ATI Radeon™ X300 SE vs X800 SE

[LivninSC]

I was one of the people lucky enough to get a 17" LCD TV for $1 when I buy a Dimension. My computer is about 3 years old but still does a decent job with it's GeForce 4 whatever. I'm looking to get either a 4700 or a 8400 Dimension and add a nice sized HD and a Gig o'ram through the normal cheaper channels.

1st question. I can get a fully equipped 4700 (minus the same HD and RAM above) for about $650 and a fully equipped (same) for about $800 with the X300 SE. As I'll be using the 17" monitor with a resolution of 1280 x 768 does it make sense to even bother upgrading to the X800 SE? If I were to have the 2001FP and use 1600X1200 I'd agree yes but on the lower resolution don't know if it would be worth it.

2nd question. Is the price diff in the 4700 and 8400 really worth it?

3rd question. How will the monitor look on it's widescreen format? Does it just scale down to fit games and leave black bars on the side? If so that'd be weird.

Thanks!

[zippyjuan]

The X300SE is a PCI Express card and the slowest on they make. I am not sure which AGP card it is comprable to. If you play games. you will want a better card- either using the Dell upgrade or buying your own. SE is the lowest version of any ATI card. Since it sounds like the rest of the computer performance is fine, you may want to go with the 4700 and get your own new video card for about $200. The best in that range would be the nVidea 6600GT in PCI Express. Before you install a different brand of card (ATI vs nVIdea) make sure you uninstall the old drivers first or you may have some problems. Again, this all depends on what you use your computer for. Games will require a better card. As far as the monitor, I think you can set it up to format to fill the whole screen.