Graphics Card

Hello All,

While i save for the mother of all systems i have rebuilt a old Dell Dimension with winxp, 512mb ram. Runs FS2002 reasonably well, but, i am considering one of these:

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=262347&CatId=446

Cheap and cheerful and will it really improve the game play that much!?

Very good for 2002, not to good for FS9.

what bios version do you have????
and what kind of prossesor?
my old dell with a13 bios you could run a gig and a half with a slotadapter and a celron or up the pentium to 1.2
and you can shove 256mb low density sticks of ram in each slot, tho the front side buss is rather slow by todays standards.

oh ya i used a diamond stealth s80, the equvalent of the ati 9250, ran like a dream over the 32mb thing that was in it

I'm not much an ATI fan... I'd go with something NVIDIA. But just make sure you disable your onboard graphics or the card won't work right.

The NVIDIA cards are a bit more expensive as per the one below, but you think this would be better?

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=191902&CatId=2693

Also, can someone explain to me what the 128mb is. Is that the memory the card has, or the amount of RAM it sucks?!

The memory it has (if stated in the specs). The only time they use your ram is if they are on-board (Integrated) cards or low level cards (example-a card that says 120mb, has only 64mb and uses 64mb from your ram.
That type of card isn't too common.

Most have their own.

The NVIDIA is better. It supports DirectX 9.0 whereas the ATI only supports DirectX 8.0.

If it was me, I would save my money and wait to get a card that supports DirectX 10. If you plan to get Vista anytime soon, I believe (I may be wrong) you will need something that supports DirectX 10. But, a lot of newer games will use DirectX 10. But, if you plan to stay with XP or whatever you have, I would get the NVIDIA.