PCI card woth buying?

[JonnyK]

i have a family member who loves the sims. so after buying the sims 2 and installing it on her pc and on mine, she now is like "omgz gimme ur 6800GT!!11" but she doesn't want to spend 1k on a new rig just for the sims 2, it's the only game she plays.

so, her current pc is about a 2 year old hp

1.6 celeron
less than or maybe 512 ram (not sure how much)
onboard graphics
no AGP slot

so the only solution is to swap out everything, basically build a new box. or to get a pci graphics card. so how much is one going to help make her sims look/run better, right now it's very choppy and the characters just look like they are from the sims 1.

i saw they have like, radeon 9200se's with 128 mb but i wasn't sure if you could actually use what that card has through a pci slot. would something like an mx440 make much difference in the game?

thanks for any suggestions/help.

 

[Nomad]

I believe that you can find 9500s that are PCI. If so - that would be the best bet. ANYTHING that you buy is going to be better than the onboard graphics accellerator.

If you can't find one of those - then either the 9200s or one of the MX440s would be solid choices. It will make a difference to her overall system speed as well - as onboard chips do not normally have their own memory store. They use the memory that is used by the OS, etc.

 

[Slava]

There is Nvidia FX 5500 in pci version. Take a look at that if you cant find 9500 pci.

 

[tree_]

Any card will be a large difference. I suggest finding the 9500 if possible.

 

[JonnyK]

just got done installing the $99 5500 128 mb pci card. she says it's a lot better than it was before. and the mirrors actually reflect stuff! lol. so that helped more than i thought it would.

 

[Dan_D]

A 5200 is a decent choice even compared to a 9200.