1 reply to this topic

[Pacer]

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

[Max Deaton]

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...