Looking at the benchmarks with that card I would say you'd be struggling to play many games released in say the last 4 years at a decent frame p/sec and resolution.
The first link fog provides gives it a benchmark total of 246 which is pretty low IMO. It'd be perfectly fine for watching video but not really for gaming. Basically with gfx cards you get what you pay for. These cards are going for ?20-odd quid so I wouldn't expect a lot from it.
If you're after a gaming PC without breaking the bank I would recommend using what I have: an nVidia GTX 260 (but make sure you can plug one into your motherboard and that you have a *very good* PSU as it'll need it). A quick look on ebay suggest they're going for as little as ?60. In comparison to the card your looking at it has a benchmark of 1,740.
My rig:
CPU: Quad core AMD
RAM: 4GB
GFX: GTX 260 896Mb
It cost about ?350 in total 18 months ago (I reckon I could build it for 200-250 now) and it will play *anything* thrown at it at 1080p resolution with full frame rate.
It rather depends with graphic cards(which is not much help to you in terms of an imediate answer) what is important to you (3d games - ie most games nowadays, I would want good performance in the area of ansiotropic filtering (this can be usually be turned up and down) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering. But given that with most people they want to not replace it for at least a couple of years, and that over that time the minimum requirements will have likely gone up a couple of notches, you need to consider whether it will be struggling when newer games come out. Its all rather interesting - look up benchmarks (GURU 3D give a good run down, though its not the only site) compare with other cards in the same price bracket. There is a sweet spot in terms of price and performance. 3d mark and the like are synthetic benchmarks and don't always tell you what they seem to be telling you, look for benchmarks in actual games.
The list of games that the card can run could be a very long one! It's much easier to find out if the card can run any of the popular games. Go to google and type "can you run it". You will see how useful it is.
It's a low-end card designed primarily for HD playback with only minimal 3D acceleration features from a few years back, so don't expect miracles. That said, it should still play most games on modest enough settings.
Cheers for the answers guys. I bought the card to do a specific job but as it was better than my old card i tried a few games and saw that they ran better so was just wondering how modern i could go.
So it seems its an ok card for the games i was going to play with it which are fallout 3, mass effect and oblivion as long as im using low to medium settings.
Comments
here you go, no idea if what they say is correct though (take note, that discussion was 2 years ago)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091007225659AAaWyse
it normally depends on price.. and they do SE versions of cards, which are cut down.
errm main 2 chipsets are ATI and Nvidia.
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Graphics-Cards-ATI
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Graphics-Cards-Nvidia
reviews might be helpful to you. also look on any new game box to see what the spec is , one of the GTA games wouldn't work on my pc.
I have a decent pci-e card, but need to sort out the money for the rest of the pc..
it depends on your budget and if you want to run 2 monitors etc.
toms hardware is a good site to look at also.
The first link fog provides gives it a benchmark total of 246 which is pretty low IMO. It'd be perfectly fine for watching video but not really for gaming. Basically with gfx cards you get what you pay for. These cards are going for ?20-odd quid so I wouldn't expect a lot from it.
If you're after a gaming PC without breaking the bank I would recommend using what I have: an nVidia GTX 260 (but make sure you can plug one into your motherboard and that you have a *very good* PSU as it'll need it). A quick look on ebay suggest they're going for as little as ?60. In comparison to the card your looking at it has a benchmark of 1,740.
My rig:
CPU: Quad core AMD
RAM: 4GB
GFX: GTX 260 896Mb
It cost about ?350 in total 18 months ago (I reckon I could build it for 200-250 now) and it will play *anything* thrown at it at 1080p resolution with full frame rate.
what with unexpected bills etc I've not got some of the other parts yet.
Solitaire, Minesweeper ect
Here's a video of someone playing Crysis 2 on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luI7yUINIkU
It looks playable enough, but you're not exactly going to be seeing the game at its best.
So it seems its an ok card for the games i was going to play with it which are fallout 3, mass effect and oblivion as long as im using low to medium settings.