I'm trying to find the best (highest spec) card for my machine. I would like to play HD games & improve system performance. I bought a 8800Gt, but had to take it back as, either it did not fit the board or there was insufficent power as it made a beeping sound upon boot up. I was really dissapoited as I was told this was a top card to have. I would be grateful if any one can recommend a card(s) for my spec, as below. Foxconn 9657MA 4Gb ((800Mhz) Core 2 Quad Q6600 ISO-450PP 350W 7300LE Many thanks. .

2 motherboards come up for 9657MA http://www.foxconnchannel.com/searc... Both have pci-e 16 slots so with your psu, I'd go for a mid range card like the HD4670. This card doesn't require a hi power psu or aux connection to the psu. Here's a collection to look through... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Skip

I'd go with the Radeon 4770. It's a great deal faster than the 4670--it pretty much matches the 4850. While the 4770 does require a PCI-E power connector, its actual power consumption under load is a mere 2W higher than the 4670: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vi... Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Socket 939 Dual core Opteron 185 @ 3.2GHz on A8N32-SLI Deluxe 4GB of CL2 PC3200 2x 8800GTS in SLI Blu-Ray and HD-DVD X-Fi Titanium for PCI-E Vista x64. Samsung 24" LCD

That's true and I overlooked the HD4770...wasn't available last time I looked. It does support DirectX 10 and comes with GDDR5, but I'd sure like to see the price come down some. Skip

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

The HD4670 is the kind of card (one of a kind?) that I live for. Performance, price, power consumption, size, availability, ability to work on about any machine...what's not to like. The story about my love affair with the HD4670... My Mexican girlfriend has a family large enough to staff a modern aircraft carrier and most of them buy hp/Compaq, eMachines, Dell, Gateway, Acer, Sony; whatever meets the criteria of cheap, pretty and new. It all started about a year ago with a dead 6200LE. Those useless things sold for about 50-60 bucks then so I did a little research and ordered a HD4670; 17 cards since that one have gone into various machines without a single psu replacement. At one point, I bought 5 with the big idea of doing a comparison review but they were all gone within 2 weeks. So no review. What I can say though is single core, dual core, quad core, AMD, Intel all came alive. Simply no valid concerns about memory bandwidth, cpu bottlenecks, or wasted money. A bonus that all 18 of these HD4670's can be retained and stuck in their next pc's is not to be ignored either. What's not to like? Skip

Thank you for all your comments. The link below says that 450W power supply is recommended. So I will look to buy a new power supply before I go for the 4770, just to be on the safe side. http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonh...