TheGift73

Hi,

I am looking to upgrade my current Radeon 9200 series to something better. I am looking at spending upto £170.

What I will be hoping to do with the card:

Play most (if not all) the latest games, this is not massively important, but would be good if I ever decide to play any PC games
Working with 3DS Max (latest version)
Photoshop
Watching films and TV shows on my PC. (this is pretty important)

The issues I am having with my old card aren't actually drastic except that I have noticed that 3DS Max doesn't like it at all nor does WorldWideTelescope, (I believe that this is because the 9200 does not support DirectX 10)

I am planning on building my first computer as soon as I have saved enough for the parts I need, so I though I'd try to kill two birds with one stone and get a card that is compatible for my current set up and my future one. So far I have no idea as to what parts I will be getting for my next computer except that it will have a duel-core processor (AMD)

My current specs are:-

PSU: X-Power ATX-400TD (400w)
OS: Win XP Pro SP2

Display:
Video Adapter RADEON 9200 SERIES (256 MB)
Video Adapter RADEON 9200 SERIES (256 MB)
3D Accelerator ATI Radeon 9200 (RV280)
Monitor LG L226WTQ(Digital) [NoDB] (1704192542)

Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 2955 MHz (15 x 197)
Motherboard Name ASRock P4VT8+ (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM, Audio, LAN)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8763 Apollo PT800
System Memory 2048 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (04/08/04)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

I would really appreciate any advice you could give me (good or bad). Also if you think I may run into any heat issues with the future card.

For my main spec you can also look under 'My System' to the left of this post under my name. (in the drop down box)

Richard

tecknomage

I have a GeForce 7300GT 512mb (see Detailed Specs tab), but then I'm prejudiced for nVidia cards.

wrench97

If you need DirectX 10 its going to require an upgrade to Vista because with XP you'll only be able to run DirectX 9, If you go to Vista you'll probably want to upgrade a lot more components.

Upgrayedddd

If you've got £170 to work with, consider buying a new motherboard (same CPU socket) with PCI-E. Because if you want DirectX 10, then you need Vista and a graphics card that supports DX 10. No AGP-slot nVidia cards support DX 10, and the AGP-slot ATI cards that do are pure trouble. So you would need PCI-E.

But I don't think you need DX10 to begin with. A good AGP DX9 card for XP would be enough (especially when you've got a £170 budget.) Finding one is going to be the problem as they keep getting rarer and rarer.