Upgrade recommendations

[David Hare-Scott]

I recently bought a new PC which is mainly used for internet browsing,
email, wordprocessing and a few old strategy games. It's a core 2 duo
2.5ghz, 2gig RAM with Intel G33/31 integrated graphics, it has a spare PCI
Ex16 slot. For the intended use it is just fine and I have been quite happy
with it. One of my old games is Civilization and version II runs just fine.
About two months ago a little devil whispered in my ear that Civilization IV
was a good new version and had better game play, so I bought it and now I am
enjoying it. This is where the problem comes in. The machine was never
intended for modern games and their demanding graphics plus I didn't realise
that Civ IV was going to be very demanding of graphics as it is a few years
old and a strategy game. I can play but it is a bit jerky even with the
graphics options turned down a fair bit.

So my question is what video card would be an appropriate upgrade? I am not
after mind-blowing latest and greatest but a *cost effective* upgrade for
the purpose. There is still no chance of me wanting to play shooters and
action games at 100 frames/sec.

David

 

[Oliver Nowak]

David Hare-Scott drückte sich sehr genau aus :

So my question is what video card would be an appropriate upgrade? I am not
after mind-blowing latest and greatest but a *cost effective* upgrade for the
purpose. There is still no chance of me wanting to play shooters and action
games at 100 frames/sec.

A new and very fast mainstream (around US$99) graphics card from
AMD/ATI is about to be released in the coming days: the Radeon HD 4770.
Have a look at some of the articles already avaliable on the web:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Radeon+HD+4770+review&btnG=Search


HTH,
O.