Upgrading Video Card, need some help

Well my computer use to be awsome about 3 years ago, but you know how that goes. I have been having a lot of trouble with my video card not being powerful enough, and it has recently hit the breaking point with World of Warcraft. I have the settings down to the lowest with 800x600 and I cant go anywhere without a lot of lag. I also have to use really old drivers or else my screen will glitch up .

The video card I currently have is a GeForce 2 GTS 64mB.
I just want to spend enough money so I can run WoW at a good resolution and not have to upgrade for around a year or so. So im hoping I can get a card for under 80$ or even better less. Does anyone know what I should get? I was thinking of getting a GeForce 4 TI 4200 128mB or a GeForce 4 TI 4600 128mB if I can find it. My friend has the ti4600 and he gets a good FPS at 1024x960. My computer right now is as follows :

AMD XP 1800+
512mB SDRAM PC133
PCHIPS mobo
GeForce 2 GTS 64mB

So I am assume my bottleneck is the video card, anyone have any suggestions on what a good CHEAP video card is?

 

Well obviously, the more you pay the better you get. Personally, I'd look at something along the lines of a 5200 or a 5900. Also running an AMD xp @ 1800 might be lagging too, would boost that up to something like a 2800 or even go to an athlon 64. If you can say how much you want to spend then we can look around

 

It's mainly the video card that would be the bottleneck, although your motherboard and RAM don't help with only PC133 memory and bus.

If you only want to spend $80, there's no point in buying a new card as they won't be able to run a lot of games.

Look for something second-hand in the BUY & SELL forum, or try local computer fairs or second-hand computer stores.

Places like eBay may also be an option, but that can be a bigger risk.

 

It could be your connection,slow server or your cpu,you can check this by trying different servers,seeing if it changes when there are less people online or lowering detail option in your gfx card and game options.

 

You have to be joking "it could be the cpu"

If he has an AMD XP 1800+, and even though the other specs aren't the greatest for gaming, the most probable cause out of that equation would be his GeForce 2 video card.

 

You're right to look at the GeForce 4 Ti series--since those are about the only decent cards you are going to get in that price range. they will not hold out well on you for another year if you wish to play advanced games, though.

the ti4200 or 4600 should let you play WoW a bit better, but for more advanced games, the rest of your system will begin to limit you.

i understand you are tight on money, but you cant expect a good card in 'this' time for $80, expecially when you are upgrading from a card that was $200 'in it's time'

as Insomniac said, you're best looking on forums, friends, craigslist, or dare I say ebay? (especially since the Ti series retail for over $160 due to unavailibility now)

 

The amount of people on the server is directly related to the power of your cpu,I dont know exactly how world of warcraft works "and I'm not gonna research it"But I know its a massive online multiplayer to me that means alot of other players for the cpu to deal with.I play Call of duty united offensive,on my old system with an xp1900 with 32 players online I had to turn all the detail down to make the framerates acceptable to me,so it looks like a gfx card problem but isnt,I plugged my 6800gt in to see if it made any difference and "nada" I still had to turn all the detail down to make it playable.

Obviously the card is the weak link,my point is replacing it might not get rid of the Lag as "lag" as I know it is caused by a poor connection or slow cpu,but I agree a new video card is needed and a gf4 ti is the way to go.

 

My point is that the card is the bottleneck, and whether it fixes the issue with this particular game or not really shouldn't be the decider.

Running a GeForce 2 with an AMD XP 1800+ is not a very good combination.

A GeForce 4 would be an ideal match for the current system, regardless of World of Warcraft.

 

"I just want to spend enough money so I can run WoW at a good resolution and not have to upgrade for around a year or so"

I just dont want him to be dissapointed.That said I think a new video card is the right way to go.

 

Its definatly not the servers although I do play on a really high pop server. It is FPS lag that I get. Such as it freezes and im getting 2FPS in many places. Arrgg it is unbearable at times.

 

Yeh m8 I think a new card is definatly needed,one way to check for sure to rule out everything is to go onto an empty server "if you can with wow" or wander around offline and see if the framerate is improved I'm just offering other Ideas as to the lag there may be other factors.

What connection do you have and what is your ping?

 

Well the ping varies, but latency should not affect FPS. Im fairly sure I know the differance between server and client lag, and I believe this is all client side. I also just noticed that my HDD that is ATA/100 is running at ATA/33!!! And I have a ATA/133 cable hmm I need to check this out, lol.