Need a new, yet AGP, video card....

[CmdrSlack]

So I was looking at Crucial.com for a new video card.  I am currently running a Raedon 9000 that I believe has a whopping 64 meg of RAM.  I'm not in the market to buy a whole new machine at this time, so I have to work with what I have, which is an AGP slot.  Are there any goofy things about AGP that I should know?  The last time I did my own video card upgrade was from a Voodoo2 to a Voodoo3 back in the late 90s.

For instance, is the whole 4x AGP some special slot or is it just a better use of the standard AGP slot?

ETA -- This one looked decent for the price point and significant upgrade

[Miasma]

Evangolis posted a link to this article a little while ago, has some nice information about the best AGP cards.  I imagine you would need to check in your BIOS or motherboard manual to see if it at least does 4X for the card you linked, the compatability section of the wiki seems to indicate that if your board is very old the card will not even fit into the slot so that no damage can be done (of course it wouldn't work either  ).

[CmdrSlack]

This is what I get for buying a box when SWG launched instead of building my own....le sigh.

[Sky]

Well, it is a matter of putting money into a dead-end pc. It's a tough one, one I went through last year as I considered some good agp deals. I finally decided to hold out for a new system (and oh am I aching right now). How long do you plan to keep this system chugging along? Shorter term might lend itself to a cheaper card, but if you don't foresee building a new system for a while, it might be worth it to drop some dough on a decent gpu (and maybe beef up the RAM, depending on what you've got).

The question is really about where your system will bottleneck. What cpu/mobo/ram are you running? What kind of monitor will you be supporting, what resolutions do you expect to use?

I was looking at one of these puppies recently: Sapphire X1950PRO 512MB. That puppy will definitely spruce things up a lot. It's $130 more than the one you were looking at, so performance does come at a price. I consider this a nice mature version of this lineage, like the 9800PRO I'm about to retire; the 9800PRO lasted me three years in this system (and is still a darn good card, if slow in newer games...it did play Oblivion acceptably!)

The card you listed is very light on shaders, so you'll be turning effects way low and struggling with new titles. Also, one great thing about the 9800pro was the 256 bit memory interface. A lot of the newer AGP cards are skimping with half that.

With that in mind, I also dug up a couple alternatives: BFG Tech GeForce 6800GT 256MB for $190 or BIOSTAR GeForce 6800XT 512MB for $150. There's also an open box 9800Pro for $66, but I'd guess you want a more significant upgrade than a three-yr-old card!

Just some ideas. I generally spend months researching stuff before I finally buy. I recommend you do the same (well, weeks anyway!) and you'll be just fine. Hope this helps some.

[Viin]

If you had posted this earlier I would have sold you my ATI X800 Pro (256mb) card for like $50 but I already sold it to a friend.

[CmdrSlack]

Just some ideas. I generally spend months researching stuff before I finally buy. I recommend you do the same (well, weeks anyway!) and you'll be just fine. Hope this helps some.

Thanks man.  Yeah, I plan to do a ton of reading around, etc.  I am not looking to buy until I get my taxes done and get my return back, so it'll be a bit anyway.  IF the return is large enough and I can get the financing for a "from the store" box (read as: Dell), then I MIGHT just make a down payment and finance the rest and upgrade the whole machine.  Thing is that the P4 proc and 1 gig of RAM it has ain't doing too shabby in the productivity department.

I am mainly concerned about being able to play Spore when it launches.  Of course, by that time I also plan to have a new machine entirely.  This box has lots of future uses, including my daughter's first computer when she's old enough to learn to use one...which I guess is in about three or so more years...four year-olds can learn to do basic junk on a computer, right?

[Strazos]

I just recently purchased the BFG card linked above. I can tell you from experience that the card is an absolute monster.

Unfortunately, now the only thing holding my system back is the CPU, an old Socket A AMD Athlon XP 2700+. Practically every game I own auto-detects and sets the visuals settings to "just about" max. The only time my performance has not been what I would like it to be was in large CoH groups, where during heavy combat my FPS would drop to a slideshow. I can only guess this is due to my CPU, as my card is very nice now, and I don't imagine the game would choke out my 1GB of RAM that easily.

In short - get the BFG. You will like it. The only thing you need to be concerned about is the power consumption. When I purchased my card, I had to upgrade my PSU; this thing wants at least 20 amps on the 12+V rail. My new 500w Antec unit carries 18A each over dual 12V rails.

EDIT: What's the difference between the 6800 GT and the 7800 GS? I mistakenly read the above as being the 7800 GS, which is what I have. Also, if you get the GS, there's a $50 rebate. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046

[Ironwood]

If you dig down a wee bit, there's a thread that I started where we hashed over the same issue.  I don't think AGP's come on much since then.

[CmdrSlack]

large CoH groups, where during heavy combat my FPS would drop to a slideshow

Hrm.  I get the same effect with my current rig, was hoping to fix that.

If you dig down a wee bit, there's a thread that I started where we hashed over the same issue.  I don't think AGP's come on much since then.

My search-fu is not so much it seems.   

[Sky]

EDIT: What's the difference between the 6800 GT and the 7800 GS? I mistakenly read the above as being the 7800 GS, which is what I have. Also, if you get the GS, there's a $50 rebate. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046

Oh, that's nice.

[Strazos]

large CoH groups, where during heavy combat my FPS would drop to a slideshow

Hrm.  I get the same effect with my current rig, was hoping to fix that.

It's better now, since I dropped my res to 1024x768. I'm not sure which piece of hardware is doing the most to hold me back at this point.