I'm in the market for upgrading my graphics card wich atm is a stock pc graphics card. I'd like to hear what the community thinks is a good one.

nVidia GeForce 6600GT is the sweet spot of price and performance in the mid-high end.

Be sure to check whether you have AGP or PCI-Express, as a lot of new cards are PCI-E. Then pricewatch.com is a good resource for pricing, although I usually buy everything from newegg anyway.

AGP? PCI express?

OMG! Do you have a slot at all? If yer PC came with on-board graphics, you better make sure you have an open slot!!!

I like allstarshop.com for PC supplies, they've got great prices...

O.o how do I find out if I have a slot?

[Edit] must sleep will check responce tomarrow

Open the case and look at the motherboard, there should be a few white slots to put upgrade cards in. On one end there could be a brown one which would be an AGP slot.

http://www.mysuperpc.com/pc_assembly/agp_slot.jpg

If you have PCI-E slots they will look like this:

http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/1042/pci_pcie_confronto_s.jpg

Good luck, and btw whichever slots you have the 6600gt is great.

Thanks this will take some time to open my comp up and find what I'm looking for

I use a program called Belarc Advisor (www.belarc.com) to find information about my computer's hardware at home and at work. It does give alot of hardware information but not exactly what graphics card your computer will accept.
If you down;oad and run the program it will tell you what mother board and model you have. I think a simple search on google will give you the specs of your mother board along with what graphics card it can accept.
I think were all assuming that this is a custom computer you are talking about. You didn't get it from Dell or Gateway. If you did you can always go to thier web site and get the specs of your computer.

JB

if you run windows, the System profile will usually tell you if you have AGP AFAIR. under linux, lspci will do the trick if you know to read it. =)

Ah looked on the website and it says AGP or atleast it showed graphics cards with AGP port compatible.

one nice thing i suggest to ya'all is a 3 monitors setup under 150 (excluding monitors), and that's mobo, amd proc and videocard.

just buy a Motherboard with embeded ATI Chipset and onboard PCI Express x200 based card and add an ATI PCI express card x300.
you will get a three monitor setup that can be seen as one by ati software and you can play vendettaaaaaaaaa!

if the worst comes to whatever it is that it usually comes to, you could get a pci video card.

Okay, so you're limited to AGP cards with your current motherboard.

As you weren't even sure what sort of graphics slot you've got, I'm guessing it's a fair bet you don't want to replace your motherboard to get PCI-e slots.

Which isn't a problem, really, because the current crop of AGP cards should still meet your needs for a few years to come yet, and will definately keep VO happy, perhaps forever. I use a fairly cheap Radeon 9600 card (cost about 150GBP), and that allow me to run VO in high res, all options at max, with no graphics lag, even in the heaviest of NPC convoys. I do loose my jump animation sometimes when 20 other craft are jumping at once. For reference, I'm running a 9600 Saphire/Radeon Atlantis (256Mb), on a nForce motherboard, with a 2600 Athlon and 1 gig of RAM. Expect your mileage to vary, depending on your specs.

Depends how much you want to spend, really, and what other games you want to play. My setup plays pretty much anything, though it's getting a bit tired for some of the more recent games, like Battlefield2.

Any of the Radeons, from 9600 upwards should do (but try to get a PRO model if you get a 9600), and any of the current nVidia cards (but avoid the really cheap old ones, especially ones with 'MX' on the end of their name).

I've been building computers (professionally and privately) for a few years now, so if you want more detailed advice, or if you want to seriously upgrade to state of the art, then you best supply all your specs (motherboard type, memory amount and type, CPU spec etc) and I'll think about it a little harder.

This is a PC we're talking about, isn't it? :)

www.newegg.com once you know, you newegg..

Only place I ever buy from, great prices, awsome service and customer support.

shouldnt this be off topic?