another video card question

[man]

Im finally going to get a video card. I have intel integrated graphics and my frame rate sucks. I don't know the motherboard name or anything. I have a Dell dimension 2350, pentium 4, 256 mb ram. Went to wal- mart to see what they have. I saw Nvidia 5200, 5600 by asylum, and pny. 5600 is $200. 5200 is $150. So, whats a good card for $150, doesn't have to be those, just getting ideas. I would like to get 75 frames per second or better while playing online. Also, I'm going to get 512 mb ddram pc2100. Should that help my frames any? thanks.

[accord 4 me]

ati 9600 xt www.pricewatch.com

or go to best buy and get the pro..the xt is faster tho

Bestbuy (in store) has ATi's Radeon 9600SE for $130 plus free Half-Life 2 game (when available). Instead of 9600SE, the 9600 Pro is inside certain boxes. You will have to look at the serial number listed outside of the box to determine which card is inside. Thanks to quad3d@work & hkgonra.

180336X = pro
180339X = pro
180340X = Non pro
180338X = Non pro

[5gencivic]

i'll agree with that 100%. stay away from the newer generation of nvidia cards. just like the radeon 8500 was problematic the newer nvidia cards aren't performing like they should. the 9600pro is the shit as far as price/performance goes right now.

[ninjacookies]

9600 pro's are pretty nice BUT.

I dunno.

I'd probably take my chances and opt out for a 9500 non pro. You can get them for like 130 shipped now, and if you email some sellers on pricewatch that carry it (I know buyxtremegear carries the 'special' ones), then you, my friend, have a very good chance at having yourself a 9700 for the price of a 9500.

What you'll want to ask is for the '9500 non pros with the 'L' memory configuration. It doesn't matter what color the board is...can be black/red/green...whatever...you just want the 'L' memory configuration, as opposed to the 'straight inline' memory configuration. If you look at pics you'll see what I mean. (memory are the little 4 black chips found to the right of the chipset/fan. People have been having good fortune with buyxtremegear . A 9700 non pro will kick a 9600's ass or 9500's ass to shreds, due to it's 8 pipelines and 256 bit structure.

Look here for details of the simple software procedure to change the card and what to look for

http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/faq.php

9600's cannot be modded, no matter what. Worst comes to worse, even if you do get a 9500 with straight line memory, you can still mod it to a 9500 pro (like me) and those give some pretty damn impressive numbers as well.

You really can't lose if you go with either cards though.

Good luck.