whats a good cheap mid range graphic card

[Flox]

I'm thinking of getting a new graphics card for my 700MHz AMD pc,it has a crappy onboard Asus one at the moment.
I'm thinking of a Radeon 9000 pro one or a GF4 TI one cus I know the MX one is crap and not worth it....problem is.....which one would last me most for sometime before I need a new processor and motherboard, and also which brands are more reliable and easy to download new drivers for....I was thinking of ATI, Creative, PNY,Saphire, MSI or Abit

theirs one that looks pretty good but is it worth it cus its a bit of a waste putting it in a 700mhz pc
Abit Siluro Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB OTES
can be viewed at:-
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/abit_otes.shtml

[M82A1A]

Does your motherboard support AGP? If not, you'll have to get a PCI gfx card adn they seem to be a little behind.

[Flox]

yes, my motherboard does have an AGP which is good news

[sterno]

Any of the current ATI and Nvidia cards will kind of be a waste in a 700MHz machine, but you'll be able to take the card to a new machine in the future. Unless you just have to play the latest 3D games at high resolutions and fast frame rates all the time you don't need to stay up-to-date on video hardware, it wasn't that long ago that I replaced my Voodoo 2 board and it was still quite usable. I'd guess that you could easily use a current ATI or Nvidia card for 5 years or more if you're not a real hard-core 3D gamer.

If you take a look at sites like Tom's Hardware you'll find that, for the most part, any card with any Nvidia chipset is virtually the same as any other card with the same chip and memory. Most of them even look almost identical because most manufacturers just take Nvidia's sample board design and build it. A lot of times the only real differences between two cards is the software bundle and the warranty.

You can usually use the same drivers for all of them, I always use the generic Nvidia drivers for my card because Nvidia releases faster drivers and the manufacturers don't release new drivers of their own in any big hurry. Sometimes the manufacturers do add some features to their drivers, but a lot of times all they add is their logo in the control panel. When they do add more stuff with their drivers it's usually to allow performance tweaking, which you can also do with any one of a number of 3rd-party applications.

[Flox]

cheers mate for the info...
I think I'll get one that will last me for sometime cus I'm thinking of upgrading my whole system.......it needs it........just a problem with if my budget will let me.........lol.....

[auto98]

One with its own GPU would be good on a lower power machine

[rhegedus]

If your motherboard is quite old, it may not support newer graphics cards because of voltage differences - something will get fried.

Personally, I'd wait till you have the cash for a new board/cpu/memory and then worry about a graphics card. Like sterno said, a new card would be a wast of time in your machine.

Rob