Best PCI video card

J

joecool234

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2001
Messages
433
I know this topic may be a little outdated, but it's rightfully so. If many of you follow [H]otDeals, you may be familiar with the Dell SC420. Well it's Dell's dirt cheap entry-level server. Unfortunately, it has no support for 3d acceleration and lacks an AGP slot. The pcie 8x slot can be modded to pcie 16x slot, but that's not the route I want to take. I simply want to add a PCI graphics card. So now my questions:

1) ATI or Nvidia...I've seen the ATI 9250, NV 5700LE, NV 52000 come in PCI flavors...are there others in the same or higher class?
2) 64MB, 128MB, 256MB?
3) Has anyone tried using a pci card in this exact server? The only reason I ask is that some people have had issues (ie, BSOD) with using NV cards in the pcie slot.

This card is going to be used, more than likely, at a resolution of 800x600 for games like HL, HL2, Sims 1&2, Rise of Nations, and maybe Doom3. I tried to find reviews and benchmarks for the pci versions of these cards, but haven't had much luck. Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Well, I dont think you'll ever be happy gaming on any PCI slot video card. It'll have a hard time no matter what. But the best performer out of the one's you pointed on is probably the NV 5700LE, with the Radeon 9250 coming in next, and the 5200 is dead last. I'd stay away from the 5200 at all cost, its juts a crappy card.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-411&depa=1

A much better deal than the one Meanie posted, there's no reason ever for a PCI card to have 256mb of memory, it'll simply never have any use for it. 128mb is all you'll need and 64mb would still be useful on a PCI slot card, just because a PCI card will have a hard time pushing the pixels for anything to take up that much memory.
 
Since a PCI bus is 32bit @ 33Mhz, doesnt that add up to about 260 Mega-bits per second of bandwidth? If so, the PCI video gaming will be slow no matter how much ram or Mhz the card has.
 
None the less, the poster isn't asking "PCI good or bad?".
He is asking for the best PCI card. All of which now-a-days are better then onboard.
If you can't stay on topic, there is no need to shit in his thread.


 
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