Some of you may remember a thread I posted a while back about a friend who bought a Dell PC and wanted to add a graphics card so he could play games. I've just looked at the insides of his PC, and it only seems to have PCI slots, not even an AGP slot!

The only PCI graphics cards that I can find are Matrox Milleniums (I'm guessing I should run a mile from these), Radeon 9250s, GF 5200s and www.ebuyer.com list a FX5500 which I think is the best bet. Would either of these cards actually be better than his onboard intel extreme 2 graphics, and does anyone know of any more powerful PCI cards?

The GF series seem to be the best PCI cards I have worked with, a 5200 or a 5500 will work wonders over Intel Extreme Graphics. I bought a 5200FX PCI for my little brother and it works great.

Let's just say my Voodoo 3 plays HL better than IEG2.

OK, great. The 5500 is out of stock at Ebuyer, but PC World have it for £65. Is spending an extra £30 for the 5500 over the 5200? Also, are XFX cards pre-oc'd ie better than standard 5200s? Thanks for your help.

Stay away from the entry-level Radeon chipsets, they are not fully DX 9.0 compliant.

I really liked my 5200FX for what it could do, atleast as an AGP part, heck, back in the day (2 graphics card upgrades ago), -I'd found it amazing to be able to eke a 30FPS avg at 1024 at med settings in Far cry and it OC'ed very nicely on stock vlots from 250/400 to 300/530+ with no problems which I found quite attractive at the time.. Only problem with it though, -couldn't run Doom 3 playably at all, not even at 640x480 for some reason.. Guess its mostly to do with the fact the card breaks its own neck trying to use dx9 when it's true prowess was basically suited for dx8.1.. (hence, the reason ATi's entry competition didn't feature dx9 until it could handle it as it does today eg> x330/ x550 x1300 etc..)

My family PC has an FX5200 in it, so I'm familiar with their rubbishness. Would the PCI nature of this card affect its performance much? I'm aware that PCI bandwidth is shared, so would the network card in the other PCI slot affect the GPU?

No. the 5200 is one of those "Set it and forget it" cards. That's why I like it so much.

So, is it worth paying extra for a 5500, being that it'll actually only be another £20 or so?

A quick "Google" and I came up with these UK links;
http://computing.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/sb.../11230277.html
http://misco.co.uk/categories/~242~/...A%20Cards.html
http://www.pcupgrade.co.uk/productsD...Graphics+Cards

There were lot's more.... I gues buying a 5500 in the UK should be a breeze... go for it!

TDR

*slaps forehead for being stupid enough to forget Goggle*

Thanks a lot for the those links. I think we'll go for a 5500. Cheers for you help guys.