A worthy upgrade?

[cannoli]

A friend of mine is upgrading his GPU and is offering to sell me his old one, a Radeon 4650 PCIe 512MB (not sure on the brand) for $35 US.

If I purchase it, it would be replacing a GeForce 7900GS 256MB which I know is several years older but it has done well running the games the PC currently has installed, primarily Age of Empires 3, Battlefield 1942 and Dragon Age: Origins.

Future purchases include Star Craft 2 and BF1943.

For $35, is the 4650 a good buy?

The PC specs are:

HP xw6200 workstation
Dual Xeon 3GHz
3GB DDR2 ECC
250GB WD SATA
Windows 7 x64 Pro

The 19" LCD suports a max of 1280x1024 so game resolution wouldn't exceed that.

 

[plznote]

Is the card DDR2 or DDR3?

 

[wolfram23]

Like plznote mentions, if it's DDR3 it's going to be significantly better than if it's a DDR2 card. If it is DDR3, then that's going to be an alright improvement and I mean it's only $35. You could even use your current card as a PhysX card if you ever want to play PhysX capable games (Cryostasis, Batman Arkham Asylum, Mirror's Edge, Metro 2033 and some others). Even the DDR2 model should be a fair upgrade, and the price is good...

However, at the same time, I got a GT240 on sale for $45 which is a bit better even. You might want to just check local stores and see if there's any sales going on like that, and if not, then go ahead and pick up the 4650.

 

[cannoli]

The 4650 is DDR2. After some browsing I see that similar cards are retailing for as little as $55 on newegg.com.

If I can get a new GT240 for just a few $ more than the use 4650, perhaps thats the way to go then.

Wolfram you mentione using the 7900GS for PhysX capable games, I didn't think the 7900GS had PhysX hardware support...

 

[wolfram23]

The 4650 is DDR2. After some browsing I see that similar cards are retailing for as little as $55 on newegg.com.

If I can get a new GT240 for just a few $ more than the use 4650, perhaps thats the way to go then.

Wolfram you mentione using the 7900GS for PhysX capable games, I didn't think the 7900GS had PhysX hardware support...

Oh... uh yeah good call. I think you're right, it's on the 8- series and newer isn't it? Well, never mind then.