best ATI GFX to get?

i was wondering what would be the best graphics card to get that would be powerfully enough to run todays games and as im a student and dont have a lot of money i need one of the cheap side

What games are you planning on playing? As most games have different hardware requirements. If you're thinking about games like Oblivion you'll need a pretty good card, which is expensive.

Other games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3 aren't that demanding and will run nicely on older high end cards like a Radeon 9800 which is pretty cheap nowadays.

Depending on what bus type your computer have ( AGP / PCI-E ) you should look for one that fits your budget. Speaking of budget, if you could enlighten us on what your budget is, we could advise you even more.

Awaiting your reply,

Greetings,

Marcus

my budget is about 40 to 60 quid and i was planning on gettin oblivion but not until i have completely upgraded my system and atm im using a 2 and a half year old sapphire 9200 which to be fair has seen better days

After having looked at various online hardware retailers I still can't advise you very well on a card,

I played Oblivion on 1024*768 with a XFX Geforce 6800 256Mb once, and wasn't satisfied with how the game ran back then, but that's all about personal demands; lot's of eye-candy or barely playable.

As far as I can tell, between 40 and 60 quid you can't even find an ATI card that compares to a 6800. I might be wrong though, since I don't have experience with the newer Ati cards. Other Hardware Forums users should be able to shed more light on this then.

The closest you can get to that is a Sapphire x1300 card with 256 DDR2 Memory for £62.69, the 6800 has DDR3 memory and thus is much faster.

Maybe you could look on auction sites, like eBay and such for 2nd hand cards.

Here's the system requirements for The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, lot's of cards seem supported, but under "Recommended" you'll find what you should be aiming for.

Recommended:

3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
1 GB System RAM
ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card
Minimum System Requirements:

Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows XP 64-bit
512MB System RAM
2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
128MB Direct3D compatible video card
and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
8x DVD-ROM drive
4.6 GB free hard disk space
DirectX 9.0c (included)
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard, Mouse
Supported Video Card Chipsets:

ATI X1900 series
ATI X1800 series
ATI X1600 series
ATI X1300 series
ATI X850 series
ATI x800 series
ATI x700 series
ATI x600 series
ATI Radeon 9800 series
ATI Radeon 9700 series
ATI Radeon 9600 series
ATI Radeon 9500 series
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 series
NVIDIA GeForce FX series

Anyway, good luck with your search.

Greetings,

Marcus

i have a simmilar problem. No cash and desperate for a gfx card. I have researched alot but its really hard to decide.

I have found that a 7600gt will do you well for just about any game but its expensive(for us)so the best i could cum up with is the sapphire x1600xt. Its not the world best gfx card but it shud run everything solidly and oblivion ok.

Im waiting on the buks for it. I just though id let u know what i found. look for benchies and reviews too see for urself. good luck

If Oblivion is your goal, I'd hold on until you can buy something that's actually going to give you an enjoyable experience. The Radeon X800GTO's seem to really be dropping in price (at least at Newegg...I can't speak for any UK eTailer).

i was just using oblivion as an example i probly wont end up getting it on pc
btw just out of intrest would anybody recomend the ati radeon 9550?

The X1300 series is no where near as powerful as the 6800 series. A lot more contributes to that than DDR2 vs. DDR3 memory actually. DDR3 memory basically allows for higher clockspeeds and more overclocking potential, little more. But pixel pipelines, vertex shaders, and the overall efficiency of the gpu's architecture account for a much greater leap in performance.
It's very hard to get a card that will run Oblivion well for 60 quid. The 6800GS really marks the minium for turning up the settings pretty high provided the rest of you're system can handle it too. I realize hardware is pretty expensive in Europe but it's better to save up a bit more money and get the card you really want than blow what money you have on a card that doesn't really live up to you're expectations and standards. After all whatever you get you'll probably keep for awhile so it's good to like it anyway.

For AGP look around for an X850XT PE or X800XT, these can be found for around £100-£150, i think i seen an X850XTPE for about £130, and there very powerfull cards, there mid to high end, difficult to find now, but very cheap considering about 6 months ago they were about £300 in some shops.