[J3Vr6]

So my birthday was last week (happy birthday to me) and my dad gave me a $50 gift certificate to office depot.  I have no idea what I could buy at office depot but I got some options.

I could either spend it on a video card to replace my geforce 2mx (32 megger), which they have the following:

http://www.officedepot.com/txtSearchDD.do?searchTxt=radeon

http://www.officedepot.com/txtSearchDD.do?searchTxt=geforce


Or I could spend it on this harddrive:

http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=678808


So guys, rape my options!

[Bobboau]

Radeon

[kasperl]

Nothing PCI.

[Lonestar]

Get the HDD and save your money to have money for the new PCI Xpress Video Cards. Your wasting your money on old video cards if you buy them considering their are newer ones out, you will be about 2 years behind the game if you bought one low end now.

[J3Vr6]

Originally posted by Lonestar
Get the HDD and save your money to have money for the new PCI Xpress Video Cards. Your wasting your money on old video cards if you buy them considering their are newer ones out, you will be about 2 years behind the game if you bought one low end now.

Yes, but seeing how my motherboard only goes up to 8x agp and doesn't have that fancy pci express thngy, that point is moot.


I am leaning towards the harddrive, but I could really use a new video card.  It would definitely be AGP.

And u guys just said radeon, but there was like 5 different ones there.

[redsniper]

radeon 9800 pro
yes, it's more than $50 but the gift cert will help cushion the price.

[Knight Templar]

*wonders what your dad was thinking when he went shopping for you

[J3Vr6]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
*wonders what your dad was thinking when he went shopping for you

I thought the same thing, but hey a gift is a gift and I appreciate that he got me something.


I didn't see a radeon 9800 on the website so I can't do that one.  Plus, if the store had a 9800, office depot would probably charge like 400 or 500 beans.

[Knight Templar]

It's too bad he didn't get you a gift card for Safeway then. I hear beans are pretty cheap over there this time of year.

[J3Vr6]

[Liberator]

PCI Express is overrated.  There hasn't been a PC yet that can flood 8x AGP, much less the theoretical max bandwidth of a PCI Express(PCIE?) card.  The bottlenecks are as follows(in terms of performance increase): CPU --> Video bus speed, then Hard Drive transfer rate/bus speed, then CPU/memory transfer speed.

To take advantage of PCIE, two things need to occur:
1. Video cards need more memory and still faster processors
2. Hard Drives need to become faster to fill the pipe

Currently, with 8x AGP, it's a water hose feeding into a 6in drain pipe.  There is no hope of filling that bandwidth.


BTW, OT get this one

The 5200 is much better than people give it credit for.