hey guys i wanna upgrade my graphics card my card suks right now, i dont have much money at all but i saw the xtasy radeon x3oo se in the store for 100 and iwanna know if it is good enough to play source and half life 2

It should be able to run Source but it's a low-end card which means that you'll have to run at low resolution and minimum eye candy.

If you can afford a little more then I would highly recommend this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102573&ATT=14-102-573&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r). It's a good mid-range card and will allow you to play Source at modest resolutions (1024x768) with pretty much all the eye-candy on. I myself have an AGP version of this card and it performs really well. The card your mentioning will not be able to take advantage of the new graphical features found in Source as it has some older technology.

Of course overall performance will also depend upon the other components of your system such as CPU and RAM.

Source is fully playable at 1024x768 with all settings on high, 4x aa, 2x af with frames in the region of 50-60+ average. My system: P4 2.4c (overclocked to 2.9), 2GB RAM, and Sapphire x800 gt (AGP).

It should be able to run Source but it's a low-end card which means that you'll have to run at low resolution and minimum eye candy.

If you can afford a little more then I would highly recommend this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102573&ATT=14-102-573&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r). It's a good mid-range card and will allow you to play Source at modest resolutions (1024x768) with pretty much all the eye-candy on. I myself have an AGP version of this card and it performs really well. The card your mentioning will not be able to take advantage of the new graphical features found in Source as it has some older technology.

Of course overall performance will also depend upon the other components of your system such as CPU and RAM.

Source is fully playable at 1024x768 with all settings on high, 4x aa, 2x af with frames in the region of 50-60+ average. My system: P4 2.4c (overclocked to 2.9), 2GB RAM, and Sapphire x800 gt (AGP).that card looks good i might buy it how much does the shipping cost and do you know how long new egg takes toship. one more thing i have never put in a card but i have an idea how so if u can give mr any tips that would be cool

Newegg are a great online retailer. I have ordered many items through them and have been very happy with them. Their shipping usually takes 3 business days after your payment has cleared. If you have paypal your payment usually clears the same day as long as you're not ordered last thing at night.

Shipping is about $5 for 3-day Fed-Ex which is cheap.

Putting in a new graphics card is fairly straight forward. Just make sure that the power supply is unplugged from the back of the computer.

Make sure you're not wearing clothing that generates a lot of static or else wear a grounding bracelet.

Before you yank your previous card out make sure that any retention mechanisms holding the card in place are moved to allow the card to be easily removed. You shouldn't have to exert undue force in order to get the card out.

While you're in there give your case a good clean! :D

Then gently push the new card in place. You should have to use a large amount of force but the card should 'click' nicely into place. Then make sure it's secure. Connect the power lead from your power supply to the card.

Connect the power supply back up, leave the side panel off for the moment in case the system doesn't boot. Once everything has booted alright then switch the system off, secure the side-panel, then re-boot and you should be fine.

If you're having problems during the boot make sure that the card is securely in the slot and also that the power lead to the card is in place, you can usually tell if the card is getting power if the cooling fan is spinning when the computer is switched on.

Hope that helps.

Always be very careful when installing hardware, make double sure your computer is NOT connected to the mains outlet.

is the shaphire x700 good it is on new egg for 95$ will that do the job and also all i do is put the card in then my computer will just reconize it

The x700 should do the job. It is able to carry out all the same shader and video functions as an x800gt. The major difference, aside from clock speeds, between the two models is that the x800 has a 256-bit interface whereas the x700 is 128-bit. How much of a difference that will make in the real world, I'm not sure. As with most things, more is usually better! :)

If your current card is ATI and you're running Cat 6.1's then there should be no problem. If however you have an nvidia card make sure you uninstall ALL of the nvidia drivers before taking the card out. The new card should come with drivers that will enable you to get started and then you'll probably have to update from there.

I'm also assuming you're running WinXP. I had no problems replacing an ATI 9500pro with a Sapphire x800gt. I just took the old card out, popped the new one in, re-booted and it was recognised straight away. I'm thinking Win2k should be similar. As for older OSs then the cd-rom that comes with the card will be invaluable.

The x700 should do the job. It is able to carry out all the same shader and video functions as an x800gt. The major difference, aside from clock speeds, between the two models is that the x800 has a 256-bit interface whereas the x700 is 128-bit. How much of a difference that will make in the real world, I'm not sure. As with most things, more is usually better! :)

If your current card is ATI and you're running Cat 6.1's then there should be no problem. If however you have an nvidia card make sure you uninstall ALL of the nvidia drivers before taking the card out. The new card should come with drivers that will enable you to get started and then you'll probably have to update from there.

I'm also assuming you're running WinXP. I had no problems replacing an ATI 9500pro with a Sapphire x800gt. I just took the old card out, popped the new one in, re-booted and it was recognised straight away. I'm thinking Win2k should be similar. As for older OSs then the cd-rom that comes with the card will be invaluable.i have a nvida geforce 6100 its thats shared shit and how do i delete the drivers and is that all i have to do to install the x700

i am just gunna get the geforce 6600 for $119 that should be easier to install i guess

6100 is integrated graphics? I'm not too familiar with nVidia models. If it is then you just have to disable it in your BIOS. Usually to access the BIOS during boot, press "delete" then it should take you to the bios menu.

For uninstalling drivers use this (http://www.drivercleaner.net/).

i just hope i dont waste 119 dollers and then not know how to use it or get it going

It's very easy to install graphics cards. The most important thing is to make sure you have the correct interface to your mobo: either agp or pci-e (or possibly pci). The most modern interface is pci-e.

If you're running windows xp then the card will be automatically detected and basic drivers installed. Just make sure in your BIOS that the integrated video card is switched off. If you know the make of your mobo then please post it here, if not, then the model and computer manufacturer (dell, gateway, et c.) and I'll see what I can find on it.

i have a emachines and the model is t6420

The card you want has to be PCI-E, you have one open PCI-E 16x slot that can be used for your graphics card. If you stick with nVidia, you can have both graphics, integrated and standalone, working at the same time to power two monitors simultaneously.

Unfortunately the integrated graphics are not automatically switched off if you plug in a standalone video card so you'll have to go into your bios and change settings there.

so say if i got a 6600 gt and then turned on the 6100 graphics it should run really good on source right

Um, no. In order for you to utilise 2 graphics cards at the same time to power a game you have to have a SLI setup. This requires a mobo that supports SLI and two identical graphics cards.

There's no way to use integrated graphics with a standalone card in SLI mode.

So you'll only be able to use one graphics card to power your games.

so i dont have to delete any drivers i just turn the other graphics off and then download the updated drivers for the 6600 and then i am ready to play cs.also will the 6600 run ok on cs source

It should run source fine. It has Directx 9.0 and Shader Model 3 support. Not so sure how HDR will affect it. Just don't expect to be running at 16x12 with everything on! :)

You may not even have to turn off your integrated graphics card before installing the new card. As with ATI, nVidia release a unified driver set that will work for most if not all their gfx lineup so you shouldn't have to uninstall your current nVidia drivers when you switch from your integrated driver to your stand alone card. Just download the latest version, uninstall completely the old version, then install the files you just downloaded and you should be up and running.

I think I'm right in saying that the nVidia 6600 is roughly equivalent to an ATI x600 as both these cards came out around the same time ( I think nVidia was slightly earlier ).

see thats what i dont get when you say uninstall the old drivers do i have to do that and if i do where do i find them to uninstall them i thought all i had to do was turn of the integrated graphics and download the most updated drivers

i am such a noob

heh, the reason I'm telling you to uninstall the old drivers is just to make sure that you clean it all out before installing the new drivers.

Sometimes when installing new drivers over old drivers you can run into problems with incompatible files. If you uninstall the old drivers first and really give a good clean, use this great tool (http://www.drivercleaner.net/), to make sure all the old drivers are gone then the new drivers should install with no problems.

so let me get this sriaght first i delete the old drivers then i put in the new card and turn of the intagrated graphics.then go to nvidia . com and download the newest drivers.if that is so how do i delete the old drivers not clean but find the files to delete

Just to be sure your card is detected you can just power down your system, install the card then power it back up. You should see a notice saying "new hardware detected" and then should ask you to install drivers. Put the CD-ROM that came with the card in the cd-rom drive and then point the installation manager to your cd-rom drive. It should then automatically find the drivers on the disc. Since you already have nVidia integrated graphics the new card may just use those so you won't have a need to install drivers just yet but I would install the latest drivers as soon as possible.

Sometimes you may have to cancel installation of new drivers and then run the CD-ROM installation disc once windows has finished booting. This would be a quick test to make sure that the card is detected properly.

The order I would do it in would be:
1. Go to nVidia and download the latest drivers, save them to your desktop for easy reference.
2. Power down and disconnect power supply of computer.
3. Install new card
4. Power up computer but interrupt boot to go into the BIOS and switch off integrated graphics.
5. Save settings then allow the computer to keep on booting.
6. When you're entering windows it should then say "detected new hardware", then cancel finding new drivers and let Windows finish loading.
7. Run Drivercleaner to remove all nVidia drivers (you will probably have to reboot to clean them all but be sure to read the readme.txt of Drivercleaner throughly first).
8. Install the latest drivers which you downloaded off the internet.
9. Probably have to reboot.

After that everything should be working fine.

Hey shadow123123t. I found this guide that should help you out. It's basically the same thing that was said here but it has pretty pictures that I'm sure will help.

http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/GraphicsCard1.htm

well thanks guys this really helped. I will see you on source i maybe a noob at video card stuff but not in games :D

well thanks guys this really helped. I will see you on source i maybe a noob at video card stuff but not in games :D

Jump in our server and test things out;)

InYourEye']Jump in our server and test things out;)as soon as i order the card from new egg i will :)