Much as I hate to do this...
 

This is in fact, yet another video card thread. I have a 128MB Radeon X300 SE card right now. Extremely shitty card that came with the computer. Since getting a laptop, I decided to get back on World of Warcraft for a while and immediately noticed that my video card was running like it had lodged a rusty spoon in it's ass and /wrists'd itself in the new expansion content areas.

I have between $150-200 to spend on a new card, but I'm also confused to a degree.

This card I have now is a PCI Express card. The card I will likely get is PCI Express x16. From what I've read, there exists PCI Express 1x, 4x, 8x, and 16x. Am I going to need to open up the computer and look at what kind of PCI Express slot is in there, or are they literally all the same? I bought my computer in January of 2005, so I'm not sure.

I just don't want to purchase a new card from Newegg and have to ship it back. Any help would certainly be appreciated, as I'd like to have the card bought either today or tomorrow.

and yes I have learned my lesson about purchasing computers rather than building them lol

You can usually discover that specification in your motherboard's documentation or, if you know your motherboard's model, you can look it up online. (If you don't know or remember what model your motherboard is, you can always use something like CPUZ to check it.)

I would be willing to bet that you'll have a 16x slot, but, as I've not had much experience with PCIe yet, I can't really say for sure. More likely than not, that information will appear somewhere in the mobo documentation.

Every contemporary motherboard i've ever seen has a PCI-E 16x slot in it for the video card. It's a long socket positioned closest to the CPU area, similar in placement and length to the old AGP slots. I'm pretty sure that your current card is a PCI-E 16x compatible model so it makes sense that the replacement should work in the same slot.

Oh nice, it apparently does have a PCI Express x16 slot in it. Ok, this is good.

You two wouldn't happen to know of a specific card that I might like would you?

I'm in love with my Nvidia GeForce 7600 (LS/GS - I don't know which of the two).

7600GT is a good deal right now. They're somewhere in the $150 - $200 range right now. Good Mid-range card that delivers good performance.

Seems Newegg is OOS on most of the decent 7600 cards, so I guess that's out of the question at this point.

Should I worry about the whole DirectX 10 compatibility bullshit? I'm not planning to switch to Vista for a long, long time though.

get the radeon x1950PRO. it's right in your price range and will wipe the floor with a 7600GT.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=&srchInDesc=

Those look fairly fantastic.

How about this one, this any good?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814153035

If I were you I'd wait til the mid range DX10 cards come out, some of the new DX10 games look pretty promising. Vista won't be that bad if the hacked light drm/tc/palladium free version is for real.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with Cam on waiting for mid-range DX10 cards to come out. Of course, if you want to play World of Warcraft now, that doesn't help you out much.

The X1950 wouldn't be a bad choice, but I wouldn't get a Jetway one (really bad quality control), and I kind of question the value of paying extra for the 512MB version of the card instead of the 256MB one.

That sounds like a good idea in theory, but I can't really see myself playing games for too much longer since the whole life thing is starting to kick in. I'd rather grab a new card now and sit back to see how things play out rather than stagger through what I already own with a horrible 128MB value card while lying in wait for the new ones.

I hope to god they hack it quickly though if they're going to.

I'm not really paying for it lol, it's a birthday present. Is there something wrong with Jetway?