good video card for the price?

You can do a lot better than this one. Especially since it's a deactivated item. 8 series cards are outdated. Look for the GeForce 9 series and 2xx series or the ATI 4xxx series.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130383

how bout that one?

and will it fit my computer?

http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/GTModels/5454/5454sp2.shtml

"anlgp wrote:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130383

how bout that one?

and will it fit my computer?

http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/GTModels/5454/5454sp2.shtml

Not exactly a performance GPU.

I'd recommend the extra cash to get these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102803

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133239

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127383

The 4830 is the best bang for the buck IMO and all should fit your computer.

should run on both windows and linux?

"anlgp wrote:

should run on both windows and linux?

Windows sure. Linux, you should be able to find the right drivers to install somewhere on the web, probably nvidia or amd.com.

what does this mean (the part in bold)?

# Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950

* Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) supports up to 224 MB of video memory

# PCI-Express (PCI-E ×16) slot available for upgrade

That part refers to the video graphics chip located on your motherboard. It has nothing to do with whatever video card you plan to buy.

As for what card is best for you, that depends: how much is your budget, and what do you want to do with the video card?

"Desides wrote:

That part refers to the video graphics chip located on your motherboard. It has nothing to do with whatever video card you plan to buy.

As for what card is best for you, that depends: how much is your budget, and what do you want to do with the video card?

trying to spend less than 100 and i just got oblivion. i don't really game much but it won't play. also; if i find myself getting a bigger monitor at some point (talking 42'') i'd watch movies on it for sure.

that and i just don't want on board stuff...

For under $100, a card that will reliably handle Oblivion will be tough. The Radeon HD4830 suggested earlier is a solid value for the price point, especially if you overclock it, but it has a very tough time sustaining frame rates: you'll fluctuate from as high as 35 to as low as 3, depending on the game. The real trouble is your CPU: the Pentium Dual-Core is a sort of hackjob dual core processor: it's an old Pentium 4 with two cores, but the cores don't share memory, so it's less effective than you would think. I wanted to recommend you go outside your budget a little and pick up a Radeon HD4850 for $150 or so, but I think it'll go to waste with that CPU.

Go with the HD4830. Fits your price range, seems like a good match for your CPU, and you should hopefully get Oblivion running well on the lower settings. If you overclock it (using the Catalyst Control Center program that comes with the drivers) 15-20% above stock speeds, that should really help out. (Warning: don't take it too far.)

"Desides wrote:

For under $100, a card that will reliably handle Oblivion will be tough. The Radeon HD4830 suggested earlier is a solid value for the price point, especially if you overclock it, but it has a very tough time sustaining frame rates: you'll fluctuate from as high as 35 to as low as 3, depending on the game. The real trouble is your CPU: the Pentium Dual-Core is a sort of hackjob dual core processor: it's an old Pentium 4 with two cores, but the cores don't share memory, so it's less effective than you would think. I wanted to recommend you go outside your budget a little and pick up a Radeon HD4850 for $150 or so, but I think it'll go to waste with that CPU.

Go with the HD4830. Fits your price range, seems like a good match for your CPU, and you should hopefully get Oblivion running well on the lower settings.

well what about upgrading the processor?

That would require a new motherboard, as the Core and Core 2 line of CPUs use a different type of CPU socket as the Pentium Dual Core. At that point you would be better off just buying the parts for a budget gaming system, around $500 or so, less if you can recycle items like the power supply, hard drive, and case from your current computer.

IMO, just for Oblivion, it's not worth going to all that trouble, and as a bonus the 4830 will handle movies just fine.

thanks desides and regan :yes:

how much is a new MOBO just out of curiosity?

"anlgp wrote:

how much is a new MOBO just out of curiosity?

Depends on which brand and features you go for. They can be as high as $300 and as low as $50. If you're considering a new system, I would recommend something like this Gigabyte board. I built a new system at the beginning of this month on a $900 budget and used this Asus board.

so say i was willing to spend about 150?

"anlgp wrote:

so say i was willing to spend about 150?

On both the CPU and motherboard? That's going to be tough. The motherboard is doable for about half that figure, as demonstrated earlier. But the CPU... well, if you're going to get a new CPU, you're looking at a Core 2 Duo at the bare minimum. The cheapest Core 2 Duo on Newegg is $120. So you're looking at $200 just for those. Then you have to bump up to the 4850 video card from the 4830, as the 4830 will unnecessarily bottleneck you, so that's $150 in and of itself. Luckily, RAM is cheap, so you can spend relatively little and get a lot.

Those parts will absolutely destroy Oblivion (which is quite the feat when you think about that phrase...) but again, you're practically building a new computer at this point. You have to ask yourself where your personal limit is, as spending this much just for one game is a lot. The upside is that you'll be able to run Oblivion with most or all of the eye candy on max.

My limit was $900, so I managed to get around some of these issues when I built my new PC last month.

no just the video card.

Then the 4850 I linked to is your ticket. But again, I think it's slightly overkill on a Pentium Dual Core system.

what do you mean by overkill? and i could always use it at a later date on another computer if i build my own?

By overkill, I mean that the 4850 won't be fully utilized by your system, as your CPU will be bottlenecking performance. Imagine a Ferrari stuck in rush hour traffic.

"anlgp wrote:

what do you mean by overkill? and i could always use it at a later date on another computer if i build my own?

Well, there'd be a sort of cap on the max performance you can get out of your video card because of your CPU limitations. Granted it'd be a huge improvement but not as big. I second Desides, the 4850 is a great card for the price. And yes you can always use it at another time for another computer.

"Desides wrote:

By overkill, I mean that the 4850 won't be fully utilized by your system, as your CPU will be bottlenecking performance. Imagine a Ferrari stuck in rush hour traffic.

but it would be a good long term investment?

"anlgp wrote:

but it would be a good long term investment?

It would for now if you're considering on getting a new desktop within 1-2 years.

"Regan21286 wrote:

It would for now if you're considering on getting a new desktop within 1-2 years.

i hadn't really thought about it.

i just put 4G of ram into this and from what i understand it's a somewhat decent computer but it is a few years old. 2/3.

i have 300G HD space.