looking for a decent PCI card to play SL

i have a dell dimension 2400 so there is no agp or pci express slot. im stuck with pci, but there must be something decent out there? i'm not sure what to get, i've never bought a graphics card before.

actually i play SL with the pre-installed intel graphics card, and it does suck pretty badly, but it plays the game. so i figure any upgrade to this has to be a giant improvement. (i hope)

thanks for any reccomendations

You too, huh? I am looking for one too, once I have the money. Same deal, all the way, except I'm on an HP. I want recommendations for optimum performance, not just bare minimum. Dunno if you are too, but hope you don't mind my camping on this thread to hear the replies.

Newegg shows 48 PCI video cards listed here.

Knock yourselves out.

P2

no, i don't mind. camp away

yeah i'm looking for the best possible card too, because i cannot buy *another* computer. i have 4 already (my current dell, two laptops and an imac. they're all old).
it's not so much the money as like..what the hell do i do with all of them? i've been on newegg.com and checked many of the pci cards there, but i'm just so unknowledgeable when it comes to them that i'm not sure which to get. i guess obviously 256mb is better to get than 128mb, but will it work with my system? gah, i'm confused

help?

*crickets*

hehe, posted before i saw this.

thx phoenix


about the manufacturers, what are the differences between all of them? is any one much 'better' than another?

That's the part I want to know, as since the update already some supported cards seem to work better than others, so I'd like somebody who actually knows hardware somewhat to give advice. lol

Sadly most of those are either definatly or possibly not compatable with SL. The 9200 ATI's are developments from 8500's tho which should be ok as the 8500 is compatable.

I recently helped a friend who was in this dilemma - in the end she went for a Geforce 6600 PCI with 128mb of RAM (this was to go in a Dell Dimension 3100/E310). Pretty sure she ordered from newegg and it was something like 30 of your US dollars - not much at all really. She hasn't been around to install it lately however I'm confident it'll actually let her run SL with some degree of useability (as opposed to the non-compatible Intel 900 series integrated graphics).

I would avoid the ATI-based cards, as it's generally agreed that NVidia cards tend to play nicer with SL than ATI -- something about the way ATI supports OpenGL.

The only manufacturer listed under the NVidia-based cards that I have actually heard negative things about is Chaintech.

There are a couple of EGA GEForce 5xxx series cards, both of which have 128 MB of ram, listed here.

There are also a couple by XFX, both of which are GEForce 5200's, one with 128 MB and one with 256 MB, here, but it looks like those are presently out of stock.

These cards are, of course, nowhere near state-of-the-art by any means, but for the very reasonable prices on some of them, they'll beat that Intel Extreme Graphics onboard circuitry to hell and back.

P2

I had a look on Newegg too. There aren't any PCI cards with reasonably modern chipset available any more. The best of the bad lot was an NVidia FX5700 card. Second best would be the Radeon 9250 cards.

I don't think any of the later generations of video cards were ever made in PCI versions. I've never heard of a PCI NVidia 6xxx, or an ATI 9600 or 9800.

SL works just fine under ATI and in fact currently there are LESS issues with ATI and SL than Nvidia. Plus ATI's IQ is better generally.

Just to add my tuppence here again...

I finally talked my friend through installing her new PCI graphics card last night, it took us a while (the easy part was talking her through actually installing the hardware). It was an Nvidia Geforce 6200 PCI card, 128mb of RAM - and only 30 USD plus delivery from newegg!
The harder part was disabling the integrated card - Dell Dimension 3100s (or E310s) seemingly do not have a disable setting for the integrated Intel card - you can either set the Primary Display in the BIOS to Auto or On-board.. no disable option. We left it set to Auto and continued with the installation.

After much messing around removing Intel drivers in safe mode to get the system to actually boot up normally, I discovered the only way to actually disable the card (for Windows anyway) is in the Device Manager.

Second Life appeared to be very sluggish with it's framerate at first.. even after giving it 10 minutes the framerate had not improved. I suspected the same problem I get with my system (I run a dual core setup with a 7800 GTX card)... just restart the SL client and it usually fixes permanently choppy framerates.

We tried that and voila! She can play SL again without too much choppyness caused by the graphics card. A little tinkering with the Graphics settings was required but it doesn't run too badly for a PCI card, especially considering how cheap it was!

I hope this gives a little bit of hope to those who are limited to upgrading to a PCI card due to poor upgradeability foresight by the big manufacturers *cough Dell*.

I also discovered that Microsoft Remote Assistance runs pretty well, even from London to NC

*feels intimidated*

thx for the info everyone, but i'm still feeling lost on what to upgrade to. NVidia FX5700, Radeon 9250, Nvidia Geforce 6200...
what are the differences between them all? which is newer/better? will a 256mb card make a substantial difference over a 128mb card? and more than anything, the only thing that matters..which will play with SL the best?


ty for posting that info pietro it is hopeful

(Damn Dell. had i known then...bloody...wouldn't have....grumblemutter...;////)

Personally this argument between ATI and NVIDIA is getting a little tiresome as at the moment both cards have their own merits and strengths.

Also they both can cope with sl with no problems as long as the drivers are kept up to date!

The radeon 9200 is just barely acceptable for SL, IMHO. It's actually a less capable card than the 8500.

If you can get an nVidia 5700 or 6600 PCI, go for it. It'll be MUCH faster than the Radeon 92xx. I don't know about the 5200 or 6200, they're nVidia's low end model and designed to compete with the 9200 rather than the 9600 or 9800.

The probable order, from slowest to fastest, would be:

9200/9250 5200 6200 5500 5600 5700 6600.

I've used these cards for SL:

9200 5600 6600 7600.

The 6600 is *significantly* better than the 5600, and the 7600 is moderately better than the 6600. And the 9200 is (as noted) marginal.

Care to elaborate on which is better for what? Always like to hear from somebody who's willing to speak for both sides of the fence as far as tech goes.

I am buying a completely new computer and all my specs are based on wether it will play WoW and SL better than I can now.

I have no qualms on the price of the computer, but I absolutely do not want a desktop because I have no space.

ATI Raedon X1600
and
nVidia Geforce go 7900 Gs

are the types of cards in the highest end laptops.
Which plays SL better?

question 2: Will ATI Raedon X1400 be better or worse?
or Will nVidia Geforce go 7800 be better or worse?
or will nvidia geforce go 7600 be better or worse?

Thank you.

Ever heard of Shuttle cases? Google it... flexibility of a desktop in a little teeny tiny space.

Ok what is wrong with chaintech i use one and have no problems at all?????

X1600 I'm not sure about ( need to research it myself as up to know I've been sticking to the X800 and X850 which are becoming short in supply ) howeve the 7900's are good choices.

I'm certain the ATI cards are X1300, X1400, X1600, X1800 and X1900 in order from worse to best.

As for cases have a look at the Lian Li V600. It's a tight squeeze but is little bigger than a Mini-ATX case such as a shuttle but takes conventional ATX form factor motherboards.

Sorry I'm so stupid, but ya lost me. It's still a tower with a serparate monitor right? Can't have that. All-in-one or a laptop is mandatory. I'll try a search for it anyway. But I don't want to build a computer, I would like to order a customized laptop.

I'm in the same fix with my eMachines T5010 desktop. Looking for a good PCI card that will work.

Also, curiously, my PC has a place for a PCI-E slot to go, its marked on the circuit board as PCI-E, hard to explain sorta, I have another PCI slot where you can slide a card in, but where the PCI-E is, there's no thingie to slide a PCI-E card into, just a place marked where it could go. Hope I'm not confusing anyone.

Any advise would really be appreciated

porcelain, no offence but make yr own damn thread!

man. i hate that when someone just barges in to post their own problem in someone else's thread when it's not even related really.

-huff-

Sorry, I thought those were PCI cards. Those cards are what is in all the popular systems. In forums I've been in in the past they hate it, absolutely hate it, if you make new threads when there is a similar one.

I didn't mean to barge in, I also needed help with graphics cards and tried to combine. I won't do it again if thats how SL forums works.

In every other forum I'd have been told "go to the other graphicscard thread that was started you troll!"

Sorry, I'll leave now. I'll delete my posts.

no no no, don't do that. it's ok

it's just i think the cards you mentioned are pci-e or agp cards? when this thread was specifically about pci cards (that are heading towards extinction) and kinda need a focused thread

i'm not sure about other forums, but i think it always helps people who are searching boards to have threads devoted to a specific topic so they don't *have* to troll so much within threads to find a specific issue or problem.