I REALLY need a new card for my gaming rig:
Athlon 2800+ XP
2x256MB RAM
PNY Fx5500 <-- Yes, ph33r my framerates...
80GB IDE Hard Drive
Yeah, it's not exactly the mother of all rigs, but it plays the games fine. Ish. I know I've only got 512MB RAM on there, and I could upgrade that to 1GB if people think it would give serious conceivable improvements in FPS.
However, I've been looking at benchmarks, and they all seem to be on 3400+ 64bits, and FX-55's. In short, I'm saying: what card should I buy for the rig to get optimum performance in games such as Doom3 and HL2?
Ive got a 19" flatscreen D), so I'm only interested in going into the realms of 1280x1024, but I would like to be able to put AA/AF on that, and high quality.
I've got a fair amount of money saved, and I'm looking at one of the x800 series. The standard x800 doesn't seem to be quite enough to give my system the kick it needs, so the XL/Pro/XT are what I'm looking for. I dont want to be flashing my bios and overclocking it AT ALL though, because I know people who've done that and fried cards, and unlocked broken pipelines, and artefacts all over the place, and... yeah.
I dont know if the money will stratch to an XT, but I'd like one. However, considering the relatively slow processor speed I've got, could you recommend me a good card to buy, considering that I'll be wanting to play HL2 at 1280 on Max, and pull a good 40fps average. I'm not one of the people that wants 75fps from their card, because 40 is absolutely fine for me, looking at the FPS counter I've got on HL2.
Athlon 2800+ XP
2x256MB RAM
PNY Fx5500 <-- Yes, ph33r my framerates...
80GB IDE Hard Drive
Yeah, it's not exactly the mother of all rigs, but it plays the games fine. Ish. I know I've only got 512MB RAM on there, and I could upgrade that to 1GB if people think it would give serious conceivable improvements in FPS.
However, I've been looking at benchmarks, and they all seem to be on 3400+ 64bits, and FX-55's. In short, I'm saying: what card should I buy for the rig to get optimum performance in games such as Doom3 and HL2?
Ive got a 19" flatscreen D), so I'm only interested in going into the realms of 1280x1024, but I would like to be able to put AA/AF on that, and high quality.
I've got a fair amount of money saved, and I'm looking at one of the x800 series. The standard x800 doesn't seem to be quite enough to give my system the kick it needs, so the XL/Pro/XT are what I'm looking for. I dont want to be flashing my bios and overclocking it AT ALL though, because I know people who've done that and fried cards, and unlocked broken pipelines, and artefacts all over the place, and... yeah.
I dont know if the money will stratch to an XT, but I'd like one. However, considering the relatively slow processor speed I've got, could you recommend me a good card to buy, considering that I'll be wanting to play HL2 at 1280 on Max, and pull a good 40fps average. I'm not one of the people that wants 75fps from their card, because 40 is absolutely fine for me, looking at the FPS counter I've got on HL2.