Yeah yeah, now I know I'm a computer tech, but I'm not up to date with the latest and greatest video cards, having never really gamed much on a PC. I am in the process of building my own PC, and the motherboard that I bought supports SLI with 2 PCIe x16 slots. Now, I've read a little into this, but not too much in depth. I don't really play the newest games, but with my new system I'd like to start playing a few games, namely Doom 3, Half Life 2, and Counter Strike Source, along with a few others.
Right now, in my current computer, I have 512MB of SDRAM (The board's max), a Pentium III 733MHz CPU, and an ATI Radeon 9250 with 256MB of memory connected to a standard PCI slot (since that's all I have on the board), running WinXP. It plays all older games great. Now, in my new computer, I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, running WinXP, and now for my question: Should I keep my current card for now (The ATI Radeon), or upgrade to a newer SLI budget card (I've seen 2 cards so far in the $60 range that have 256MB of memory on them)?
The two cards are the Diablotek GeForce 7100 GS with 256MB of DDR3 memory, or the EVGA GeForce 7100 GS TurboCache with 256MB of DDR2, but supports 512MB with TurboCache. The EVGA card actually costs $10 less. Now, I bought my Radeo at Staples for like $120 (I upgraded from an integrated Intel graphics card), and the price of two of these cards (to run in SLI mode) is about the same, so right now I'm unsure of what to do. I want whatever I get to last for quite a while (I haven't upgraded my GPU since buying the Radeon 2 or 3 years ago). Help me out please!
Right now, in my current computer, I have 512MB of SDRAM (The board's max), a Pentium III 733MHz CPU, and an ATI Radeon 9250 with 256MB of memory connected to a standard PCI slot (since that's all I have on the board), running WinXP. It plays all older games great. Now, in my new computer, I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, running WinXP, and now for my question: Should I keep my current card for now (The ATI Radeon), or upgrade to a newer SLI budget card (I've seen 2 cards so far in the $60 range that have 256MB of memory on them)?
The two cards are the Diablotek GeForce 7100 GS with 256MB of DDR3 memory, or the EVGA GeForce 7100 GS TurboCache with 256MB of DDR2, but supports 512MB with TurboCache. The EVGA card actually costs $10 less. Now, I bought my Radeo at Staples for like $120 (I upgraded from an integrated Intel graphics card), and the price of two of these cards (to run in SLI mode) is about the same, so right now I'm unsure of what to do. I want whatever I get to last for quite a while (I haven't upgraded my GPU since buying the Radeon 2 or 3 years ago). Help me out please!
