Help me to buy a Graphic card

[Nipuna]

Hi first of all Very Happy new year friends.

Here goes my first question in the new year

I need to buy a graphic card. To try some games, I wasn't much interested in gaming but now I feel to try some

So I decided to buy from eBay as usual and I found so many and can't decide which to buy.

Here are the models I found.

GeForce GT 240
GeForce GT 440
GeForce 9800 GT

From above ones only GeForce GT 440 has Direct X 11 the other 2 only have 10 and 10.1 will it be a problem?
Even though I buy this card to play games I know I can't play very heavy games even if I pay them I have to use lowest setting and it's OK with me.

So here are my questions.

How much will be those cards in here? I am looking under $100, more cheaper is more good
And those cards must have HDMI.
And are there are other card you guys know that is better than those 3 and price is in my range? Or ATI cards are beer than these? And do you know a good ATI card better than these all 3 and supports for more games?
Will I need to supply power to these card more than PCI-E slot supplies ? I mean from the PSU ?'
And if those cards are for PCI-E 2.0 will they work with PCI-E 1.0 ?

Here are my Computer's spec,

Intel P4 3GHz/ 2MB cache HT processor (Will soon become Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 since I ordered one and it's on its way in these days )
2GB 667Mhz RAM
Foxconn G31MX series Motherboard.
450W PSU
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (Thanks to Herath and Expertcore )
My monitor is Samsung S22A350h and I use 1920x180 full HD resolution since it's the native resolution for the monitor (Thanks all ROBOT.LK members who helped me to buy this Monitor, Neo, Herath and all the others)


Again Happy new year friends hope you will reply me soon


Thanks

[Herath]

Well, I would buy the GT440. 9800GT is old and a power hog compared to the GT440. 9800GT requires 105Watts and GT440 is just 56Watts according to the specifications.

However, if you do not care about the power consumption and you need more gaming hourse power. Go with the 9800GT. It has more memory bandwidth and more Texel and Pixel rates.

GT440 won't need auxillary power but 9800GT is going to need PCI-E auxillary power since the card requires more than 75Watts. Also, you will have to confirm that your powersupply can handle the 9800GT. Otherwise the system will be unstable when gaming.

There aren't many DX11 games. And most of those games can be played in DX9 too. So, having DX11 not very important unless you need things like DirectCompute, OpenCL, Direct2D(Direct2D is in Dx10 onwards) etc.
PCI-E is backward compatible. A PCI-E 2.0 card will run quite fine when plugged in to a PCI-E 1.0 socket.( I am running a GTX550Ti in a PCI-E 1.0 slot). I do not think that the cards that you have mentioned will saturate the bandwidth available in the PCI-E 1.0 x16 slot. Your CPU might be a bigger bottleneck than that. But do not worry. I am also on a Pentium D. .I do not expect to upgrade untill Haswell CPUs arrive.

I do not know much about ATI (AMD) cards. I haven't used any. My sister has one in her desktop computer and said that it is a crap comparing to the GeForce 7600GS they had. It is basically due to the driver crashes and problems with hardware acceleration for applications. So I did not even bother to look at AMD graphic cards. . Besides, I like green!. Red is ugly,Yuck!.

You can buy Asus GT440 for 14000LKR and and Axle GT440 for 10000LKR at a Majestic City shop. But prices might be high now since the dollar is expensive now. Not sure about the places that you can buy 9800GT. Anyway, that won't matter since you are going to buy through ebay.

[Nipuna]

Wow thanks man

As Soon as I go home I'll post more about my PSU and try to add a picture here also. (I am at my father's parent's house now. That's why I was late to reply)


Thanks man You are surely an Expert man for everything No doubts for that man

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[Nipuna]

My PSU is a 450W one and only have Molex power connectors.

And for my new DVD RW drive I had to use an adapter cable to convert it to a SATA power cable.

Here are what stuff my PSU uses.

Motherboard with a Pentium 4 processor soon will be a Core 2 Duo E6550
DVD combo drive
DVD RW drive
SATA Hard disk
2 System cooling fans.

So do you think my PSU is enough for a 9800GT ?

And by the way, 512MB and 1GB will be a considerable;e problem ?

[Nipuna]

Can you do me a little help please?

I found so many on eBay and can't figure out what to choose

How about buying an used one form this seller?
http://www.ebay.com/sch/Graphics-Video- ... ingmiracle

Or getting this http://www.ebay.com/itm/GeForce-9800GT- ... 4ab42a21ca

Or this http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-Express-512 ... 2a178f38f6

I want to save as much as money I can

Can you please search on eBay and tell me one. I need to buy one below 10000LKR and is spending about 13000LKR for a 9800GT not cheap you think? That's that I can't figure out. I really like if I can find a card for about 7000LKR or 8500LKR with shipping. Don't think I am greedy, You know why I want to save money.

I saw some more cards that are around $45 and for shipping it costs around $60 if you can find a good card like that is also fine because I have a client in US who became a friend of mine and I can tell the seller to ship to his address and then I can tell my friend to send it to me using the cheapest method available. Or I can ask the seller instead to ship using the cheapest method available.


And another thing, I saw this card doesn't have HDMI port, so if I use S-Video to HDMI adapter cable or DVI to HDMI cable will I get same performance as HDMI ? And will there be any (even a little) problem?

And as I see all these cards are only 512MB and will there any problem because this isn't 1GB ? And by the way, A 512MB card is fair for above prices ?

And please reply to my other post too man.

Thanks man without you guys I am lost

PS: And by the way, Why these all Molex to PCI-E power cables have 2 molex connectors? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-14G0006025 ... 2c5e20f4c3

[Herath]

Sorry to say but those 9800GT does not look good to me. They seem to be produced with the cheapest available materials. Even the Voltage Regulator Module components seem to be scattered everywhere on the board. And probably the VRM is made of very cheap components. Look at the following card from Asus,


http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_ ... mb_pci-e/2

It has nice layout and this is the nVidia recommended board layout. The card is having 2 SLI fingers for Quad-SLI. But the cards that you have linked does not have any SLI fingers. The cards that you are looking at are probably made somewhere in a remote chinese village. . The sellers are top rated, but still the goods that you are looking at seem to be garbage. You can go on and buy it if you think that they will last at least for an year without exploding the capacitors of the Voltage Regulator Module. The build quality of the VRM (and other components like memory chips) are very important for the stability of the card.

You can use a DVI to HDMI adapter for using HDMI(Hope you remember stuff you learnt at your monitor buying). That is not a problem. Having more Video memory is good, but does not give any significant performance upgrade.

The molex 4 pin to 6 pin connector is having 2 molex 4 pin adapters since the molex 6 pin has three +12V lines. Molex 4 pin has only one +12V line. I think it explains the two 4 pin connectors.

Can't say much about your power supply. It is not just the Wattage. Need more parameters like the power it is delivering through the +12V lines etc. If your power supply is a no-name one. You are probably gonna have to upgrade to run a high end card, even the current mid range ones. Eventhough your power supply might have a label like the following. It can not be trusted unless it is a well known brand.

Untitled.png (45.6 KiB) Viewed 118077 times

The above chart is for my power supply. It is a Cooler Master 460Watt one. It can deliver a maximum of 312Watts along the +12V lines (all of them combined). So I can safely run the 116Watts gfx card off a single rail.

Another thing that you will have to consider is the length of the graphics card. The 9800GT is a lengthy card. You are probably going to need a new case if your case cannot take long video cards. But the ones you have checked on ebay are very short for a 9800GT.

I think it is better if you save a little more for a better card from a good brand(standard advice ). Don't waste money on cheap ones. You will regret it. Sorry if you feel bad and complicated. But these are lessons that I have learnt over time. . Cheap graphic cards-> no no, Cheap Power supplies-> no no, Cheap casings-> oh no. Anything cheap-> oh my god .

It is better to buy a high quality mid range card than a lousy high end one. And,oh this is my baby, . Mid range, but anough for me.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130625

[Nipuna]

Can you please search one for me on eBay that suits me? because you know what I like

Or I'll just forget about buying a graphic card

[Herath]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZOTAC-ZT-98GE ... 27c30e9411

The above is a nice card. But shipping and handling charges are higher than the cost of the card. You can find a graphic card at the same price as Card cost+shipping in local market. Although I was able to buy a graphic card from ebay for any amount. I decided to purchase it from the local market considering the warranty issues etc.What if something goes wrong?. What if the card was dead on arrival?. I have a friend who bought some high end used graphic cards from ebay. But they are $180 high quality cards(last one I can remember is a XFX HD4890), even in used condition. But he haven't had any problems. However he did not keep the same card for more than 6 months.

You will be able to find local gamers selling their old stuff at gamer.lk .

Barclays and Tulip computers also have a little collection. I saw AMD HD5670 cards at Tulip when I was checking unity plaza to buy a card. Well, that is if you do not insist on buying the card online.

And I have to warn you though. These high end cards consume lot of power. Even I can't run my GTX550Ti at full load for hours. On the other hand my power supply is at 70% efficiency at maximum. So I can easily use 1 unit of electricity within 2 or 3 hours. . So consider that too.

[Nipuna]

Thanks for the reply

Here is what I have on my PSU as I see its name is GTS

PSU.jpg (49.37 KiB) Viewed 118068 times

I've edited your image to add my PSU's values It's bit ugly

Can you tell me a graphic card that I can get for the price I said except the ones I said above. I think you know a one that suits me. So I can buy one of them if I can't get a 9800GT

And can you search on eBay and give me links to them also so I can buy it right away.



Thanks man

[Herath]

12*14=168

So, 168Watts on +12V rails. That is the maximum. And a 100Watt card might work or it might not. Not sure about that.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Graphics-Vide ... ercepc2009

fiercepc seems to be a good seller. I was thinking about buying card from them but did not buy.