Good Card for HL2? Created 18 years ago2006-06-12 21:02:06 UTC by Fortran

Hi Guys,
Im looking to buy a good....but relitivley cheap graph card so I can finally bask in the glory that is HL2 on max settings!! My system, I think should be able to cope with runnin HL2 on max settings:

Athlon AMD 2600+ / 1 GIG DDR RAM

But I now need a good, but cheapish card. Anybody got any suggestions....I want something that will run HL2 on the maximum settings. But my budget is roughly ?80 - ?100 ($147 - $182).

I was kind of looking at the following...but I dont know:

1: SAPPHIRE RADEON 9550 256MB DDR

2: PNY GEFORCE FX 6200 256MB DDR 8X AGP

3: 3D FUZION 3DF GF5500 256MB AGP (GEFORCE FX 5500 - 256MB)

There's no way you'll be able to have HL2 on high settings and expect it to run well with those cards. In the price range you're looking at though, you shouldn't have a problem getting a higher-end card.

For what you're expecting out of it, I wouldn't get anything less than a GeForce 6800/Radeon X800 or similar. Cards from that era don't usually cost more than $160 or so.

AGP? sigh.......

Out of those I would suggest the Geforce.

BTW whats the cpu speed on your computer?

Newegg.com is a great resource, as with tigerdirect.com

Personally I would suggest getting a new motherboard with PCX16 slot. A good card for PCX16 thats a nice price the GeForce 6800 256mb ddr.

Or go crazy and get the GeForce 7950 GDDR3 Gig RAM!! ZOMG!

Athlon XP 2600+ is approx 1.92Ghz. I think I will need a mobo or chip upgrade as well then as you suggest to get max settings ? Or would one of the cards you guys suggested be sufficient ? Unfortunatly graph cards here in the uk are seriously overpriced still....ie. NVIDIA GeForce 6800 approx ?220 or $404 !!!

Thank you for the help though guys

I've seen proper ATI X800s for significantly less than ?200. I mean, look at this. I don't know whether "XT" is a good thing for an nVidia card, but any 6800 for ?120 has gotta be good.

Dunno where you're looking to find such expensive stuff...

I have an overclocked Athlon XP 2400+, and a slightly broken RADEON 9800, and I can run HL2 acceptably at high details at 1280x1024.

my Geforce 7800 was only 300 USD, and I play on maz settings.

I use Radeon 9800 Pro and it runs fine on high...The odd lag in places but that's normal for todays advancing games.

Unfortunatly graph cards here in the uk are seriously overpriced still....ie. NVIDIA GeForce 6800 approx ?220 or $404 !!!

I'm not quite sure where you're shopping. Here's a Geforce 6800XT With 256mb of RAM for ?83.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=402366

For ?220 you can buy this.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=386398

But seriously, you need to go to PCI-Express.