The Real Dave
June 10th, 2009, 12:37 PM
My system came with an Ati Radeon Xpress 200 Chipset, which as far as I can tell has 32Mb RAM, and a 300Mhz Clock speed. As I like gaming, and Compiz fusion, I've been wanting for a while to upgrade to a better card.
The Xpress 200 chip has been working ok, I mean like, its nothing special, but it'll play the games I want it to (most of my games are either old or low memory requirements, the most demanding is probably Toca Race Driver 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOCA_Race_Driver_3)). For most of my games, I over clock the chip to around 450Mhz to get a better response, using the AtiTool overclocking app.
I've been looking at a few different cards, and found two that I reckon would give a good improvement, however one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00172H1UC/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1) with 512Mb GRAM, and another (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0014ICNNO/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1) with 256Mb, even though they both claim to be the same card.
Will either of them give a good improvement, or can anyone advise a similar card for about the same cost? Also, does anyone know how they are in regard compatibility with Ubuntu? My Xpress 200 needed restricted drivers in 8.04, but works out of the box in 9.04
:guitar:
The Xpress 200 chip has been working ok, I mean like, its nothing special, but it'll play the games I want it to (most of my games are either old or low memory requirements, the most demanding is probably Toca Race Driver 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOCA_Race_Driver_3)). For most of my games, I over clock the chip to around 450Mhz to get a better response, using the AtiTool overclocking app.
I've been looking at a few different cards, and found two that I reckon would give a good improvement, however one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00172H1UC/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1) with 512Mb GRAM, and another (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0014ICNNO/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1) with 256Mb, even though they both claim to be the same card.
Will either of them give a good improvement, or can anyone advise a similar card for about the same cost? Also, does anyone know how they are in regard compatibility with Ubuntu? My Xpress 200 needed restricted drivers in 8.04, but works out of the box in 9.04
:guitar: