Advice On Buying a video card

[Hopester Doofus]

I've decided to upgrade my video card, on a limited budget. We're not serious gamers (although my teenaged son might beg to differ on that point) but do run MOH Pacific Assault and Battlefield 2 from time to time.

A couple of questions, because I find I'm suffering from some information overload here:

1.  I've decided to go with a Radeon card, but of course there are dozens of card manufacturers marketing this chipset. How important is the manufacturer? (I'm considering VisionTek).

2.  Between the Radeon 9250 and 9550, is there enough of a difference in the 9550 to justify the higher price?

3.  Would either of these cards be a sound choice?

[jowser]

I use the 9550 and it runs BF2 ok but most of the graphics settings are on low.

I've never had any serious probs with the 9550.

[Hopester Doofus]

Thanks, jowser - that's a good start. Anyone else have an opinion on my other questions?  

[wrwss]

9550 is agp and 9250 is pci and they are the same price although I am not sure if the 9250 is pci express or standard pci but in one of your other post you were asking about your agp speed so go ahead and get the 9550. Here are the specs
http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?search_id=8

[Hopester Doofus]

Thank you, wrwss. Actually the 9250 comes AGP or PCI, while the 9550 comes only AGP, from what I can tell. I was able to determine that my AGP bus speed is 8x so no worries there.

My original questions are still the ones I was hoping to get some feedback on - I just wanted to find out what others more knowledgable than I thought about this class of card. And also if it mattered what company manufactured it.

[wrwss]

Well from my experience, I have never had any trouble with radeon and now my new Dell came with radeon x800 pci express graphics and it is nice. There are alot of makers out there using the ati technology and they are all pretty much the same in specs and price so if you see one that grabs your attention more than another then take it.

[Hopester Doofus]

That's what I was hoping to hear. I'll take that advice, wrwss, and go with the 9550. Thanks.