Recently bought basic system (Asus p4 3.0 Gig 256 ram xp ) never bothered with graphics card just used onboard. My daughter has been given 'Sims 2' game and am wondering what sort of card i should be looking for to be able to run this game. The manual states should have a Direct X 9 compatible card, T&L capable with 32 meg ram such as NVdia Geforce 2, nvdia quadro etc. Im blown away
Any advice would be great
Cheers Y'all

Can you give us an exact model number for the PC? If we can get the specs for the on-board graphics, you might actually find that it's already capable. Other than that, any decent new graphics card that has 64Mb RAM on it ought to be OK. You can go higher than that if you want - graphics cards with 128Mb RAM can be bought for as little as £60 ($100) and you can get up to 256Mb for top-end gaming systems. However, I'm guessing that that's not what you intended the system for as you described it as "basic" and it's only got 256Mb RAM for the entire system.

Also bear in mind that on-board graphics chips normally share the main system memory, i.e. that 256Mb RAM that you've got. If the on-board graphics is set to use 32Mb, then that only leaves 224Mb for the rest of the system. A separate graphics card will have its own dedicated memory.

Good well-known brands are Nvidia and ATi. If you particularly want to have this game working as well as possible and they recommend Nvidia cards but don't mention ATi, then it's Nvidia that you should get. Some games work well on one but not the other (so I've heard). Also note that some manufacturers make cheaper graphics cards using Nvidia and ATi chipsets. These are generally perceived to not be as good as paying slightly more and getting a full-blown all-Nvidia or all-ATi card.

Confused?! Sorry, I was trying to make it clearer!

My advice would be to get either a ATI Radeon 7000 64mb DDR or nVidia Geforce FX 5200 either 128mb or 256mb editions, these cards are low spec and low budget, but will do the job of playing the likes of Half Life 2 & Doom 3 (on low resoltuion)... etc

The cheapest place I've seen them is on - www.ebuyer.co.uk

Just be sure to check the box, if it meantions nVidia or ATI then go for a card made by that manufacter, but remember not all games want the same card.



Regards
_____
Meck

Can any 256Mb graphics card really be called "low spec" ?!

I do agree with you about the Radeon 7000 - I've never used one for games but I've installed a couple in new PCs that I've built and I've been really impressed with them in general Windows use, particularly at such a low cost

The 256mb FX5200 card is classed as low spec card by the likes of Doom 3 and Half Life 2, as I can't play tham on my 128mb Personal Cinema verison

But it's general put in the catagory as its been superseeded by the likes of ATI Radeon 9600XT, X850XT and nVidia 660GT.


Regards
_____
Meck