Is this video card compatible?

Recently I had issues playing LOTR Conquest for PC, it seems the audio, and game itself work fine, but I have pixel shader 2.0 and the min requirements are 3.0 shader so I have no video just a black screen. I want to buy a new graphics card, but I'm not too savvy with graphics card hardware. I researched quite a bit and I think this card should be able to work with my PC: Card 1

but I am not sure if this one will work as it is DDR2 (just in case please let me know): Card 2

Also here are the specs for my computer: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=env&cc=us&docname=c00571922
I have an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Series video card right now and according to my PC I have one PCI-Express slot open and several PCI slots open. I have an upgraded 1.5GB DDR PC3200 Memory with 3.7 GHz processor AMD Athlon. Everything runs smooth on the comp except the video card is a bit outdated.

I would appreciate if anyone could help me out, and since I have not bought a graphics card before I would like to know if the two cards above are decent quality for their price, but if you have any suggestions for video cards please let me know, I'm looking for a small price range though, nothing fancy.

Also one more thing, is it possible to run 2 video cards at the same time because I have more than enough slots? thanks.

 

Hello & welcome to Major Geeks,

I suggest you run this to take a look at the specs of the game vs your pc: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

Well you said nothing fancy & both the FX 6600 & 8400 are both... crap :-D, but if you want to run the game on minimum settings they should play the game.

I would suggest something a little more... Premeium to play it well such as the GeForce 8600GT by XFX you can get either the 256MB,512MB or 1024MB ver, I personally had the 512MB ver and it was great. As you can see they are both basically the same although the one on the leaft has DDR3 memory & a better memory clock : http://www.xfxforce.com/en-gb/ShoppingTools/ProductComparison.aspx

They are old cards so if you can find them they should be cheap

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

Thanks for the fast reply, however I have already checked "Can You Run It?" and the game Lord of the Rings Conquest is not listed yet (released in Jan 2009).

Also I am not sure if I would be able to run a video card with DDR3 memory, can you clarify that for me?

 

yes, you can run a video card with DDR3 memory. I would also suggest an 8600 as a good budget card.

 

Oh okay, so it won't hog too much power or require extra fan or anything, or memory, etc?

I was under the impression a DDR can only run DDR (not DDR3 or DDR2). Thanks, I'll take a look.

 

ddr is your ram that your motherboard uses the video has its own ram and is designed to use it independently

 

I can run The Lord Of The Rings: Conquest and I have a ATI (Sapphire) Radeon HD 4870 1GB, with GDDR5 so you'll be fine :-D

Temps wise i'd wait and see if it's hot mine was quite cool considering it was an nVidia lol

It's definately cheap though, mine was 80GBP back in Feb 08 :-D, and power wise it's not part of the new wave of power hungry GPU's so you "should" be fine.



:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

a 4870's a bit overkill for a single core system- but I agree, it should run LOR just fine

 

I still havnt played LOTR CONQUEST....but im going to pwn everyone on it.

 

Okay I took your guys advice and bought an EVGA GeForce 8600 GT DDR3 PCIe card, I checked the sys requirements and it says 300watts so I hope it will work since my pc power supply is exactly 300watts.

But I believe my ATI Radeon Xpress 200 is an onboard graphics card, I read that you can allow this to run as well as the GeForce but I am not sure as other websites say you should disable it.

So do I run both at the same time or disable the ATI, and to disable the ATI graphics card I just go to device manager and disable right? no need to uninstall the ATI drivers?

 

It should auto disable, all mobo's i've had with on-board graphics have done so.

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

The 300W means that the graphics card needs that by itself. You need a bigger power supply to get the full potential from the computer, and possibly to avoid breaking it.

I would recommend at least a 500W power supply from a company such as Antec. It should be about £45 for a good Antec 500W.

 

A nice heavy power supply :-D

Weight = quality.

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

actually the rating they put on the cards is what they recommend minimum for whole system hence you see (as an example) 300w for 1 and 450w for SLI.

 

I would still go big, it will last far longer if it's more powerful.

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

That's funny, I found my exact same question (I didn't post this) on yahoo answers:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071105231529AApFDPt

I also checked with 4 different power supply calculators, it said I should be fine running the 8600GT, but if it doesn't seem to work, or if I can tell it's messing up my PC when I use it, I will mostly likely upgrade.

 

I'm just thinking about the longevity of the PSU, a good one will last you years. I had an old CoolerMaster 400W for 6 years :-D

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

Okay so my card came in the mail today. I installed everything and I can play LOTR Conquest, COD 4, etc.

It seems to be working fine, I downloaded Everest ultimate edition to check the temp's and when playing Conquest it get's pretty high the GPU diode is in the 70's range (I believe Celsius) and the CPU diode in the 60's range. The motherboard, CPU, and 2 HDD's don't seem to go above 40 degrees too often. When playing WC3, COD 4, Battle for Middle Earth, etc. the temp doesn't ever go higher than 60 (70 max for COD 4) for GPU diode. For COD4 the CPU diode doesn't go higher than 60 in gameplay. At normal usage i.e. browsing web or playing video files the temp never goes above 40 for all of them.

So far it seem smooth however I do have two questions:
1. I have the DVI-VGA adapter but my monitor doesn't seem to be DVI since it looks basically the same as VGA, is there a way to check if it is DVI or not? It's an HPvs17 monitor with a vga input but the GeForce card has a dvi output.
2. When I play the Conquest game the sound glitches sometimes in the intro and sometimes in the cut scenes? Although, the game play is all perfect/lag/glitch free.

Overall I think LOTR Conquest is a game beast...

 

Those temps are a little high but within the hardware's green/yellow zone :-D

As for the sound issue, try updating your sound driver. LOTR Conquest is... short, it's mildly entertaining considering it is based on the Star Wars Batllefront games it is awful. There aren't enough AI NPC's for my liking, I mean in Helms Deep there were 10,000 Uruk-Hi but in the game there is not even the feeling of that many. I think at least there should have been fake arrows flying around.

Ok this is turning into a reveiw LOL, basically online play is the savouring feture of the game. But I am glad everything save the sound seems fine

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

The sound glitch you describe may be caused by the processor and the sound chip not being able to keep up with the sound, assuming that you are using the motherboard;s sound. I would recommend purchasing an inexpensive sound card, such as a SoundBlaster xtreme audio OEM.

 

Hate to bring this up but I'm planning on building an entirely new PC, I'm going to get an AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE AM3. However, as I was looking for motherboards on Newegg, the ones that support socket AM3 that are $100 or less include ATI Radeon 3300 or 3200 HD onboard video cards, but my GeForce 8600 GT is better than those.

Thus the lowest motherboard price that doesn't have an onboard graphics card is 125$-129$. I could sell my GeForce on Ebay for 35-40$ but then I would have to stick with the lower end ATI 3200/3300 HD cards. Any suggestions on what I should do?

 

Get a Phenom II quad core for starters the X3's suck & buy an ATI card onboards always suck, they are not meant for gaming just HD video playback & basic photo editing. The 8600GT is extremely dated now, I got rid of mine a 2 years ago because it couldn't handle high resolutions at all budget cards never do. I would go for a mid rage ATI card with a Phenom II atm.

Start a new thread with a budget & the PC's use and I can help you out

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

EDIT(After 10 mins): I am not sure if this has a video card or not, tried searching online and product manufacturers site with no avail, I don't think it does but can anyone clarify: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128387?

EDIT 2: I don't really play Crysis or any high end games so I think an 8600GT will suffice, well as far as I've had it hasn't given me probs. But as far as the Phenom II X3 goes, the 720 BE that I plan to get can be overclocked to 2.8Ghz to 3.6GHz with a simple BIOS multiplier change with almost no frequency change (as I've read). And I am planning a budget build no more than $600 so Quad Core would be out of my range.

 

Please Ratman2050 you're not supposed to "hijack" someone else's thread, if you start a new thread & put a budget & a use I can spec you out a system that would be perfect.

FYI X3 Phenom & Phenom II's really are a waste of money wither stick with a dual core or go quad.

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

1. This is my own thread :-D
2. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1323268

 

I run a 8600GT on a 300 Watt hipro (Crap) power supply on a HP pc and it seems to run it with no issues but i don't know if it is going to crap out soon.