need a new vid card

ok i need a new vid card so i can play crysis.
currently i'm running an nvidia 6600
i'm looking at the 8400 as well as the radeon hd 2400
right now i'm leaning towards the 8400 so like i said cheap ppl!
i don't want to spend more than 60usd on this upgrade (and don't give me crap about saving up i'm a seriously whipped man and i'm lucky my wife is letting me spend that much!)

oh and so you know the rest of the configuration on my system is as follows
amd athlon 64 x2 4200+
2 gig ddr2 800
HDD will soon be (about a week away) 160gig seagate sata 3gbs

ok now for real no more than 60usd all posts going over that amount will be mocked!

I'll assume that one of our American friends here will do the research of a cheap card. If I select one for you the difference in price due to the strong Euro vs weak dollar would be too big.

Anyhow, it won't stop me from shedding some light on matters. First, DX10 won't give you an edge with these types of cards so you don't need to look at a DX10 within this budget. Getting a DX9 card with higher clockspeeds would improve performance way more, just a friendly tip. Second, don't let fanboyism cloud your mind. If you have 500-600 dollars to waste on a highend card then waste away for all I care, but look at facts and statistics on your card if you are on such a low budget. Maximize performance instead of acting like a 3 year old child that blindly follows what he already thinks he knows. Seriously, don't get caught off track by any fanboy crap in this budget. Both Nvidia and ATi make extremely competitive cards in this sector and they both under perform equally in this segment.

Well I'm just not in the loop on these value minded cards. But I have to agree with Gazz.
If it was me I'd probably order the X1650 w/ 512mb of ram (last link)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814103043
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814150246
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814102084

Well, I also think that when you have a low budget, a fast DX 9 card is a better choice then a "slow" DX 10 card. Unfotunately, a GeForce 8 or Radeon hd would probably cost you about 200 dollars (or even more now your dollars' currency is so weak). So my piece of advice is to look for a ATI Radeon (range: 1700 - 1900), or a GeForce 7 (but not below 600). Make sure it is a PCI-express card, some models of the GeForce 7 are with AGP (as far as I know).

Ebay Ebay Ebay...

and go for a decent ATI x1900 spec card going cheap. If not go for a nvidia 7900GS or something. DO NOT BUY anything new, you will get more bang 4 ur buck on ebay. Stay well clear of anything like the 1650 pro, its barely better, if at all, than your current gpu.

Gm2 has a point with looking at Ebay, who knows what you might find there and dear old Gazz already did some research for ya I don't agree that you'd have to stay away from the 1650 series, it's a great series that shouldn't be confused with the "normal" 1600 series which indeed underperformed. I was just hoping to find a 1900/1950 gt card for a good price somewhere, they can be oc éd to 1950 pro standards at the blink of an eye and that would make it an excellent card.

I looked around the US Ebay page and came across this refurbished 7900GS. It's 55 dollars now, so if you bid a bit more you'd probably get it. Good card with some oc potential and with your processor being a 4200+, 1.5 gig and a seagate you probably wont run into any big bottlenecks and get to max out performance on this budget.

That card that Gazz found would do the trick nicely. I have a 7900gs oc in my old pute & I installed Crysis on it to see how it ran, everything on Med w/o AA no probs (processor is a x2 4600 but that wouldn't make much diff)

The 7900's are better than the 8400/8500/8600 in performance (& even some 8800's)

Who wants dx10 anyways - it's an MS gimmick to sell vista

I've bought alot of stuff from ebay. But it only take one Ecrap purchase
to ruin a good thing. Especially when your on a limited budget. It's
worth not saving $20 to deal with a reputable dealer. Just my 2 cents worth.

well a friend of mine (whom i work for off and on) decided that for all the free work i have done for him...
he is going to pay for the harddrive (wd instead of seagate but 250gig instead of 120) sooooooo my budget for the vid card just went up a little bit
so i'm going to try to keep it to about 80 bucks
so i was looking at an 8500gt and a 7600gs and the hd2600pro all are close to the same price and all have 512mb........
so again i ask what do you think













well i did a bunch more research and found that from 60 to 80 bucks the best card in that price range is the 1650 (suprizingly followed closely by the 1550) and the 6600 fell well below both of them...... and i do mean well below them. i even checked to see if i could play the games i wanted to on that card like bioshock and such and everyone on the other forums seems to say yea it should play it at a low to medium range btw i can make bioshock play on my 6600 but it tends to freeze and crash. so i went ahead and ordered my x1650 from saphire and it should be here in just a few days and by this week end i should have my hdd from my boss as well. also a couple for really old laptops which i'm giving to my niece and son the niece for homework and my son so he will stop annoying mommy everytime she gets on her laptop! lol


so my new system specs are as follows tell me what you think (please remember i'm going for budget gaming here)
amd athlon 64 x2 4200+
2gig ddr2 800 dual channel
250gig sata2 western digital hdd 16mb cache
SAPPHIRE 194L Radeon X1650 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16
all on my cheap as dog crap pcchips mobo!
lol yea i'll upgrade the mobo later so get off my back lol!