good video card for the price?

You can do a lot better than this one. Especially since it's a deactivated item. 8 series cards are outdated. Look for the GeForce 9 series and 2xx series or the ATI 4xxx series.

 

Not exactly a performance GPU.

I'd recommend the extra cash to get these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102803

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133239

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127383

The 4830 is the best bang for the buck IMO and all should fit your computer.

 

Windows sure. Linux, you should be able to find the right drivers to install somewhere on the web, probably nvidia or amd.com.

 

That part refers to the video graphics chip located on your motherboard. It has nothing to do with whatever video card you plan to buy.

As for what card is best for you, that depends: how much is your budget, and what do you want to do with the video card?

 

For under $100, a card that will reliably handle Oblivion will be tough. The Radeon HD4830 suggested earlier is a solid value for the price point, especially if you overclock it, but it has a very tough time sustaining frame rates: you'll fluctuate from as high as 35 to as low as 3, depending on the game. The real trouble is your CPU: the Pentium Dual-Core is a sort of hackjob dual core processor: it's an old Pentium 4 with two cores, but the cores don't share memory, so it's less effective than you would think. I wanted to recommend you go outside your budget a little and pick up a Radeon HD4850 for $150 or so, but I think it'll go to waste with that CPU.

Go with the HD4830. Fits your price range, seems like a good match for your CPU, and you should hopefully get Oblivion running well on the lower settings. If you overclock it (using the Catalyst Control Center program that comes with the drivers) 15-20% above stock speeds, that should really help out. (Warning: don't take it too far.)

 

That would require a new motherboard, as the Core and Core 2 line of CPUs use a different type of CPU socket as the Pentium Dual Core. At that point you would be better off just buying the parts for a budget gaming system, around $500 or so, less if you can recycle items like the power supply, hard drive, and case from your current computer.

IMO, just for Oblivion, it's not worth going to all that trouble, and as a bonus the 4830 will handle movies just fine.

 

Depends on which brand and features you go for. They can be as high as $300 and as low as $50. If you're considering a new system, I would recommend something like this Gigabyte board. I built a new system at the beginning of this month on a $900 budget and used this Asus board.

 

On both the CPU and motherboard? That's going to be tough. The motherboard is doable for about half that figure, as demonstrated earlier. But the CPU... well, if you're going to get a new CPU, you're looking at a Core 2 Duo at the bare minimum. The cheapest Core 2 Duo on Newegg is $120. So you're looking at $200 just for those. Then you have to bump up to the 4850 video card from the 4830, as the 4830 will unnecessarily bottleneck you, so that's $150 in and of itself. Luckily, RAM is cheap, so you can spend relatively little and get a lot.

Those parts will absolutely destroy Oblivion (which is quite the feat when you think about that phrase...) but again, you're practically building a new computer at this point. You have to ask yourself where your personal limit is, as spending this much just for one game is a lot. The upside is that you'll be able to run Oblivion with most or all of the eye candy on max.

My limit was $900, so I managed to get around some of these issues when I built my new PC last month.

 

Then the 4850 I linked to is your ticket. But again, I think it's slightly overkill on a Pentium Dual Core system.

 

By overkill, I mean that the 4850 won't be fully utilized by your system, as your CPU will be bottlenecking performance. Imagine a Ferrari stuck in rush hour traffic.

 

Well, there'd be a sort of cap on the max performance you can get out of your video card because of your CPU limitations. Granted it'd be a huge improvement but not as big. I second Desides, the 4850 is a great card for the price. And yes you can always use it at another time for another computer.

 

It would for now if you're considering on getting a new desktop within 1-2 years.

 

I disagree with Regan here. You can get the 4830 for below $100 and it should serve your needs well. In 1-2 years the 4850 will be relegated to "old" status. As it stands, it's already a low-midrange card, best used in budget gaming builds.

If you're planning on building a new PC in 1-2 years, buy the 4830 now, stick with what you have, and buy all-new components when you're ready to build. You won't do yourself any favors in 1-2 years if you decide to buy a Core i7 (or its successor) and slap a 4850 in there. Quite the opposite.

 

Depends on the needs but one can overclock the 4850 more than the 4830.

 

Not if you know what you're doing or just use the ATI software included. It can be dangerous if you have no idea what you're doing.

 

Then the ATI Catalyst's Overdrive overclocking will probably suit you then. It's mostly for beginners and it handles all the work.

 

I haven't heard too many things like that about the 4830. It's a lot cooler than most mid-level and up cards. You could always upgrade fans off of newegg for cheap.

 

Not the point, the 4850 has higher stock clocks. The point is that the 4830 can overclock to near 4850 levels almost effortlessly, thus partially bridging the performance gap. Downside is that the 4830's minimum FPS in high-intensity situations is much lower than the 4850's.

There really isn't a way to improve that on a budget. Just don't overclock it very far, if at all. I have a 4850 X2 card--MSRP is $300--and it runs hot even with the fairly elaborate built-on cooler. I'm considering investing $60 in two bolt-on cooling units to lower temperatures and fan noise, but this is something of an advanced surgery, not to mention potentially warranty-voiding.

What reviews are claiming the 4830 is hot?

 

Both actually though I'm guessing the stock Gateway case will be limited in terms of fan placement.

 

Newegg reviews are useless. Ignore them.

The 4830 is fine. You don't need to add cooling.

 

Forgot analgap wasn't into heavy Crysis-like FPS. Yea, then the 4830 will do. I prefer my 4870 but whatever.

 

I prefer my 4850 X2, which is consistently within 5-7 FPS of the 4870 X2 in benchmarks at almost half the price.