Low Budget Vid Card

[madflava54]

I got a desktop sitting at home. It's like a P4 2.6 and 1gig of ram on a 7200 HD. I don't use it but I guess when I am home, I would like to game. I don't care for beautiful graphics, but simply just want to play games like FEAR with some beauty, but not the best. Anythign below $50 you guys can suggest?

 

[Lord_Exodia]

I coulnd't think of a single card to run fear under $50.00 that would make the game playable(above 30fps) with all the settings on low. Sry

 

[air2k5]

The least would be $100 for 9800pro or you might be able to buy used for a bit less.
Here check this out it is refurbished and it can run FEAR, but it is $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102362R

 

[name]

Might want to look at one of the new 256mb 6600's from XFX. They seem to overclock to 6600GT speeds and beyond and they only cost $100 - w/ a full copy of Far Cry. Hot Hardware got their card to a stable 515 core, 885 memory.

Couple of Links:

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/geforce6600ddr2/
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=744&cid=2

You aren't going to be cranking up the settings, but in the price range you described you can't expect too much. Still, it runs FEAR at 1024x768 and Quake 4 at 1280x1024, no AA/AF.

 

[SPARTAN VI]

At $50? GeForce4 Ti4x00. If you can find one. Wont play anything like FEAR, but that's what $50 can get ya.

 

[needmorecarnitine]

A Radeon 8500 will handle it. Get one with 128MB of video memory

 

[kurt454]

I had a Ti4600 that played FarCry at medium settings pretty well. Don't know how it would have fared playing FEAR.

 

[Kek]

64MB GeForce(TM) 4 Ti or Radeon(R) 9000 video card

So a GF4 Ti card will run it, according to them. In my personal opinion, F.E.A.R. is playable with <30fps in single player, but then I made use of bullet time a lot.