ATI Graphics Cards or nVidia Graphics Cards

I need a graphics card but which one, any recommendations

How much $$ do you want to spend?

I'm looking to spend about ?70 give or take ?10

I'm assuming PCI-E and not AGP here.

Hm. I'm not too familiar with prices in the UK at the moment, but in the $120 - $160 range in the US, you really should be looking at the nVidia 9600GT 512MB.

The ATI Radeon 3850HD 256MB is a nice alternative that should be slightly cheaper.

the rate is for every one US dollar you need .58 GBPs

so prety much exactly what you wanna spend.

I know the exchange rate, but the exchange rate alone doesn't account for prices in various countries. A card that can be bought for $135 in the US probably won't be quite exactly 78 pounds in the UK.

So I just tried to get two cards at either end of what the range might be

sound thinking.


Couldn't he order it from the states using pounds?

I dunno. By the time you pay the extra tax and stuff it probably would be more than getting it from the UK.

I don't shop for computer parts in the UK much. I dunno!

I dont ever shop for computer parts I wouldn't even know what to buy.

in the states you can buy a a flat rate box for like 12 bucks I'd think they'd have something like that there, but it probably would be better to buy it from where you're from. I've only ever ordered books from over seas.

Thank for the help guys.

These are 2 that I've been looking, 1 ATI and 1 nVidia.

ATI

Powercolour R51B-PE3P Radeon X1550 512MB *Silently Cooled* PCI-E Graphics Card

* ATI Radeon X1550 Chipset
* 512MB DDR2 Memory
* PCI-E x16 Interface
* Dual DVI / HDTV Out
* Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Support
* OpenGL 2.0 Support
* Windows Vista Ready
* Silent Cooling System


nVidia

PNY GeForce 8500 GT PCI-E 512MB

* 512MB DDR2 memory
* VGA, DVI-I, HDTV-out
* GeForce 8500 GT Graphics Controller
* PCI-EXPRESS Card Interface
* 450 MHz Clock speed
* 3.6 billion pixels/sec fill rate
* 16x full screen anti-aliasing


Let me know what you think

Those are both very poor cards that are not at all suitable for gaming.

If you don't plan on gaming at all, either of those are fine.

I will be gaming but normally I play RTS games and the odd racing game.
Can you recommend something similar if these are no good.

Cheers

I believe I already did

Sorry, forgot that you had I was to busy looking at the ones I've mentioned.

Are the 2 you recommended of similar spec to these 2.

I know that 1 is 256 but is there really any other difference

No, they are far, far superior.

The 8600 GT, for instance, has twice the memory bandwidth and almost 3 times the texel fill rate.

The 8600 GT is only a couple of dollars more than the 8500 GT, but the 8600 will average about twice the performance of the 8500.

The 8500 is a card intended for mainstream budget desktop performance. It's really not meant for gaming.