Graphics Cards- Win7.

Get something from the Radeon HD 4000 or 5000 series.

bobkn said:

What kind of hardware interface? PCI-Express, AGP, PCI? (In case you're unfamiliar, PCI-Express is entirely different from PCI, and incompatible with it.)

If it's PCI-E, the cards at the high end of your price range (best 3D gaming performance, and DX11 support) use the AMD/ATI HD 5770 chipset. The 5750 is slightly less powerful, and less expensive. They may be a little hard to get at the moment: I think they use 40nm TSMC chips, and that fab has been having a little trouble keeping up with the demand.

If all you need is Aero Glass support, rather less expensive cards are available (nVidia Geforce 8400 based is about the minimum that supports DX10).

I'm looking more into 3D gaming thanks for your help but how can I tell if the graphics cards are compatible?

bobkn said:

Oops. Forgot to check the system specs tab.

Right: one PCI-E X16 slot. (It may not be PCI-E 2.0, but I believe that all PCI-E 2.0 cards are backwards compatible.)

I'd still suggest the ATI HD57xx cards. It probably isn't worth a price premium to get the latest technology, but I've noticed in the past that prices of the previous generation (HD4xxx) tend not to drop when the new tech comes to market. For example: a 4770 with a 750 Mhz core clock, 640 stream processors, and 512MB of 800 MHz memory at 800 MHz sells (www.newegg.com) for about $110 and up. A 5750 with a 700 MHz core clock, 720 stream processors, and 1GB of 1150 MHz RAM sells for $145. That's not a trivial price difference, but the 5750 would be superior at higher resolutions, and it's DX11 as well.

I tend to prefer nVidia's drivers, but I believe that ATI/AMD has the price/performance lead in hardware at the moment.

One caveat: I see that the OP's system board has onboard graphics. I hope there's a BIOS setting to disable that. I have read postings from people having trouble getting discrete graphics cards working properly in systems with onboard graphics that couldn't be explicitly disabled. A quick check online didn't reveal whether the system has such a BIOS setting.

Thanks for the help and quick response- I'll have a look into the graphics cards you suggestes paticuarly as I've never bought anything from ATI/AMD before.

thefabe said:

From the looks of the board Core - Denver 10 Motherboard - spec_denver10 - Information and Instructions - iMedia - platform_amadeus_imedia - Desktop It has a PCI-e slot so I would suggest any of the 4XXx series ATI cards or a gtx250 Nvidia. should be close to your price range. Fabe

Thanks as well for the help! The transistion from one graphics card to the next should be quite smooth anyway as there is the upgrade slot!

Just remember, you can't run simultaneous video cards of multiple vendors, meaning you can't run an ATI and a nVidia card at the same time. Unless you buy one of the boards coming out next year with the Lucid Logic Hydra chip on it.

Zen00 said:

Just remember, you can't run simultaneous video cards of multiple vendors, meaning you can't run an ATI and a nVidia card at the same time. Unless you buy one of the boards coming out next year with the Lucid Logic Hydra chip on it.

so when i put (for example) an AMD card in my computer the Nvidia one gets overidden and I can't use it at all. But if i stuck an Nvidia one in I could use both?