Recommend me a cheap 3d graphics card.

[HoneyDippinDan]

I'm not looking for anything special, just cheap. I got Star Wars: The Best of PC for Christmas, which is 5 older PC games. Some of the games require a 3d graphics card, which apparently my computer doesn't have. I got Empire at War to play, but the graphics in cinema mode are all blocky and slow. It's not a big deal if I get one or not, since the game plays, I just figured if I could find one for cheap, I'd get one. Any suggestions?

[batmanbooyah]

its 2007, and you don't have a video card that can do 3d graphics?


do you have to put floppy disks in your computer to start it up?


all jokes aside, we'd need to know what kind of computer you have. you could have an awesome computer with just onboard video, which is easily fixed. or you could have a computer that requires two rocks smashing together to start up, in which case, this might be a little harder.

[HoneyDippinDan]

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name YOUR-VVX88VYRXO
System Manufacturer eMachines, Inc.
System Model Imperial
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2192 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix 6.00, 2/14/2003
SMBIOS Version 2.31
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name YOUR-VVX88VYRXO\CompUSA
Time Zone Mountain Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 93.32 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 864.82 MB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys



Yes, I know it's an E-machine.

[batmanbooyah]

you have a 2gighz computer and 512mb of memory. even with on board video, you should have what it takes to run some old games. did you buy an emachines? a laptop maybe?

[Natty P]

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name YOUR-VVX88VYRXO
System Manufacturer eMachines, Inc.
System Model Imperial
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2192 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix 6.00, 2/14/2003
SMBIOS Version 2.31
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name YOUR-VVX88VYRXO\CompUSA
Time Zone Mountain Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 93.32 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 864.82 MB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys



Yes, I know it's an E-machine.


You should have just right clicked my computer and looked at properties. We know you have a non-3d video card, we need to know your processor and memory. The latter, in addition to a bunch of other stuff that that doesn't matter, at all, like your time zone, is above, the cpu speed isn't.:)
[edit] it's a 2.0ghz processor? You should be fine with a 40-60 dollar video card.

[HoneyDippinDan]

Celeron CPU 2.2 GHz
512 MB of ram

[Hate_Prime]

Maybe something from the lower end of the Geforce 6 series? If those are a bit much, the Geforce 4 ti 4200 was a really really good card (relatively) but I don't know if they still even make those. They should be really cheap these days.

[Thomas Mauer]

If you have an AGP slot, I can really recommend the MSI Radeon 1600 Pro TD512. I bought it for 179 Euros three weeks ago which should be $200 or so and it runs games from last year smoothly with the highest detail settings. So the older games should not be a problem at all and current games at lower resolution and quality settings as well.