Torn between graphics cards

Hi, I've got a
Dimension8100
P4 2GHz
768Mb Rambus PC800

I cant decide which of these cards to buy
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 256MB AGP8X Graphic Card with DVI & TV-Out Lite Retail - Sapphire

for £71.44

or

XFX Geforce FX5200 256MB AGP8X Graphic Card with DVI & TV-Out Retail - XFX

for £59.46

£80 is kinda my limit cos I'm a cheap c**t but I want a card that will run Ghost Recon 2 fairly well as well as running Half-Life 2/Doom3/Max Payne2 and that.

Any reccomendations please?

I have XFX GeForce FX 5950 Ultra in my desktop and it works great on all the games I play ( Unreal, Half-Life, Far Cry, Half-Life 2 i hope) No complaints from me and I have a 128MB 9600 in my laptop which also performs well. I also have a box with a GeForce Ti4200 128MB so in my case majority rules and i vote Nvidia.

The 9600 will significantly outperform the fx5200. This site has direct comparisons of many cards, including those two, on many games.

Yeah i looked at that site and change my vote. Didn't realize that the 5200 was the bottom rung of the graphics card ladder.

Thats the benchmark that I've been lookin for for ages. Thanks man, saved me a lot of time. BTW, I'm not getting automatic email notification on my posts for some reason even though they're turned on...

Glad to help.
For the email problem, submit a ticket at the support page

One last question for anyone still reading this.
Is there anywhere that explains RAMDAC, core speed and so on as I've fallen behind on my terms since college finished. (Kinda got sick of the abbreviations!)

Try google. For the two examples you've mentioned, RAMDAC stands for Random Access Memory Digital to Analog Converter. Its a chip on older video cards (integrated on new ones) that translates the digital representation of what's on the screen into an analog signal the monitor can display.
Core speed is the clock speed of the gpu (graphics processing unit) chip itself.

i have a 5200 its an OK card for the money(btw i have the 128mb vers.) i play on it:

• halo
• call of duty
• doom 3
• SW battlefront
• unreal 2004
• and other games

on it and they all preform quite well(except halo which laggs a little on single player)
so unless ur a 13 year old kid with no money( like me) go ahed and get the other card... otherwise go 5200

Job.
Cheers lads

i wish .. ya if anyone has a job offer for me goahed and post it

Job = Nice one