Graphics Card Choice

[Signalmaster]

I searched the subject and found lots of info, but since I am not an expert, finding the right advice is not easy. The only game I deal with is MSTS

I have a secondary system that gets used that get used enough to want to upgrade the card that's in it now.

The system has:
Pentium D 2.88 GHz
3 GB RAM
PCIe 16x port with
256MB ATI Hyper Memory PCI-Express X16 Radeon X600 SE
300W Power Supply

The one nice thing about the current card is it's QUIET, no fan.

Most new cards getting to $200 range seem to want to feed on 350+W power supplies.

My main system has a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Dual-GPU Graphics Card and runs everything well. This whole system is quiet. Something in the monitor is the only clue it's on.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Regards,
Hank

[Vince]

Hi Hank,

The only thing I have to offer is I like NVIDIA because of the ease of both upgrading or rolling back drivers and a good support site.
Mine is an older NVIDIA 5600 256ram card. and it does a good job on my current frame rate intensive project, the LIRR.
Last week during spring cleaning I found The cooling fan had fried so I just removed the stock fan and glued another I found in my computer junk box to the cards fan mount with silicone adhesive wich worked out just fine. What a piece of crapola fan NV stuck on this card but then I only paid 80 bucks new for it at Freys Electronics. It was able to run most of the PRR eastern region with decent frameworks too.

Downside is the necessity to run in 16 bit resolution in the AE but it runs the Sim fine in 32bit. But I cant tell the difference between 16 and 32 bit anyway :p

[Signalmaster]

Hey, guys...Help!

I have 2 open AGP ports on this system. Since MSTS is old tech, might there be an AGP card that will the sim as well as it can.

Regards,
Hank