Reccomended VID Card Alternatives

Well, I know last year the best bang for your buck would have been an ATI 9800Pro (or XT) for 4X AGP motherboards and up. If you have PCI Express, obvious go with a PCI Express card, but, I can run every game perfectly with my ATI 9800XT.

Nvidia is great too, but the last card I had by them was the Gforce4 4600ti (great card). Just be careful with what you get because higher numbers doesn't mean it's better. For example, the Geforce4 4600ti is hands down better than the Geforce 5600FX (even though it's newer and supports DX9).

google "Tom's Hardware" for a great site comparing PC hardware.

If your on a buject get the Geforce 6200 128mp graphics its only £60 in the uk and should be about the same if you you live in usa

Actually, assuming you don't have PCI Express, and instead need an AGP card, the GeForce 7800 GS was recently released and is the best and will always be the best AGP card you can purchase. ATI has stated they won't produce another AGP card, and I doubt Nvidia will ever do another one either.

I just installed this card last weekend, and now I can finally play AoE 3 and have all the goodies cranked up on GalCiv2. A definite must for anyone not wanting to upgrade their entire system.

If the kid has a Rage 128 pro cira 1999, I highly doubt he has a PCI express or even anything more the APG2x-4x. I also doubt he has the newer voltage APG style.

Your best bet IMHO is either to break down and buy a new $500 tower.

Or see if Pricewatch still has some NV-4200 cards for $50-80 or one of ATI solutions. Don't spend too much because you don't want to invest too much money into such an old computer, nor will the newer APG card likely run in your old APG slot because of the voltage requirements. (heck your power supply might not even be able to handle it)

I second that.. do NOT pick up a 7800 GS, or anything even remotely modern! not only can the motherboard not handle it, but there is no way your probably underpowered power supply will, it'll boot, but you'll eventually end up with nasty crashes and a dead/dying power supply.. provided it doesnt fry something more vital in the process. Stick with the previous suggestions, and try to realize that a rig like you are using cant support top of the line graphics. The 5x00 series are good, but not great, and trying to figure out which of the 4x00 series are good will give you migraines. Then again, a new rig might be your better bet, as I kind of doubt your proc can keep up ><

Well, we'd really have to know more about his computer before recommending him to buy a new rig It's quite possible that he'd do quite well with a ATi 9800Pro or the equivalent Nvidia product. Screw it, I'll make a link:

Link
Above link compares various 3D cards.

Price comparisons (on ebay, common "buy now" prices):
ATI RADEON 9800Pro 128MB = Good card, too old to buy, really
ATI RADEON 9800XT 256MB = $150 (I know this card runs this game well)
NVIDIA 6800GT (AGP) = $190 (better than the 9800XT)

NOTE: On older/cheaper motherboards where you can't fiddle with the amount of juice that goes to your AGP card, you're system will run more stable if you set it to run at 4X instead of 8X. You'll only lose about 3 FPS (seriously), and might make the difference between a stable and unstable system. YMMV

My bro has a 9800 pro (which i gave him) and it runs Gal Civ2 perfectly. When i upgraded from 9800pro to a 6800 GT, then i went from a 6800 gt to a 7800 gt, and now am with a x1900xtx which i love.

As for the rage 128 pro... i had that card in '98 when i was still playing games like Rebellion, and Quake 2....
So that gives you an idea on how old it is. That card is before nvidia bought out 3dfx and when 3dfx champion voodoo was battling ATI for the video card title. That just gives an idea on how old that card is. If the rest of your comp is that old. Dont even bother getting a video card since your pc will proably be a AMD k62/ Intel p2 or p3. Proably a whole new sys would be the best bet.

If his whole system actually is that old, then yeah, time to buy a new rig. But I doubt it the game would run at all on a win95/98 OS system, with a max of 256mb of mem and screaming by at a whole 266 mhz. Haha.

Actually my system is more in-date than the vidio card.

I'm running a

AMD Sempron 3200 + 2.0 ghz 512 mb ddram and have a LG Lite DVD Burner/Cd Burner /CDROM drive , floppy drive [standard drive for all computers ] and a 120 gig hard drive. Allong with an optical mouse and an internet keyboard.