Best option for Gaming card

[damien c]

good point didnt really notice the cpu till now i did look this morning but didnt look properly yeah a 4670 will do.

[Dai]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

dude the machine does not need a card that good. The 4670 will be more than adequate. What size screen and what res does it run at also needs to be asked

Zing - didn't the Radeon drivers have trouble with some older games recently?

I thought I remembered seeing reports of Spearhead and a couple of other games crashing out.

I have no idea I aint played anything old in ages

[Uncle Peter]

If GT Legends, BF2, Civ IV and BF1942 are classed as old(ish) then they work fine on my 4850. I'm going to have a dabble with X3 over the Christmas period so will let you know if there are any issues with that.

[Matth]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...46&lc=en&cc=us
Looks like a HP/Compaq special motherboard, and if that's the machine, anything more than a middle of the road card would need a PSU upgrade.

Replacing an X1300Pro, you should be safe with a HD4650 and might be able to get away with a 4670

http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=264 - Relative power usage of quite a range of cards.

[boroboi]

all of which i stated at the beginning of the thread lol...

---------- Post added at 22:30 ---------- Previous post was at 22:29 ----------

Originally Posted by chrisjones

Thanks for the friendly help - So im looking for the 4670, do you know the best place to pick it up?

I mainly shop at Ebuyer, OCUK and Novatech, but it would best to shop around for the best price on some other hardware sites, like scan, aria for example.

You should find it for around £50 - 65 though.

Doesn't matter about brand, go for the cheapest 4670 you can find.

[chrisjones]

Thanks for all your help guys
Picked up a Radeon HD 4670 today, around the £65 mark so you were right there. The installation guide says Windows (im running XP) will ask for my Windows CD during installation, is this correct? Ive never had a Windows CD as the machine came pre-installed.
Should I go ahead and install anyway?

Sorry for the noob questions, ive installed pretty much everything else in a PC other than a new GFX card! haha.

uninstall old drivers download new drivers from ATI. Shut down ,install card boot to windows and stop all the found new hardware blar blar and run the installer you got from ATI

[chrisjones]

ahhh got impatient and gave it a go myself. Didnt think to uninstall the old drivers, but I replaced the card, ignored the 'Found new hardware' box and installed via the ati disk in the box.

Is it worth searching for and removing the old drivers?

[boroboi]

You shouldn't have a problem installing over the old ones but it's been known to happen.

If you do encounter problems, uninstall all drivers and restart in safe mode. Run Drivercleaner and delete any of the files it detects, then simply reboot and install the latest drivers (Catalyst 8.12) or the ones from the CD.

[chrisjones]

As it would happen ive lost all sound, ive tried a re-boot but to no avail. Any idea if its a quick fix?

it may have defaulted to the sound chip on the gfx default back in sound props

[chrisjones]

ah ive just noticed its not even listing an audio device..

and this was all working before?

[chrisjones]

Yeah
Think I sussed it. Changed the sound settings in bios from 'auto' to 'on' in the onboard sound option.

That sound sensible?