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General discussion

need help picking a video card??

by justchillin Nov 17, 2004 6:20AM PST

i'm going to be building a system soon and am trying to figure about how much it will cost me for all the components i will need...the only thing i'm not sure of is the video card...my current computer is about 5 years old and is a generic 32MB card that came with my dell...

i'm not a gamer so i don't need top of the line but i would like tv-out, vga and dvi...

looking on new egg i came across this one:

POWERCOLOR ATI RADEON 9250 Video Card, 256MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "R92U-LD3" -RETAIL
$85.00

seems to have what i need but i've never heard of powercolor...

any suggestions/comments???

thanks

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Re: need help picking a video card??
by Steven Haninger Nov 17, 2004 6:56AM PST

You probably don't need 256 megs of memory but ATI is a respected manufacturer which makes it's own boards as well as partnering with others. This board may be fine but what might be at issue is drivers. These 3rd party vendors might have features that limit your use of ATI drivers released for their own products. Perhaps someone here will know. In this case, you should be able to use reference drivers from ATI or will need to get updates from Powercolor or other board manufacturer as the case may be. You could be stuck with their support if you have problems. If possible, I'd advise getting a midrange genuine ATI built product rather than a generic.

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Re: need help picking a video card??
by justchillin Nov 17, 2004 7:28AM PST

thanks that's just what i was worried about...the price seemed too good...do you have any specific ones in mind or just anything by ati???

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Re: need help picking a video card??
by justchillin Nov 17, 2004 7:33AM PST

just went back to newegg and the cheapest ati i found with tv-out,vga, asn dvi was this one:

ATI RADEON 9600SE Video Card, 128MB DDR, 64-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP -RETAIL $117.00

would this one work better?? i'd rather spend the $30 extra for a higher quality vc.

thanks again

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Re: need help picking a video card??
by Steven Haninger Nov 17, 2004 9:12AM PST

I'm no gamer either. I have one PC with an ATI 9600 and it works fine on my Sony 18" monitor using the DVI function. Mine is an older card prior to the SE edition but probably similar. ATI was reported to be suspect in the driver area a while back. I have not found it so. They post new ones every 6 weeks or so. I can't say anything bad about the card I have. It runs in an ASUS P4C series MB using a WD Raptor 37gig drive. I've got a couple Seagates in a RAID 1 array for stored data. No hiccups in over a year.

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