Well I am about to start playing WoW again and I am considering investing in a new graphics card, at the moment I have an ATi X300 (pci-e version) I did buy an nVidia 6600GT a while back but my computer tends to restart by itself when in games when I use it. I was considering an ATi card as I have never had problems with them in the past and apperntly they dont consume as much power as the nVidia cards.

Does anyone have any recommendations on budget cards which will let me play World of Warcraft in 1280x1024 with a good FPS as apposed to 800x600 / 1024x768 at 40fps

I'm not too familiar with ATI as I have always used nVidia. I'm currently running a 7900 GT-OC from BFG. I got it about a year ago and it was top flight then and set me back £300.

I would always advise someone to get an old top flight card than one that has been made for the budget market. It all depends on how much cash you have... and without that info it's tough to be more specific.

I've heard good things about the 7600GT based cards, but then again, I'm saving up for an 8800GTX

I'm not sure about the 8800 cards. You will have to run Vista to get the most out of them. There aren't any decent games for DX10 yet. One of the guys in the clan has a PC running Vista, he has a pair of 8800. He is getting lower fps under Vista playing BF:2 than I am with XP with just the one card and a single core CPU.

I figure you have to get what you can afford at the time, the prices change so much, by the time you have saved enough for what you want, what you want has changed...

you can get a 7600 GS from new egg for like 90 dollars. its 256mb. its what i use, pretty good budget card.

Exactly! So by the time I have the £250 or so needed for the card, a better one will be available for that price...

So how much do you have right now??? is a new card might not be the best use of your cash? Would some more RAM or faster hard drive give you a better improvement?

Don't forget the sound card... If you are relying on the "on-board" sound you could be affecting the overall performance of your system. Also have a look at the type of USB devises you are using. Complex USB devices use CPU cycles to run.

Getting the most out our hardware on a budget is a fine balancing act

I have a moderate card - it runs most of the stuff I want. I am saving at the same time for more memory and a faster HDD too but the main item I am wanting to get is the gfx card. That is the area my computer is lacking in.

What ever you buy, DO NOT buy ATI. You will be banging your head on the wall constantly trying to make it work, on Linux. I also add that it's performance on Windows is worse than nVidia cards. I've been hearing good things about the 7600 series, so you should think about such cards.


Extreme Coder

I've always had good luck on Linux with Nvidia cards. My older desktop has an Nvidia 6800 in it that works great, and my new laptop has an Nvidia GeForce Go 7700 in it.

If you're having lockup issues with your system and Nvidia cards, you might want to consider upgrading your power supply. Nvidia cards do consume a lot of power, and your typical Dell with on-board video on the motherboard, and an el-cheapo power supply just barely adequate for running that motherboard, might not be able to deliver all the amps the Nvidia card needs.

When I upgraded to the 7900 I was more than a little surprised when I had to fit two power connectors. In the end I had to fit a new 600W PSU to the rig. Next on the list is more powerful CPU. That of course means new MoBo and RAM.

This looks like the likely candidate. A good balance between performance, price and upgradeability. You can get much faster but for a lot more money, as I said in a previous post performance on a budget is a fine balancing act...



All for £198.57 Inc VAT

# AMD Dual Core 4200 AM2
# 2048Mb DDR2 667MHz
# ATX
# Nvida Nforce4 Chipset
# ASUS AM2 Motherboard

im using a Ati x1950 pro, 256 ddr3 ram. It works great! not too expensive either , 250-300. It all depends on price.