Graphics card upgrade advice for build needed

[Cooroo]

Hello, first post and I'm afraid I'm not to tech orientated, but basically I've a question about a rig I just bought for 73 pounds on ebay that I need to upgrade the graphics card and most likely the psu. I'd like to make it so I can play games like Dawn of war 1+2, Supreme Commander 1+2, Medieval Total War 2, Mark of Chaos 1+2 if possible without upgrading the mobo or anything else (hmmm). If there is anything else info wise I need to add then I'll try my best to find for you.

Its got in it...

A Alive Sata2 Glan mobo (has the pci-e x16 slot)

2x 2.2gigz amd processors

3 gig of ram over 4 cards

400w psu (though I am going to upgrade that to 500+, most likely a 650w one)

160 gig sata(2?) hard drive

and the nividia (geforce???) 7200 256meg 3d fx card which I've since found out is pants

What with all the cards on the market that are all of the same series and whatnot then I'm lost. I have read that the pci-e 2 cards from nividia are incompatible with the mobo unless I flash/flush the board or something. I am on a budget but I am willing to pay a fair amount that I don't have to upgrade for a couple of years.

Any help is really appreciated, thank you in advance

 

[SMOKEU]

You're going to have to be a little more specific. Tell me a bit more about those processors.

 

[EarthDog]

Processors? How about the board?

Regardless, PCIe 2.x GPU's will work on a 1.x board so you will be fine. What is your budget?

 

[Cooroo]

Ok, so I'm running Windows 7 reg'd 32 bit os(whoop, thought it was vista for a minute), with for those that it seems to matter AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ 2.20ghz and its a Geforce 7300LE card that I guess I've got to upgrade. Under the heading computer in the device manager it says ACPI x86 based pc... no idea.

As for money then not much really to be honest as I'm unemployed atm, maybe 40 to 50 pounds at a big big stretch, saying that then I'm looking to buy second hand through ebay so cheaper than that would be amazing.

 

[SMOKEU]

At first I thought you had a dual processor server board...

See if you can pickup a second hand 9800GT. They're pretty good value for a cheap card and won't bottleneck your CPU.

 

[Cooroo]

ASUS EN9600GT GeForce Graphics Card PCI-E 2.0?

 

[SMOKEU]

That would get you a VERY basic gaming rig by modern standards, but check the system requirements for those games you intend to play.

If it meets the minimum system requirements then it *should* be all g if you don't crank the graphics up.

 

[FearBefore]

I just got a brand new EVGA 9800GT from tigerdirect for $49.99. I thought it was a steal

 

[Cooroo]

So I got a Palit geforce 9800 gt... and it doesn't work with windows 7, or more accurately the drivers nvidia are handing out are dodgy with windows 7 and 3d graphics, when I play anything with 3d then I get a BSOD with the nvlddmkm.dll showing the error. I've tried to clean install the graphics, force the driver after unpack, a couple of other things as well but for the life of me I can't get it to work. really really unhappy, can anyone help?

 

[Cooroo]

oh, and I ran a memory test, everything came out fine, haven't done the hard disk as I'm a bit green with what to do, also, how do I check my voltages, and how far out does the voltage have to be to make a card frag out?

 

[Cooroo]

Oh, I just serched the site for the nvl** file report, there are lots of us

 

[SMOKEU]

I had 2 9800GT cards with Windows 7 and they both worked fine.