Seeking graphic card advice.

[Maryhl]

I'd like to upgrade my ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 Graphics card -- which I think is technically a chip -- to make MMORPH game play smoother on my computer. What should I be looking at in roughly the <$100 range?

Would there be any advantage to having both the original graphics chip and a new card running at the same time? ...or would that just make things less stable?

Thanks.

[Gabriel Faust]

A few questions: Is the computer in question a laptop or desktop?
What games in particular are you looking to improve? We can help you choose a card better fitting the requirements.

Quote:

Would there be any advantage to having both the original graphics chip and a new card running at the same time? ...or would that just make things less stable?

Your computer will default to one video output card in most scenarios. It won't make things less stable, it just won't use the other card. So plenty of people keep the old card stored away in case they have any issues down the road or a hand-me-down for a friend.

[Touching Hair]

The HD 7750 and GTX 650 are both around $100 and will run all currents games from medium to high graphics settings.

Yes, the HD 4200 is built into your motherboard. No, you don't want to run them both at the same time. Once you install a new card and set it as your primary display device the HD 4200 will be disabled.

[Maryhl]

Gabriel Faust

A few questions: Is the computer in question a laptop or desktop?
What games in particular are you looking to improve? We can help you choose a card better fitting the requirements.

Quote:

Would there be any advantage to having both the original graphics chip and a new card running at the same time? ...or would that just make things less stable?

Your computer will default to one video output card in most scenarios. It won't make things less stable, it just won't use the other card. So plenty of people keep the old card stored away in case they have any issues down the road or a hand-me-down for a friend.

The computer is a medium case desktop running AMD Athlon II 2.8 GHz with 4 GB ram at the moment. Game wise, Eden Eternal (www.aeriagames.com) and Diablo III.

Really more interested in cutting down on the glitches, not that quality improvement isn't nice too.

[Minion4Hire]

Demon Kagerou

Gabriel Faust

A few questions: Is the computer in question a laptop or desktop?
What games in particular are you looking to improve? We can help you choose a card better fitting the requirements.

Quote:

Would there be any advantage to having both the original graphics chip and a new card running at the same time? ...or would that just make things less stable?

Your computer will default to one video output card in most scenarios. It won't make things less stable, it just won't use the other card. So plenty of people keep the old card stored away in case they have any issues down the road or a hand-me-down for a friend.

The computer is a medium case desktop running AMD Athlon II 2.8 GHz with 4 GB ram at the moment. Game wise, Eden Eternal (www.aeriagames.com) and Diablo III.

Really more interested in cutting down on the glitches, not that quality improvement isn't nice too.

What you can install will mostly depend on your power supply. If you have a 350W or better power supply and/or a more than 20A 12V rail you should be able to get away with a Radeon 7750 as it doesn't consume much power. That card would offer you a huge performance boost though.

[God Emperor Akhenaton]

You won't find a lot of cards that are great for under $100, but I would search for an EVGA 600 series.

[Maryhl]

I ended up going with a MSI Radeon HD 6670 1GB... seems like the highest I can go with my limited power supply of 300w and is within the $100ish budget. Model actually recommends 400w... >.>

It does seem to meet what I was going for in making games more playable. Also went from 4gb of ram to 10gb... feels pretty slick now!

[Minion4Hire]

Demon Kagerou

I ended up going with a MSI Radeon HD 6670 1GB... seems like the highest I can go with my limited power supply of 300w and is within the $100ish budget. Model actually recommends 400w... >.>

It does seem to meet what I was going for in making games more playable. Also went from 4gb of ram to 10gb... feels pretty slick now!

Even a 6670 is a huge increase over that 4200. Those wattage recommendations aren't very useful however. What you need is sufficient 12V rail amperage. The only reason they list a total power supply wattage is because it is assumed that any power supply of that capacity should offer enough 12V amperage to support the card (in addition to everything else) but this isn't necessarily the case. Regardless, you definitely don't have a high end power supply. But the Radeon 7750 consumes approximately the same amount of power as the 6670. Either way, big improvement. You were trying to play it safe - nothing wrong with that.

I have to say that the additional memory really would not have done much of anything. Unless you're dabbling in rendering or VMs or something 4GBs of RAM is more than sufficient. More won't hurt. But any perceived impact is exactly that - perception, and not reality.

Windows Vista/7/8 will see a UI improvement with better graphics hardware though. So that card could be the reason if the UI feels more responsive now.

[Maryhl]

Minion4Hire

Demon Kagerou

I ended up going with a MSI Radeon HD 6670 1GB... seems like the highest I can go with my limited power supply of 300w and is within the $100ish budget. Model actually recommends 400w... >.>

It does seem to meet what I was going for in making games more playable. Also went from 4gb of ram to 10gb... feels pretty slick now!

Even a 6670 is a huge increase over that 4200. Those wattage recommendations aren't very useful however. What you need is sufficient 12V rail amperage. The only reason they list a total power supply wattage is because it is assumed that any power supply of that capacity should offer enough 12V amperage to support the card (in addition to everything else) but this isn't necessarily the case. Regardless, you definitely don't have a high end power supply. But the Radeon 7750 consumes approximately the same amount of power as the 6670. Either way, big improvement. You were trying to play it safe - nothing wrong with that.

I have to say that the additional memory really would not have done much of anything. Unless you're dabbling in rendering or VMs or something 4GBs of RAM is more than sufficient. More won't hurt. But any perceived impact is exactly that - perception, and not reality.

Windows Vista/7/8 will see a UI improvement with better graphics hardware though. So that card could be the reason if the UI feels more responsive now.

I thought ram helped with the number of programs running? Figured it wouldn't hurt either way since I tend to run several large Adobe programs at the same time... plus Firefox and whatever. Ah well, ram is pretty cheap these days anyway. sweatdrop

[Lanackse-Kanvae]

The video card will also have it's own RAM to make it more efficient in translating all those wonderful polygons and textures. This is called Video-RAM (or V-RAM) and runs completely separate from the system RAM (just called RAM), which does as you say with the number of running programs.

[jtultu]

Demon Kagerou

I ended up going with a MSI Radeon HD 6670 1GB... seems like the highest I can go with my limited power supply of 300w and is within the $100ish budget. Model actually recommends 400w... >.>

It does seem to meet what I was going for in making games more playable. Also went from 4gb of ram to 10gb... feels pretty slick now!

As long as its running fine on your PC lol rofl