Whats a good graphics card for relatively cheap?

[ValiantVenality]

Hey yall! I found a computer that my dad gave me from his office. Here are the specs.

Intel Quad Processor
3gb of Ram
700 gb Hard drive
Nvidia 7350 LE Graphics card

The computer is pretty awesome if i do say so myself. But the thing is, the graphics ard isnt very good. I went out today and bought Left 4 Dead and Grand Theft Auto 4 for the pc. Left 4 Dead ran without a single problem. When I try to play GTA 4 it gives me an error, which means that my graphics card isn't good enough. So do you know of a graphis card that will run GTA well and also many other games for windows games?

[Harshboy]

Hey yall! I found a computer that my dad gave me from his office. Here are the specs.

Intel Quad Processor
3gb of Ram
700 gb Hard drive
Nvidia 7350 LE Graphics card

The computer is pretty awesome if i do say so myself. But the thing is, the graphics ard isnt very good. I went out today and bought Left 4 Dead and Grand Theft Auto 4 for the pc. Left 4 Dead ran without a single problem. When I try to play GTA 4 it gives me an error, which means that my graphics card isn't good enough. So do you know of a graphis card that will run GTA well and also many other games for windows games?

GTA 4 for PC sucks. Its hard to get it to work with any graphics card.

It depends what your budget is, I personally have this, but it might be above your budget.

EDIT: Something cheaper and still much better than what you currently have is here.

[lifeisbetterwithketchup]

Define "reatively cheap". You could get a Radeon 4670 for ~$65 shipped that would play just about anything current pretty well (depending on the resolution you're running at, obviously).

[ValiantVenality]

Well I think my budget would be like 175 and lower. I'd like to put a little money into this because this is pretty much my main console now. Plus I just got 2 xbox 360 controllers for windows so its extremely fun.

VV

[SonyPortableizer]

but not enough money to send a package?

[ian2120]

I have the Sapphire 4850, 512MB GDDR3 RAM. Great card. Will do what you need it to do, and more, for a great price

[bicostp]

You can find GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 GPUs for around $160 now. (They give you CUDA and hardware accelerated PhysX physics.)

[Jongamer]

I personally recommend this 4850, only $110, and Sapphire cards kick major ass.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102832" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Want to go a little less? Here is a 3870 for $85, same Card I have, and has suited me well, has played everything I have been able to throw at it, can almost play Fallout 3 at max settings, but with only 512MB, there is allot of HDD thrashing, so I have to set the Distance load settings to allot less than what normal Maximum settings would have it to stop the HDD thrashing with the Larger textures.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102719" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[antrock101]

avoid ATI likethe plague. for 175 you can pick a nvidia 9800gt or gtx I have one and apart from the extreme temp they out put its worth it

[Jongamer]

avoid ATI likethe plague. for 175 you can pick a nvidia 9800gt or gtx I have one and apart from the extreme temp they out put its worth it

ROFL, for $175, you can get an ATI card that can wipe the floor with the 9800gt/gtx.

You Nvidia Bigots make me sick.

[ian2120]

Yeah, I can tolerate nVidia cards, but for value, nothing is hotter right now that ATI. Definitely go for the 4850 if your on a budget.

[bicostp]

Well it depends.

Nvidia has more support for general-purpouse GPU computing (video encoding and folding@home are the most hyped right now) and hardware-accelerated physics, but their cards cost more.

ATI has the upper hand with anti-aliasing and price, but their cards tend to run hotter (and therefore louder). (Did they finally fix OpenGL? My HD2600 Pro card completely butchers it; it drops triangles and textures at random.)