[jqp]

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/games/a-different-kind-of-rapture-a-review-of-bioshock.ars

[IronLion]

About 75% of the way through the game right now.  A great game, very detail oriented world that really sucks you in, and the options as far as fighting enemies are numerous and pretty entertaining if you experiment with different combinations of weapons and powers.  I would definitely recommend getting it.   

[mfsoa]

My son is trying to play, but our frame rates are really slow.

We have a Dell XPS400, 2.8G P4, 1G ram, geforce 7300LE.

From what I gather on the web this is a real low-end card (am I right about that?) and more RAM would also help.

I guess we need a new graphis card - Any suggestions?

I don't want to pay for SOTA (the 8800 series?), but what's the next best thing that'll still be usable a year from now?

Thanks for any advice!

-Mike (and Dan too)

[ooheadsoo]

Unfortunately, there's no real middle ground card, right now.  A 7950 is probably the only card that can hang on a by the numbers basis, but it won't have the dx10 support that you will get with the 8000 series.  Unfortunately, the budget 8600 series is gimped as far as performance.

[mcullinan]

You could always get am Xbox360.
 Mike aa

[gitarretyp]

Tom's hardware runs this section every month or so lately: Best Gaming Cards for the Money.

[jqp]

My son is trying to play, but our frame rates are really slow.

We have a Dell XPS400, 2.8G P4, 1G ram, geforce 7300LE.

From what I gather on the web this is a real low-end card (am I right about that?) and more RAM would also help.

I guess we need a new graphis card - Any suggestions?

I don't want to pay for SOTA (the 8800 series?), but what's the next best thing that'll still be usable a year from now?

Thanks for any advice!

-Mike (and Dan too)

Yeah the PC gaming problem: you need a new $350 video card every year to play the latest games, and still there may be issues with some games.

This game - Bioshock - seems to require a non ATI X*** series card! the X1** series cards do seem to be OK although they are lower-level cards.

see here http://www.arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2007/08/23/no-bioshock-rapture-in-sight-for-ati-x800x850-users

Recommended:

DX9: DirectX 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better

see the link in my first post

Agree that you don't want an 8600 card - you want the 8800 if you are going to go for this higher level card

All this is why I am an XBox gamer (aside from the fact that I am not at all a hard-core gamer)