best video card for 50 or under.

[raztat]

im looking to get my bro a video card for under 50, dont got to be fancy but it must be pci. He has a newer comp that came with shitty on board video, it barely runs half life 1. The processor and ram is decent, I want him to be able to run the source engine cause he is very interested in left 4 dead, portal, and css. Please help me find the best video card.

[fox099]

um, you dont have an agp or pcie slot? you really dont have any options if you just want pci. also, what are the details on the rest of the system?

[Mozgus]

I dont think you'll find anything on PCI that can run source at all. Not for under $50. In fact the prices on the higher end PCI cards only went up in recent years, due to rarity.

[Droid party]

Are there really boards still in existence that only have pci. I'm wondering if maybe that is only an oversight by Raztat.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102726

If you do have pci-e this should cover you, although I have one in my media centre pc and while it is outstanding for that purpose it does leave alot to be desired in the way of gaming.

I do however play Bioshock on it (using an x360 controller) and it handles that just fine at 1280-720 res with everything at high.

[raztat]

You know what. I think I meant pci-e. My bad, my mistake.

[Mozgus]

You know what. I think I meant pci-e. My bad, my mistake.

Oh well then you're totally fine. $50 may still be stretching it for a L4D capable card though.

[lordofduct]

You know what. I think I meant pci-e. My bad, my mistake.

You might want to double check that one...

Both of my roommates were in need of cards. One of them said, "I'm certain its a AGP, blah blah blah." Nope it was a PCI-e.

And then the other said, "yeah I gots that PCI-e, blah blah blah." Sure enough I crack it open and he doesn't even have AGP... just 3 PCI slots and that was it.


Luckily in both situations it was me installing cards I just had in the house already. If I had ordered cards for them, I first would of double checked, and second I would have smacked them.



As for your L4D question. That all depends on what your brother expects to be "playable quality". Keep in mind, Moz expects to run things at mid to high settings... you know you do Moz. But not everyone is really that concerned.

I'm on Linux and have ran L4D through Wine and through VMware. This is through DX8 to OpenGL emulation and all that fun sort. I have a very nice video card (a Geforce 7950GX2 dual GPU with a gig of GRAM), but I only run the game using one of the cores, and I have VMware and Wine configured to use only one of my CPUs. It don't run great, but with the settings put down low enough it isn't bad at all and very playable. I had the settings around low to mid and I do have the resolution up high still because my desktop is 2560x1600 and wine doesn't full screen nicely... so I play it as a window on my desktop. So if the resolution is low, I get a very small image... so high res it has to be. VMware full screens better, but I don't like playing it on there, VMware is very nice for running a guest OS for a multi-app job. But for playing just a video game I find Wine does a far better job and is a lot better at handling DX.

So if both can play at a tolerable rate, I'd assume a ok PCI-e card should handle the job "ok". It'll leave you wanting a bit more, but it ain't like it's unplayable.

To anyone out there with Linux and never used Wine... oh God... it's annoying as hell to configure and deal with. Steam has a lot of bugs!!!!

[Mozgus]

Keep in mind, Moz expects to run things at mid to high settings... you know you do Moz. But not everyone is really that concerned.

No, not that high. Just not the bare minimum settings either. If you're the kinda person who thought HL2 looked fine on the original Xbox, for example, just be glad you have no standards in life and can enjoy things so much more than me. But if you need to at least see things that resemble textures and lighting, without it being a slideshow, there's probably nothing for $50.

[raztat]

im pretty sure he would be fine with the lowest setting. Hes not a graphic whore, hes a find a fun game and play it 1000 times whore.

[RackGaki]

Hes not a graphic whore, hes a find a fun game and play it 1000 times whore.

I'm jealous. Actually, that's what I'm aiming for, slowly but surely.

I've had enough of playing the next big game just because everyone else is.