Help picking new video card please...

[flyswatta]

Check craigslist for an ati 9600 or ati x700 or faster. Search for agp ati or agp nvdia. You could probably pick up one up that way for cheap and save yourself some money to put towards your new rig.

Actually, that's exactly what I did - There were some cards for a good deal, but I decided to try to save some cash and threw out a trade offer. Someone offered me an ATI x800 for my (old) broken laptop that was gathering dust. Just throw out what you're looking for and what you have to trade - you never know what people are interested in and have laying around.

[K.S.]

Look out, party crasher comin' through...
...
But otherwise, every dollar you spend on this is a dollar thrown away. When you can get a decent PCIe motherboard for $50-ish and a decent cpu for $50-ish and a decent PCIe card for $50-ish, the total is somewhere around $150-ish, and it will play HD. Well, ok, it will need DDR2 memory, too, which is currently pretty cheap.
...
Just sayin'.

that's exactly what i thought after reading the first posts

Deusxmachina :
I know, I really do know this computer is a lost cause.
What I want to do, is have this one running decent, and buy a nice new case, and start building the HD machine into that. ( I have to watch my spending and spread it out over a few months.)

I just think for now i could benefit from a better card, and then once the HD machine is running, sell it on ebay or something.

if you allready know you want to build a new HD machine, why throw away money for stuff you won't need in 6 months? if it's really a nuisance meanwhile, get an used card like the radeon 9550 but don't expect much of a boost in performance. i'd guess your machine is just to slow & has not enough RAM for PVRX2, no matter what GPU you stick in.

i also want to build up a new client, the old one is to slow for PVRX2, it's barelly enough for the old interface
spreading the money expense over some time period doesn't make much sense if building a new machine. the only thing that might make sense to buy first is the new case...
what i'm doing at the moment: waiting for AMD to anounce its 780G chipset & gigabyte to build a decent MB with that chipset with integrated graphics. after that's hit the market i'm gonna get it & some cheap (& low consumption) AMD CPU (i.e. BE2400) + 1-2GB of RAM. at first i've planned to get the GigaByte MA69GM-S2H (AMD 690G chipset) but due to some money shortage at the moment i'm postponing that expense & hopefully take the better HW in the end

[sonoma03]

If you think you still want a graphics card for your current PC, you might also consider this XFX GeForce 6200 card with 256 MB memory from Buy.com that is currently available for $37.24 after rebate. AGP 8x cards are supposed to work in AGP 4x slots, although they will only run at 4x.
http://www.buy.com/prod/xfx-geforce-6200...38367.html

[flyswatta]

If you think you still want a graphics card for your current PC, you might also consider this XFX GeForce 6200 card with 256 MB memory from Buy.com that is currently available for $37.24 after rebate. AGP 8x cards are supposed to work in AGP 4x slots, although they will only run at 4x.
http://www.buy.com/prod/xfx-geforce-6200...38367.html

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that. I believe all of the 8x boards are supposed to be 4x compatible. Of course, you should verify that fact with any board that you purchase

I know that replacing a 4x ATI 7500 with an 8x ATI x800 made a HUGE difference in CPU usage while watching HD (even in 4x mode), but also bear in mind that it was an AMD 2100+ system.

[thetmaxx]

Ok, so I went with an SAPPHIRE / ATI Radeon 9550 256M AGP 8x. It is an OEM card, I won it for $25 on eBay. I remembered I had an $25 eBay gift card, so that paid for it! The AGP 8x worked perfectly in my old 4x system. It has an on board fan, but I didn't notice any increase in noise levels.

The moment of truth was when I tried to launch PVRX2... and it worked perfectly! I am so happy now! Everything seems to be working fine except my full screen DVD's will only play in wide screen. but i'm sure i can find a fix for this. otherwise my computer seems to be operating faster now with the load taken off the CPU. maybe it's in my head, but it seems faster...

Thanks to everyone for your inputs. I'm sure i'll be needing plenty more when it comes time to order parts for a new system. for now I think i'm going to try to find a bigger HD tv.

[Bathman]

thetmaxx

Glad to Hear everything is working well. Could you tell me what codec you are using for playback

[thetmaxx]

I downloaded powerDVD's codecs. I am using the codecs only, not the powerDVD software (through some process i found on the net to install codecs on their own) anyways, for regular TV it's just set to system default. but if i launch the old gbpvr, my DVD's playback full screen as normal. I was going to try another codec, I don't know which one to go after though. I think nvidia has one of their own some guys use.