Guess what I did?
 

I was out tonight, and I spontaneously (I shop no other way) bought a copy of Battlefield 2. After getting home and opening the package, I realized that it looked like my graphics card was incompatable. I installed the game and tried to run it. Sure enough, it was incompatable. I began to mentally smack myself, as I just put down $50 on that game, and I cant play it. Lucky for me, my father is going to buy a new graphics card for the computer. Does anyone have recommendations for low end graphics cards that could handle this game well? It requires an NVIDIA GeForce 5700 or better, or an ATI Radeon 8500 or better. The cards need at least 128MB of memory.

Thanks for any feedback.

9700's are cheap now, arent they? Thats a good card too.

I might have to settle with a 9200, but it is a significant improvement from the nVidia Geforce4 MX 440 that I am running now. Its good enough to run the game, and should improve the experience with some of my older games too.

* MSI NX6600-VTD256 Geforce 6600 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
Core clock: 300MHz
D-SUB: 1
DirectX: DirectX 9
DVI: 1
Memory Clock: 500MHz
Memory Interface: 128-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 1.5
PixelPipelines: 8
TV-Out: S-Video/Composite Out
VIVO: Yes
* Model #: NX6600-VTD256
* Item #: N82E16814127164
* $152.00

or cheaper....

* CHAINTECH SA6600 Geforce 6600 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail

Core clock: 300MHz
D-SUB: 1
DirectX: DirectX 9
DVI: 1
Memory Clock: 400MHz
Memory Interface: 64-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 1.5
PixelPipelines: 8
TV-Out: S-Video Out
VIVO: No
* Model #: SA6600
* Item #: N82E16814145113
* $113.00

Here is a question. What is the difference between the nVidia brand cards, and the "rebranded" cards from other companies that still carry the same line names?

Edit: Looking into it, it seems that they all use the same core chipset, but design and assemble the chip themselves. So I assume that any card with the core ATI or nVidia chipset will work with Battlefield 2, regardless of the company that makes it?

nVidia does not make its own boards, although they do release some pre-release models as OEM only, nVidia specifically branded boards are never for sale/resale, if you find one it's shady unless as a promotion. nVidia gives reference boards to OEM and and retail manufacturers and sells the chips, it is up to the manufacturer what modifications (if any) they make the board design that runs the chip. For instance EVGA brags about their "pure" reference design. In otherwords they copy identically what nVidia gives them as a reference board, no changes at all, theoretically.

ATI does make their own board, as well as licensing the design for 3rd party. MSI for instance makes both ATI chipset boards and nVidia chipset boards.

with nVidia, it all depends on how far they stray from reference. Theoretically all boards should be equal compatibility wise. All boards should be able to run the retail drivers and the nVidia drivers interchangeably, though any retail add-ons may not be accessable from the nVidia drivers (for instance VIVO -- video in, video out). I have only had one Asus offer me compatibility problems and that was years ago. Although chip clock speeds and coolers may change, functionality all nVidia boards are backwards compatible with older boards.

ATI went with a unified driver and backwards compatibility around the 7500 model, though it took to the 8500 to get it right and keep it stable. I have not used any model since then, though one of our customers has several ATI's that run equal to our nVidias we normally prefer. I believe now, it should not matter who you get or what model as long as it is equal to or higher than spec, but some will run faster than others.

I like the nvidia cards myself.
My secondary machine just got an MX4400 installed in it.
It's wimpy and generic with 64MB, but it runs 3D stuff WAY better than the MX420 it had before. Not that we seriously game on an old PIII 500Mhz, but it does little stuff like Zuma with fully rendered balls (and who doesn't like that).
Actually, my secondary still rocks playing Enemy Territory online.

When I got my P4 3.0 Ghz machine I couldn't afford the prices for the nvidia 6800 because it was BRAND new at the time.
Since then I've installed a bigger, better power supply so I'm ready for it, but for now I'm still running the 5200 card the thing shipped with.
It's been suprisingly good.
Doom 3 runs great on it if you don't push it too hard, and of course the whole system rips up on Enemy Territory since the reqs are so low comparatively.

What was the hangup with your old video card, DirectX 9.0 compatability?


SamuraiCatJB,
Big Trouble in Little China is a big fav of mine. I love the avatars!
Soon you'll have me ripping some from that DVD, but Buckaroo Bansai is first! ;)

If you look up in the top post, you can see that the games requirements are pretty stringent for what cards it can use. It has to have an nVidia or ATI card, and they do have to be DirectX 9.0c compatable. Im looking around, and it seems the 6600GT is a good buy. Im also looking at a RADEON like the 9550. Specifically, I can pickup a VisionTek Xtasy RADEON 9550 128MB DDR AGP at my local best buy for only about $95. The nVidia 6600GT cards run in the $200 range, but as SC says, I can get a non GT model for about $150.

6600GT model will be about equivalent to a 5950 from previous series
the 6600 (plain) is close to the 5800ultra, faster than the 5700. So it depends... do you want something for more than this game?

The most processor intensive games I have are Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty (Game of the Year Edition), and MS FSim 2002. I might have a couple other games, but those are the newest, so any card that will play B2 relatively well should be able to breeze through the other games.

So just decide how well you need to position yourself in the future for future games (you may not want to buy a graphics card once a year). A 6600 will play all of those games, but maybe you want the extra 10% of the GT to get a little more playability for future games?

The 9550 is a decent card. My complaints with ATI are design issues that should not impact game-play, so although I would never buy an ATI card, it should be sufficient for your use.

I did this to balance Jack's that had the other half of this same image. :) I like to balance the world one image at a time...

Well, I am going to pull the Windows Longhorn con too. It looks like for all of the Longhorn graphic details, the computer will require a card around this good, so I will try to position it to my father, as a "card for the future". Anyways, I would like to be able to turn on at least some of the advanced graphical options, even if I have to run it lower than 1280 by 1024.

If you are even considering longhorn then you should be consider X600-X800 on ATI or 6600GT or higher. Although that is purely my opinion, I have nothing to back it up. Longhorn is the big unknown. Nvidia claims that the 7800GTX is the first longhorn ready graphics card, but we don't know what is longhorn ready. Does that mean that everyone will have to buy 7800GTX and higher graphics boards to run longhorn? or does that mean that it will run it the smoothest without taking CPU power to handle some of the longhorn graphics capability. I expect the latter, as the former will kill Longhorn upon release (unless it releases on the 2007 schedule, in which 7800GTX will be low-end).

I would set your limit on money first. Then buy the best you can get for that money. If it is $150, then you can decide which gets more bang for your buck -- ATI generally is favorable in bang for buck markets. But I would suggest aiming for the largest bang you can afford if you are thinking longhorn.

Don't worry about BF2, I hear the developers are really dropping the ball when it comes to patching the game in sofar. Also, it kinda sucks that you have to pretty much turn your computer into a high end machine to play the freakin' game. Meh.

Well, the nice thing is that computers are finally getting to the point where the processor handles all the normal work, and the graphics card handles all of the graphics work. Thats the way it should be, and its nice, because it allows my father to have a Centrino laptop that could handle BF2, as well as Longhorn when it comes out. I dont have the fastest processor, but its the graphics card that counts.

Final judgement:

nVidia GeForce 6800, eVGA model

Installed and running fine. Got it on sale for $200, seemed like a good deal. Regardless, I was tired of shopping for a graphics card.

Sweet.
I want a 6800.
Hope it works well for you! :D

It is running games great. BF1942 and Call of Duty run like butter. BF2 looks like there is no graphics card that can please it. With everything turned on it runs maybe, 2fps. On medium settings I think it is at about 25-30fps. I am going to tweak the settings some more. The nice thing is that half the settings are overkill features, and I can make it look great without having everything on.