Another video card help

[Wernazuma III]

Well, CIV doesn't work on my comp since I only have an on-board video card. So I'm thinking about achieving one for the *sole* purpose of getting CIV to run.
Which means, I want to spend as little money as possible, buying via ebay. If possible, I want to spend less than €40,-
Does such a cheap, CIV supporting card exist?


I have 512 MB RAM and 2,8GB processor, just as additional info.


Thanks for the help,
Wernazuma

[Solver]

The minimum card that would support Civ4 is GeForce2, but that's way too old and too slow, even for Civ4.

I recommend a GeForce FX 5200 for you. It's the worst video card of its series, and should be quite cheap. I'd certainly not recommend it buying normally, as it's significantly out-of-date, but if all you want to do is to run Civ4, that will do.

Alternatively, there's an even older card, the GeForce 4 Ti4200. It's an awesome card, in fact. It performs better than some cards that are from a newer series. So yeah, if your goal is to get a cheap Civ4-supporting card, my overall suggestion would be this.

[Wernazuma III]

Thanks for the reply. I'll check ebay for a FX5200 then. IIRC, I saw one going for a whooping Euro. Just about my range of financial possibilities.

Honestly, for all my purposes except playing CIV, my on-board is absolutely sufficient, so for the moment I simply need one for playing Civ. Should I notice one day that I seriously need a new video card (Windows Vista?), I'll buy a better one, not now.

So, thanks for the tip.

[Solver]

The question is whether you want Vista in the first place, and whether you want to have it running in the uber-cool effects mode. I honestly find the requirements of Vista ridicilous, to run that cool-looking interface, it wants a card that is currently good enough to run every game out there pretty well... bah.

Again, also consider the GeForce4 Ti4200, it's actually a faster card than the FX5200, though older. I think it may even perform slightly better with Civ4, because Civ4 would care about the core clock speed more than the shader performance... hmm. I haven't tried that out . But the FX5200 should do anyway.

[Wernazuma III]

Just exhibiting even more my ignorance. I find many video card offers for GeForce ####, but they differ. Some are from nvidia, but there are also others like "Club 3D GeForce####" or "MEDION GeForce####". So, what about that? Is only the nvidia card the real thing?

[Solver]

Well, technically, you can get those Club 3D or Chaintech cards, they're manufactured by other folks. But GeForces are still designed by nVidia, no matter who manufactures them.