I'm a owner of a HP Pavillon a1250n box, it comes with a ATI Radeo Xpress 200 card. I want to
upgrade….but unsure of what would be the best fit. For reference sake I'm looking to play games like
Half-Life 2. I'm not trying to break the bank but I also don't want to cheap out. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks
I have a ATI Radeon 9550 in my machine and it runs CS source and Half-Life 2 Death match, with the resolution all the way up, perfectly…The reason this chip runs them so nicely is because I also have a 64-bit AMD Athlon 3700+, and ATI are more compatable with AMD processors…When I comes to games with more special effects like DOOM 3, I have to turn the resolution way down, turn the special effects down, and turn off the bump map, and it's pretty much not even DOOM after I do that…If you're planning on supporting a game like DOOM, you better have a little bit of extra money…On the other hand Half-Life 2 is a little cheaper to support than DOOM, you could probably support it, and get the full effect of the game, if you spent about 200 or so dollars on a nice graphics card, but this still depends on your CPU…If you have a HP more than likely you have a Pentium, probably a Pentium IV, if it is a 4.0 then you would have no problem running Half-Life 2 with a $70-100 graphics card, but if you have a 3.0 you might have to spend a little bit more…I would suggest getting something with a NVIDIA chipset…What slot is that graphics card you already have in, AGP or PCI…Sorry I couldn't be a little more specific but I don't really know what other hardware you have…But if you do get something I would try and make sure it is Open GL 2.0…