Any help with Video cards? NVIDIA 9100.?

Looking to upgrade my little 'integrated' NVIDIA GeForce 9100, and I'm not really a clue on how good any of the other cards are, I'm looking for a card that can run Bioshock 2, the requirement is stated as..



'NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card or better'



I don't know much about computers like 'supply power' or whatever that is, but..I'll do my best and give as much information as I can, if you'd like to help me futher, e-mail me at: MrSoSkilley@yahoo.com



NVIDIA GeForce 9100

317 out of 452 HDD

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dualc Core Processor 5400+ 2(CPU's) 2.8GHZ

4GB Ram|||Okay, FIRST thing. If your graphics chip is integrated, that means it's built onto the motherboard and cannot be changed. You'll have to buy a dedicated card (i.e. a graphics card that sits in one of the expansion slots near the bottom of the motherboard and has its own processor and memory, designed entirely for graphics rendering) to get better performance, such as the NVIDIA 8800GT or AMD Radeon HD4830.



On a side note, ATI (from hereon in referred to as AMD) was bought by and merged into AMD some time ago (five or more years ago I think).



Second, when a game says it requires a specific card to run, that card is usually the bare minimum and you really can not expect much performance out of it. Bioshock 2 says it requires at least an Nvidia 8800GT or AMD Radeon HD 4830, but you will have a pretty poor gaming experience with either of those two.



I'd recommend at least either an Nvidia GTX500 series card or AMD Radeon HD 5000 series card for playing with high detail graphics and a decent screen resolution (such as 1600x1200 or something close to that). Another thing to look out for is the Frames Per Second (or FPS) a card can give at a particular screen resolution and graphics detail. Much higher resolutions (like 1080p, or 1920x1080 pixels) will demand a lot more power from your graphics card and thus reduce the number of Frames it can draw every second. Anything less than 30FPS starts to become choppy and below 20FPS gets unplayable. Look for cards that give more than 60FPS (50FPS minimum). I recommend that you ask some computer savvy friends to have a look at your computer and monitor and ask them what card they would use for your setup.



If you have a ****load of money to burn off, then you should buy either an Nvidia GTX590 or AMD Radeon HD 6990. Those two are the latest and most powerful publicly available dual-GPU single cards in the world, and will give you the best possible performance to date.



Third, I'd say you have a LOT to learn about computers if you want to get into gaming on them. You should either research around the web or just go to consoles. I recommend you research the web for computer knowledge and experience so you can not only get a good computer for yourself but also diagnose and repair problems yourself. You can also impress your friends and help them out with their computer problems if they are having difficulties.



Fourth, learn about COMPUTERS!!!



Hope I helped you out to some measure and didn't confuse you with too much detail. Like I said, read around on the web and ask computer savvy friends to teach you.



Also, if you live in the US or Canada, I would visit a store/website called NCIX. They are a great computer store based in Canada and have a couple stores in the US (I think in the US, anyway). They also have an online website where you can order literally anything you find in their shops and have it sent directly to your house/PO box. You can even have them build and send whole gaming computers too!



Good luck, mate!