Finding a compatible graphics card for a Sony Vaio PC [modified]
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Hi, I hope it's alright to post my question here - I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge. My dad has a Sony Vaio PCV 2236 desktop machine. It's about 5 years old at this point. He wants to buy Empire : Total War but his current graphics card isn't good enough to run the game. Play.com indicates that a '256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Graphics Card with Shader Model 2.0 support' card is required. I've never had to worry about graphics cards before so I was wondering if anyone can suggest where I might begin to look for a suitable one? Specs for his machine can be found here[^]. Thanks, David
modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:08 AM
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Hi, I hope it's alright to post my question here - I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge. My dad has a Sony Vaio PCV 2236 desktop machine. It's about 5 years old at this point. He wants to buy Empire : Total War but his current graphics card isn't good enough to run the game. Play.com indicates that a '256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Graphics Card with Shader Model 2.0 support' card is required. I've never had to worry about graphics cards before so I was wondering if anyone can suggest where I might begin to look for a suitable one? Specs for his machine can be found here[^]. Thanks, David
modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:08 AM
How about http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-ati-radeon-4650-hd-600mhz-1gb-agp-dvi-6458.html?refs=377090000[^] According to http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/hd-4600/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4600-specifications.aspx[^] it the 4650 supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4, so I assume it supports DirectX 9 and Shader Model 2 as well.
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How about http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-ati-radeon-4650-hd-600mhz-1gb-agp-dvi-6458.html?refs=377090000[^] According to http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/hd-4600/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4600-specifications.aspx[^] it the 4650 supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4, so I assume it supports DirectX 9 and Shader Model 2 as well.
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Hi, I hope it's alright to post my question here - I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge. My dad has a Sony Vaio PCV 2236 desktop machine. It's about 5 years old at this point. He wants to buy Empire : Total War but his current graphics card isn't good enough to run the game. Play.com indicates that a '256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Graphics Card with Shader Model 2.0 support' card is required. I've never had to worry about graphics cards before so I was wondering if anyone can suggest where I might begin to look for a suitable one? Specs for his machine can be found here[^]. Thanks, David
modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:08 AM
dlarkin77 wrote:
I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge
Not using a forum isn't the best way to improve its value. Thread moved.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Hi, I hope it's alright to post my question here - I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge. My dad has a Sony Vaio PCV 2236 desktop machine. It's about 5 years old at this point. He wants to buy Empire : Total War but his current graphics card isn't good enough to run the game. Play.com indicates that a '256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Graphics Card with Shader Model 2.0 support' card is required. I've never had to worry about graphics cards before so I was wondering if anyone can suggest where I might begin to look for a suitable one? Specs for his machine can be found here[^]. Thanks, David
modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:08 AM
Depending on the game an AGP 3850 may be faster than a 4650; the cards are approximately the same in performance but have different bottleneck points. These two cards are the fastest available for AGP. ATI hasn't done an AGP card based on the 5xxx series GPUs; nVidia abandoned AGP several generations back. Somewhat broadly speaking old high end GPUs tend to outperform newer midrange GPUs on older games and fall behind on newer ones. That said the ATI 9200 is a old very low end card; so either would be a major upgrade. Toms hardware has decent benchmark tables you can use to compare performance on various games. I had to fall back to older charts to get the 3850. The 4650 doesn't appear to be on any of Tom's benchmark collections but it should be about 20% slower than the 4670. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-q4-mainstream-quality-update-3/benchmarks,69.html[^]
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18