 1 Gb of RAM at least. SL is more dependant on your CPU & RAM then it is on the graphics card, but its still a good idea to upgrade your video.

Not 100% sure if it's compatible with your system, but I just bought an NVIDIA BFG GeForce 6600 GT/OC AGP 4x/8x card for my PC. For me, it was the price break point between performance & buying a new motherboard.

System Requirements:

Intel Pentium III, AMD Duron or Athlon class processor or higher
128MB of RAM
CD/DVD Drive
AGP 2.0 Slot
35MB Hard Disk (50 recommended)
98/ME/2k/XP
350 Watt Power Supply minimum
Available Hard Disk Drive Power Dongle (floppy is insufficient)

That will set you back just shy of $200 at newegg.com The next best agp card was $400, and I believe it will probably be the last good AGP card made that will work in my system.

Before I had an older Nvidia card, and it was doing pretty good, but when 1.8 rolled around I couldn't enable any of the new features. With the new card I've got everything cranked but local lighting (which lags to death in a crowded sim) and shadows which also caused an obvious hit in performance.

It's got a dual DVI connector + TV out on the back and comes with adapters for dual VGA, S-Video, Composite, and Normal RCA. The dual monitor feature is *very* addictive.

Do you happen to have a link for that please. Can't find it on new egg...

Here you go

There are other companies that use the 6600 NVidia card, but I've been pretty happy with the stuff I've gotten from BFG. Also ATI may have something better/cheaper, but I've had a couple ATI cards and didn't have much luck with them. Also, apparently SL doesn't have a lot of luck either.

This card works out good if A. Your system supports it and B. You don't want to upgrade your pc just yet. If it's time to get a new PC, then go with a PCI-E motherboard and get a PCI-E video card

That looks rather expensive for a 6600GT, which currently should cost no more than US$150. Is there something premium about this model which makes it cost more?

Just spot checking the links on that page, here's the obvious differences I see (varies from model to model):

1. It's OEM - not refurb
   
2. Has dual DVI, instead of VGA/DVI (but it comes w/2 VGA adapters)
   
3. It's over clocked out of the box
   
4. It's BFG so it's a little more pricey, but it's got a lifetime warranty.
   

YMMV, but I've always been happy with the BFG cards I've bought & their customer service. Likewise, if you don't like all the bells & whistles, definately go with a cheaper card.

Thanx for the info, I have no previous experience with that brand so that's good to hear.

Ok here is the bad news. That HP 7935 with the AMD 1.3 isn't going to see a great deal of improvement with a 6600GT with Secondlife. It would be an ideal card if you were planning on upgrading in the near future since you could move the card into the new machine (as long as the new one had an AGP slot) SL is very processor dependant and the 1.3 is going to be a major bottleneck as far as performance goes. The motherboard is limited to 4x AGP as well so the card is going to be hobbeled even more. The really bad part is a 6600GT will require a new power supply because that one in that came with the HP 7935 isn't big enough to handle the card. You need at least a 300 watt (true rating, not the flim-flam ratings most cheap PS makers use) and that's going to add and additional $30 -$80.

Like I said, its a great card but on your machine it isn't going to all that much better than what you have now except you will be able to turn on water ripple at maytbe 3fps or less. You would be better off buying or begging a used Nvidia 5500 or 5700 spending less than $50 on it if you have no intention of upgrading in the next couple of years. You will see the water ripple for a lot less money.

Perfect Jumpda, I couldn't agree more.

I have to disagree about SL being more of a CPU hog rather than a graphics card hog, and here's the reason why, I'm on a 5 megabit cable connection, with a AMD 1.8 3000+ processor, with 768 megs of DDR ram, and a 8x geforce FX5200 card, at furnation prime with a alot of people in the area I get 10fps, a person popped in, told me she was getting 20fps with graphics settings higher than mine with farclip disabled and anisotropic filtering on among other things, smaller texture cache, basically with alot of setting on that I don't have she has a 1.2 AMD with only 512 megs of ram, NOW here's where it gets weird, she's using a nvidia quadro2 64 meg agp card. That card is where all the performance is, and it's only $20 now, there's something about it's ability to run openGL really well that's giving here the performance for something I can't even get paying 3 times as much. So, I think we need to take a look at the cards we have and see if it has openGL capabilities better than that old card, and what other special features that card has, cause it obviously has something our cards lack, I'm gonna do more research into this as well before upgrading my card.

My server's Geforce 3 Ti 200 with 64 megs of ram is better than a FX5200, when you reach anything higher than a 6600GT you pretty much see no increase in FPS. I went from a 6800, to a 6800GT and now have a 7800GTX and have seen NO differnces in my FPS. My friends Radeon 9200 64mb gets about the same FPS as my FX5600 go 128mb in my desknote. But you also have to factor in other things, that Radeon 9200 cant run the newest OpenGL and has to have less quality thus making it faster (I know this because of comparing my Geforce 3 vs FX5600go, the Geforce is a little faster but looks horriable compared to the FX). So it depends, when you reach a 6600GT or higher it is more CPU based, any lower and its more video card but CPU still is a factor.