Ok, so basically my price range is just over $110-120

My system specs in case u are wondering...
-Pentium 4 @2.6GHz
-512 DDR-RAM
-Win^xp

I want a card that will have nice video and relatively nice screenshots too.

Is there a chart or something that compares ATI cards for price, VRAM, and other graphic card-related stats??

Thanks for being so patient!

bm,

Ummmm, we already answered those questions!  

Read my post above as regards to screenshots, and see the chart that was posted for performance stats.

See if you mainboard has an AGP slot for a graphics card.

Take your time and get a good card,  better to wait and save a little more than be disappointed and waste money on something not quite good enough.

vram is another subject only abstractly related to this thread.

If you mean the amount and type of ram onboard a video card, it's only important that you buy a high performance video card, the RAM on that card will be one of the reasons it IS a high performance card.

Often, it's the TYPE of ram on the video card that makes it fast, and not the AMOUNT of ram, Modern video cards use expensive and very fast DDR RAM on them. The speed of the RAM also depends on it's LATENCY, measured in nanoseconds. The LOWER the latency number of the RAM, the faster the RAM is!

A cheaper and worse performing video card within the same GPU specification, (model range) as an expensive, good performing one, will have the slower ram onboard, so avoid them.

P.S.

I JUST TWIGGED! You say your not worried about FPS, that you already get 50 or 60 FPS.........

Well, That's your problem!      

You need to crank up the graphics on what you have now, bog those onboard graphics down to about 6 or 7 FPS with high settings as outlined in MY FIRST REPLY above, and I'll guarantee you'll get some nice screenshots!  

You won't be able to fly though...........  

Here is my DARK SECRET.....

When I fly, I use slightly degraded video settings to keep FPS above 20.

When I do a screenshot, I'm quite quick at changing all my settings to maximum, both in my driver settings and Sim settings. I take the shot and downgrade until I'm ready for the next shot.

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to screenshots, it takes me a long time to shoot a series of shots this way, but I'm proud of the results I get.

There is no way I could get shots like I do and fly at those settings, my FPS drops under 10 and is 4 to 6 at times at the screenshot setting!!!

Weather is what makes great graphics in FS2004. It's also what causes the greatest FPS loss.

I typically have 3 or 4 cloud layers and many other complex parameters. If In a rush, I click the preset "building storms".

Lighting is another FS2004 strongpoint, I use it extensively, rarely shooting when the sun is high. I max out my light settings (and everything else!).

I won't take a shot until I've sussed out the lighting for several minutes at least, from every angle; and if it isn't right, I work until it is, sometimes this takes over an hour per shot to get what I want.

I would love to have a card where I could just max it out and leave it, but I can't justify the $600 the card's cost here.  

My video card is a GF4 TI4200, My rig was tested with a Radeon 9600XT as well, and the 9600XT didn't bog down as much with lot's of clouds antialiasing and the anisotropic filtering turned way up. Other than that, they are very close in performance.

The 9600XT is simply better when the load comes on. The older nVidia cards can't match it. Niether can the lower grade FX cards from nVidia. The 5600 pro and up should be close or better.

At any rate, there may be more to nice screenies than originally meets the eye; in my case, at least, a lot of effort and time goes into it.

I hope this wasn't too techy, but you'll have to learn if you want great graphics.

Cheers

Umm, I just realized that I don't have an AGP port
what do I do??

Quote:

Dimension 2400

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Are there any PCI cards to accomodate AGP?  I'm guessing not, but...

Also, are there any okay PCI graphics cards?

Sell the Dell. 

PCI graphics cards are an option, but probably won't perform much, if any better than what you have now.

Go for the settings tweak above, also, go into your BIOS and allocate as much shared RAM to your onboard video as you can. (this will most likely be 64mb, but it may allow 128mb).

My freind has a GF4 MX440 PCI card he will sell you cheap if you really are going to buy one. It's new.

But, I would suggest spending the money on a new mainboard instead, so a graphics upgrade is possible in the future. (or get a new mainboard and a AGP card as well, keeping in mind that you may need a new case/PSU.).

Sadly, another Dell Dilemma.............

Quite a nice oc aswell.  715 Core and 1278(effective) memory.  

The only down side to oc'ing the 6800 will be the increase in power consumption, which is already very high.  Also the increase in temperature.  The new ATi card runs very cool, due to the low-k technology and the 0.13micron.  The 6800 uses 0.13micron but lacks any kind of rival to low-k so they had to put big heatsinks on it to keep it cool.
I am really not sure what the new Nvidia card has over the ATi card right now, it may become more apparent as time passes, but right now i can't see anything.  We need to wait until we see more opengl performance results before we decide which performs better in that area.

FS2004 is Direct3D. In fact the whole FS range is in Direct3D.  No programs utilise both.  Most use Direct3D but quite a significant amount use OpenGL.