I am not a massive gamer but I would like to play the latests games Sims 2, Half Life 2, and Unreal Tourney 2004 at a good speed and decent graphics. I do alot of video and photo editing not sure how much a graphic card is needed for this.

Can anyone recommend a budget Graphic Card that will suit my needs? Maybe a top 5 so I can reseatch them?

I am building a computer at the moment but heres what I am thinking of so far:

AMD 64 (3000+)
ASUS A8V Deluxe
Audigy 2 ZS
160GB HD
80GB 2nd HD

1. Point of view Geforce 6600GT 128Mb £132
Good card at a reasonable price.

2. Asus Geforce 5700 256Mb £76

3. MSI Geforce 5500 256Mb £63

4. MSI Geforce 5500 128Mb £43

5. Asus Geforce 5200 128Mb £34

Prices are from www.microdirect.co.uk

I was thinking of a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 258MB DDR DVI-I TV-Out Lite is it any good?

Below $100 USD, the are the top 5:

1. Radeon 9500 PRO
2. Radeon 9600
3. GeForce 4 Ti4600
4. Radeon 9550
5. GeForce FX 5200 Ultra

How much does that card cost? The 9600 XT is considerably slower than the Radeon 9800, and even more slower than the $200 GeForce 6600 GT.
If you can cough up the $200, i say get the 6600 GT AGP.

Don't bottleneck your system with a card that offers sub-par performance in comparison to your rig, listen to the advice above and up your budget a little.

Video Card Chart IV:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/

B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

Sounds like you ARE a massive gamer, when you want to do stuff like that. Listen to Rory. He listed some great ones, all under 100 bucks if you go to pricewatch.com. I got my GeForce FX 5700LE 256mb from pricewatch for $91. It's plenty fast and will run all the modern games out there. Just stay withing the AMD and nVidia realm. ATIs are nasty, believe me, I have experience with ATI-all bad.

Wow...another anti-ATI posting. Didn't see that coming. *rolling eyes* Mitch apparently can't follow directions for installing ATI cards, or he actually hasn't installed one in years. In that case, yes, I believe him when he says "ATIs are nasty."

The 6600GT is a very good recommendation if you can afford it.

The 9600XT is another good price/performance ratio card.

Some other sleepers to watch for are ATI 9800's if you can find them in the $175 range.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-413&depa=0

I think you'd be better off with the 6600GT if that's in your budget.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Depending on how much your wanting to spend and if yoru doing alot of video editing a 9800 pro all in wonder is a great card. I been able to run the half 2 demo at 1024x768 with no slow down and everything maxed. It also offers some great features for video editing and functions as a pvr. These retail for 250.00 Also if your not wanting the tv tuner stuff a ati 9800 pro is also a good option. Me and my friends are gammers and i have an all in wonder and he has a pro we both have been able to max almost anything out. the standard 9800 pro will run you under 200.00 i've even saw them for 150.00 and yes im an ati fan.
Maddog

LOL...hey, don't get me wrong. Saying you like a card because you've seen it work and what not is fine.

Trashing the other card repeatedly when you have no factual information aside from one card you used back in the day is something wholly different.

Please share opinions like yours, Maddog23.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

If your making a AMD64 setup you should really get a SLI mobo.

A 6600gt(sli/pci) is £100ish from www.dabs.com

Then when you can afford it get another 6600gt(sli/pci) card for a keekass setup.

Tt Lanfire
nf7-s v2.0
XP-m 2500@209x11
SP 97
512mb pc3200
Jou Jye 550w psu
FX5600
WDCaviar 160gb sata
WDCaviar 160gb sata

;~}

If you really are not into games, then try a 9550. The 9550 I have has 256 mb so it does desktop applications and DVD playback pretty well at high resolutions. I've played Half-Life 2 on a system with the 9600 128 XT and experienced no perceivable difference between the two at 1024 x 768. However, there appears to be some capatability issues with some game titles. For example Far Cry and Hitman run poorly on the 9550, yet the Punisher runs fine. Also the 9550 will handle Doom3, but grinds almost to a halt playing the lasted version of Painkiller. If you do plan on playing games then go with a 9600 as a minimum level card, if not the 9550 will do nicely. I haven't tried any versions of 9800, so I couldn't tell you. However, there is 100 U.S. dollar difference in price. I have never used a Nvidia graphics card, so I have no advice to give.

I agree with meKilgore - the Radeon 9550 offers the best price/performance ratio right now. You can pickup a 128MB/128-bit card for less than $75US

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
512MB PC3200
Asus Ti4200 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro

so psycho, you're saying I should go back to ATI regardless of the computer woes their products gave me? What if I bashed nVidia? Wow! what an idea! I might just do that to get you off my case. Is that what it takes?
What's so wrong with nVidia? Did the GeForce give you problems? I've never gotten you're stance on it. Always going pro-ati one message, then nVidia the next? WTF?

My stance is and has always been Nvidia and ATI both make solid products today. I go with whichever makes the better card in whatever price range. This is based on benchmarks, and experience with as many cards as I can get my hands on. I have absolutely no bias against Nvidia or ATI. Same between Intel and AMD.

I bash bad products when they ARE bad products. Had we been discussing video cards back when Radeons first came around, I'd have bashed ATI left and right because they had poor OpenGL performance, and game compatibility problems all over the place. Nvidia clearly made better video cards. Had we been discussing video cards one year ago, I would say both are reliable, very compatible cards, but ATI clearly had better performing cards then. Now, they're both neck and neck...depends on what price range you're looking at.

That's my point - you aren't judging any manufacturer according to their performance relative to each other NOW based on solid facts, benchmarks, etc. It's one thing to say "I bought this ATI card, and it gave me problems, etc." If that's true, so be it. It's something wholly different to tell others Nvidia makes better cards than ATI, and ATI are pure crap for all eternity no matter what objective evidence says because products you may have used a long time ago didn't work.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

i also have a problem. i hope you can help me. i wanted to buy the 9600 pro 256 , but then i discovered that i got AGP X4 on my 1.8 , 256 rdram computer i have.
will it still work even if i dont have AGP x8 ? because were ever i looked it says AGP x8 complitable.
thank you
oz bar

the one the only the oz

Yeah, but still, you have a Radeon yourself and recommend them all over the place. So in a way, you're saying that ATI is better than nVidia.

oz: it should work fine, but your AGP4X slot will be a slight bottleneck to your video card, but not that much. What I can't get is how an Athlon64 mobo has a 4X instead of an 8X. Odd. Oh, I see-it's a Packard Bell. I don't know much about them now, but the one I had back in the day was bad.

is the radeon 9200 se a good graphic card cuz i got it cuz the price (30$) and do you think iy can run half life 2 the rest of my comp goes like this.
Pentium 4 2.4 ghz
40 gig hd
384mb of ram