Looking for a New Video Card

[Mouse84]

I'm looking at possibly switching from a Nvidia to an ATI card. Any suggestions? Would like to stay at around $150.

 

[cascaderailroad]

You have to make sure that you are getting the right video board connection for your PC: ie PCI Express

You have to read your power supply to make sure that the video card is not above the wattage of your power supply.

If you buy a video card off the shelf at BestBuy, you can browse the various specs, and pay $129 for a video card that sells elsewhere for $45 through electronics suppliers.

As I have a 300 watt PS, I was limited to the Galaxy Nvidia GT 420 ... and I paid way too much for it.

 

[ct_krogen]

get one with one gig of ram and at lest 850 mhz and 8oo threads or more

 

[mrscsi]

get one with one gig of ram and at lest 850 mhz and 8oo threads or more

I would also recommend at least a 256 bit Bus. I think that's going to be the most important because I bought a really nice card with a gigabyte of RAM and the GPU was decent, it was only 128 bit and Trainz was a slideshow. I had never considered the bus prior to that but it makes a difference.

 

[clam1952]

Yes watch out for the bus, one of the Nvidia 5xx series cheap entry level cards being put out by one card supplier is only 64 bit! And you can find the "same" numbered card with either a 128 or 256 bit bus.

 

[SuperFudd]

If you are going to switch from Nvidea to ATI, or visa versa, be certain you remove all of the old driver files and then clean your registry. Better still, don't switch.

 

[targanon]

best bet go to TOM's hardware page do some research read some reviews make a choice and buy!!!

 

[William0d0]

I would avoid switching from nvidia to ati.

But if I did do the switch I would back up my userdata folder before the change just in case things go badly.

My recommendation is stick with nvidia and buy a GTX460 if money is tight or go with a GTX560 for around 100$ more. I don't know how it will fit in with your current motherboard/cpu scheme, so some grains of salt must be taken.

I'm looking at the MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7171406&CatId=3669 as a near future upgrade from my current GTS450 because it would better match my cpu as noted below in my sig.