rec.autos.simulators

Hi,

ok, even though this means re-activating XP afterwards, i finally decided to
look for a new graphic card. So lret's say i have about 200 Euros as my
absolute spending limit, which card should i go for? Most important to me is
performance in sims, of course :-)

TIA

cheers!

/ce

My advice would be to search the internet for the best card at the best
price, either ATI or nVidia. That's how I got my ATI 9800 pro.

Does swapping a vid card require one to re-activate Win XP? I thought
it took more hardware changes than that.

SG
--
"Politics gives guys so much power that they tend to behave badly
around women. And I hope I never get into that." - Bill Clinton

It does take more than just swapping a video card. I've never been
flagged for swapping a video card, or even a cpu and ram for that
matter.

To the OP, for $159.00 you can get yourself a  eVGA E-GEFORCE 6600GT
128M DDR3 AGP8X VGA DVI HD OUT VIDEO CARD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130220

I once put a hard disc from a P3-800Mhz into a Twin P4 Xeon with
different...  Well... Everything.

XP just plugged and played and did not ask for re-activation.

tbh, I was not aware such a feature was in XP at all, and being in the
industry I might have heard.

Jon.

Oh, yes it does exist, I built a PC with RAID 0 then decided to change to
RAID 1, Windows failed to reactivate and I had to phone MS. All that
happened was that I entered the key and a 'robot' read back an unlock code.
Never spoke to a real person and no sign of being quizzed as to ownership of
Windows.

Andi.

For that price (or maybe a touch more), I really like my 6800GT.  ATI
has a comparable card (X800XL).

Like Andi said, it's there, my guess is that you're using a "volume
license" and those doesn't require activation at all for very good
reasons, but it's there in the OEM, Retail and Upgrade packages

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"When two or more people are gathered together in my name,
they shall perform the Parrot Sketch..."

--Our Lord John Cleese--

You probably won't have to re-activate.

I recently upgraded (there's an understatement) my Home Server and changed
the following:

1.  Replaced System Board and Processor.
2.  Removed 7 old hard drives of varying sizes.
3.  Installed a 3Ware 9500S-8 Hardware RAID Card (SATA).
4.  Installed 6 new (one as a hot spare) Seagate 300GB Barracuda's set up as
a 1.5 Terabyte RAID-5.
5.  Installed new 120GB Seagate Barracuda PATA Boot/OS drive.

Reinstalled Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, and activated.  It didn't
complain one bit.

If I can get away with that, you should be able to get away with a graphics
card replacement :)

-Larry

It's also in certian other packages that are non-corporate, yet non-consumer
as well.

MSDN, Action Pack, etc...

-Larry

Both those cards cost more than 200 euros I believe. They are about
$300.00 USD which is 241.666 EUR. But I agree, he should fork out the
extra money and go for either 6800GT or X800XL.

Actually it's NOT in the "retail" versions. The OEM versions allow
(supposedly) 6 "hardware changes." Now, these are typically sound card,
video card, hard drive, etc. changes, but can be anything that doesn't
checksum the same as it was when XP was installed. The Retail versions
(full and upgrade) don't have this limitation. Microsoft was ensuring
that their OEM's wouldn't install the same copy of XP on different
machines - since XP WILL activate more than once (I think 3 is the limit
before you have to phone MS).

Gunner

   Well my retail install ***ed when I replaced the motherboard and cpu.
I had to call up some hindu and explain that the harddrive was still there,
the ram was the same but the cpu, mb and ...oh yeah...the new video card
were the only changes.   Got a new number.  I'm leaning towards a ram
increase soon.  Probably have to do it all over again.

dave henrie

Hmm, I could have sworn it was in the retail versions as well, but since
I deal with OEM versions 99% of the time and seem to be developing an
"Alzheimer's Light" I'm not going to insist on it :)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"When two or more people are gathered together in my name,
they shall perform the Parrot Sketch..."

--Our Lord John Cleese--

LOL no you wont...  heheheh

If the 40 euros stops ya, I like my 6600gt enough.  similiar speeds as my
older ti4600 ill admit, but with more turned on, and dx8&9, so it is not all
bad.  If Id had the 400 bucks I would love to have bought the 6800gt, but my
god man, my motherboard-ram-cpu was only about 450...

Praxiteles Democritus enlightened us with: