For GC2, I'd recomment the Radeon. The GeForce FX series has poor AA and shader performance and can encounter stuttering and slowdown where a comparable Radeon would not.

I haven't seen ST:L myself but their posted requirements are a DX9 card with 128mb of RAM and Pixel Shader 1.4 support, which the Radeon does meet.

Personally I'd advise you to drop an extra $15 beyond the 9550 for a 9600XT (very important to get the XT, not any other sub-model). The 9600XT has double the fillrate, and is a pretty decent budget card even now. I just finally replaced one myself a couple of months ago.

Th 9600XT? I'll have to ask the place I was going to order it from. I can't order it online myself because I don't have a credit card. I also have to worry about the psu. I don't want to have to connect psu directly to the graphics card. I'm installing it myself.

I wall ask at the local store, because I don't want to give paypal my bank account information. Thank you. I hope to order it from them this weekend.

I also have to worry about the psu. I don't want to have to connect psu directly to the graphics card. I'm installing it myself.

You should not have to worry too much about the power supply. AGP cards should not need a direct connection to it like many of the PCI-e cards.

AGP cards should not need a direct connection to it like many of the PCI-e cards.

I'm running a 6800 O.C. AGP card and it has the four pin connector to the power supply and requires a 300w or more PSU, I believe my friends 7800 AGP has one as well. It's just the upper line of them most likely though, and an aging one as they become extinct.

Extinct... I better order that card Saturday.

They'll be around a little longer just,I think we're seeing the last of the new AGP cards coming out.

I'm playing GalCiv2 on an older machine (4 yrs.?) and it runs beautifully with these specs... AMD T-Bird 1.0 Ghz, 512 mb RAM, and an ATI 9550 128 mb vid. card, running Win XP Professional. All the textures are there and it looks and runs great, but I have AA turned off, but doesn't matter, still looks and runs very well. Take Kyro's advice and move up to a better card as he suggests, the 9600XT or even go for the 9800Pro if you can afford it. The bottleneck on my system seems to be the (ancient)cpu in my case. I just play on medium size maps with no problems.

I use a Sapphire Radeon 9550 (not sure of version now) 256MB. It's a downclocked 9600! All I had to do was flash the card with the 9600 firmware and I had a Sapphire Radeon 9600. And it was really cheap (UK) earlier this year when I bought it and runs GC2 at 1440x900 (widescreen) with all graphics features on. It might go higher res but that's all my monitor can handle.

I think I can dig out instructions for the firmware flashing procedure if you want to go that route. (Though google is your friend).


Reading Borg35's reply makes me pretty sure it's a 9600 Pro.


Edit - and it's AGP.

Edit2 - just read Kryo's post re 9600XT. I'd say believe him - he knows what he's talking about!

Edit3 - re the PSU - when I bought my 9550 (UK) i could easily have got a new 500W PSU as well for less than $100 ... and prices have dropped since then (in the UK anyway).

AA is alcoholics anonymous....j/k
It's actually Anti-Aliasing, basically where the video card renders each frame more than once and combines the renders together to get a smoother final frame that is displayed. (it actually has to do with signal processing, but that could take a while to explain, that was just the short and easy version)

You won't have to worry about a PSU, even if it is only 250W they power consumption on you system doesn't sound like too much and the 5550 won't cause any problems. I have a 325W system and I have 3 hard drives, an x1600xt, sound card, modem, wireless card, several case fans, cool case lights, and a AMD 4000+ SD core, with no problems.

I hope you end up getting a new computer, that’s always exciting. In the mean time the 5550 should work just fine, however, I don’t know how it will work for Legacy.