Maximum PC

yea i'm in a bit of a squeeze here. my choices are as follows. 9200SE or FX5200 or onboard. my sisters POS e machine has no AGP slot so it sucks majorly and leaves her with those three choices. her game of choice is the sims 2. so would a 60 dollar PCI based card do enough to get the sims2 out of slideshow mode or should i just forget about it and get her a new mobo further down the road.

It'd be best if you'd list the specs of the E-machine.

If it's an athlon xp/s478/s754 system, there's nothing wrong with upgrading a mobo with integrated graphics and an AGP slot.

Hell, you could even go with a cheap mobo off newegg. Then get like a cheap Geforce3/4 off ebay.

well its a celeron 2.4 with a no name mobo that only has pci slots. 512 ram...pc2700 i think, sems hard to believe but i think i checked it out. i think i am gonna upgrade to mobo later, but thats gonna be a christmas/b-day gift at earliest. so for the next few months should i make her bear with a slideshow or is it actually worth 60 bux for one of those cards and if so which one is recommended?

sims 2 = DX8?

MX400 if you're looking to save a bit of cash. FX5200/9200se is just about useless.

so 60 bucks on the 9200 or 5200 isnt worth it compared to the mx400. cash isnt an issue. i just dont wanna do the mobo replacement right now. i wanna wait for p4's to drop in price and then grab a sweet combo. so if you had 60 bucks in you wallett right now you'd jsut save the 20 and get a mx400

I guess you can get the fx5200...

Look at the bottom

i guess i'll get that...i dont want to ever buy anything that is in the bottom fourth of a benchmark again.

Were there PCI 4200, 4400, or 4600...? If I recall, they're faster than the 5200's and 9200se.

They are faster, but unfortunately, they dont come in PCI form. It's just too powerful for it.