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[VictimOfGrief]

Being a cheapskate that I am.... I'm contemplating just upgrading my graphics card here shortly instead of buying an all together new PC as I wait for price on DDR3 to drop even further next year.

Now that said, I've had my 6800 GT 8X AGP card for quite sometime, but lately, i've noticed it starting to suck.

Contenders I'm looking at :

7600 GS

or

SAPPHIRE 100219L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 AGP 8X

Now I know ATI drivers in Vista are better and by default, the 2600XT has DX10 support so that's nice, but really how is the performance of the card on a P4 3.2E w/ 2GB of DDR?

Anyways, any help would be appreciated.

 

[CurlySaysX]

the 1950Pro is apparently pretty good, but its buggy as hell and you have to put up with shitty ATI drivers. IMO.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

the 1950Pro is apparently pretty good, but its buggy as hell and you have to put up with shitty ATI drivers. IMO.

and its DX9 not 10.

 

[Kabouter]

and its DX9 not 10.

There is no DX10 card worth buying for your desktop that's Radeon 2600/Geforce 8600 or lower.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

There is no DX10 card worth buying for your desktop that's Radeon 2600/Geforce 8600 or lower.

Yes but I run Vista and wouldn't mind having the functionality just because.

 

[shinjijai]

But don't you want to run games faster then have DX10 features that you can't use because you'll be going at 10fps?

 

[VictimOfGrief]

But don't you want to run games faster then have DX10 features that you can't use because you'll be going at 10fps?

Okay, see here's what I'm afraid of. Spending coin on a new AGP card and having the performance be shit compared to my 6800GT.

If it is, then I'll just suffer and build the new system but the 6800GT can't still be the best card for the buck 2-3 yrs later can it?

 

[aznpxdd]

6800GT's weren't even the best AGP cards during their release, the X850XT's were.

As for the HD2600XT, I think that'd be more of a downgrade than an upgrade. DX10 is also pretty much irrelevant in weaker cards.

 

[Splatt]

Yes but I run Vista and wouldn't mind having the functionality just because.

you are dumb?

Listen to the man. Everything that's Radeon 2600/Geforce 8600 or lower is worthless for DX10 gaming. It's better to get an awesome DX9 card than a low-end DX10 one.

 

[shinjijai]

Okay, see here's what I'm afraid of. Spending coin on a new AGP card and having the performance be shit compared to my 6800GT.

If it is, then I'll just suffer and build the new system but the 6800GT can't still be the best card for the buck 2-3 yrs later can it?

my reply was more towards the 1950 pro compare to the other dx10 cards you listed... if you don't want to update the whole system, the 1950pro is a good choice for you.

 

[artist]

the 1950Pro is apparently pretty good, but its buggy as hell and you have to put up with shitty ATI drivers. IMO.

ATI drivers are far better than Nvidia's right now.

As for the HD2600XT, I think that'd be more of a downgrade than an upgrade. DX10 is also pretty much irrelevant in weaker cards.

HD2600XT is faster than the 6800GT.

 

[Fireye]

7950gt or something of that sort would bring you up a level, but honestly, wait for 8800gt to have an AGP version released. It'll happen at some point, I'm pretty sure.

 

[artist]

7950gt or something of that sort would bring you up a level, but honestly, wait for 8800gt to have an AGP version released. It'll happen at some point, I'm pretty sure.

HD3800 series coming to AGP

"THE REMAINING AGP UPGRADE market will be all AMD's, it seems."

"With Nvidia screwing up the GeForce 8 series (G8x chips cannot work with BR02, Nvidia's own PCIe-2-AGP bridge chip), the market was left open for AMD's X1950 AGP and different models from 2000 series."

"This chip will be the most powerful AGP GPU of all time, unless the R700 generation ends up supporting ATI's RIALTo bridge chip (or if Nvidia fixes BR02 with G100 series)."

"Date of introduction is the same as PCIe Gen2 parts, November 19th."

 

[Xdrive05]

So why are all these new high-end video cards coming in AGP flavors? Wouldn't they be so bottlenecked by the CPU on AGP boards that there's not much reason in paying for one?

 

[VictimOfGrief]

HD3800 series coming to AGP

"THE REMAINING AGP UPGRADE market will be all AMD's, it seems."

"With Nvidia screwing up the GeForce 8 series (G8x chips cannot work with BR02, Nvidia's own PCIe-2-AGP bridge chip), the market was left open for AMD's X1950 AGP and different models from 2000 series."

"This chip will be the most powerful AGP GPU of all time, unless the R700 generation ends up supporting ATI's RIALTo bridge chip (or if Nvidia fixes BR02 with G100 series)."

"Date of introduction is the same as PCIe Gen2 parts, November 19th."

Sounds good to me!

 

[Servbot #42]

So why are all these new high-end video cards coming in AGP flavors? Wouldn't they be so bottlenecked by the CPU on AGP boards that there's not much reason in paying for one?

probably to make money of cheap people that won`t upgrade their mobo, see: VictimOfGrief

 

[artist]

So why are all these new high-end video cards coming in AGP flavors? Wouldn't they be so bottlenecked by the CPU on AGP boards that there's not much reason in paying for one?

You can hit your CPU-limit only in certain games .. besides a large % of the market is still AGP.

 

[Kamakazie!]

the 1950Pro is apparently pretty good, but its buggy as hell and you have to put up with shitty ATI drivers. IMO.

WTF are you on about?
ATi drivers have been very for a good while now. In fact, current ATi drivers are probably better than the nVidia ones.

So why are all these new high-end video cards coming in AGP flavors? Wouldn't they be so bottlenecked by the CPU on AGP boards that there's not much reason in paying for one?

Why would AGP cards be bottlenecked by the CPU any more than an PCI-e card?
The last AGP vs PCIe comparisons i saw showed little benefit of PCIe. It's just hardware manufacturers wanting to push people to upgrade yet again. Same with PCIe 2.




To the OP, yes, there are a lot of AGP cards out there. Just search on one of the major retailers websites.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

probably to make money of cheap people that won`t upgrade their mobo, see: VictimOfGrief

Zing! :lol

However it seems like a big FUD that Nvidia isn't offering their 8800GT in AGP flavor.... yet I would assume.

 

[Xdrive05]

Why would AGP cards be bottlenecked by the CPU any more than an PCI-e card?
The last AGP vs PCIe comparisons i saw showed little benefit of PCIe. It's just hardware manufacturers wanting to push people to upgrade yet again. Same with PCIe 2.

Because virtually there are no AGP boards that can accept modern or even semi-modern CPUs? And what's the point in putting a high end video card in a computer with a two (or three) year old CPU? It's just going to bottleneck it in ways that will make the videocard an unwise expenditure.

The issue here is not AGP bandwidth VS PCI-E bandwidth. Rather it's the fact that an Athlon XP processor will choke the hell out of an 8800 (or greater) videocard. So much so that it would probably not be worth even trying.

 

[j-wood]

Look for the BFG 7800GS. It's a 256 meg card, and it absolutely the best card you can have in an AGP slot.

 

[Vic]

The issue here is not AGP bandwidth VS PCI-E bandwidth. Rather it's the fact that an Athlon XP processor will choke the hell out of an 8800 (or greater) videocard. So much so that it would probably not be worth even trying.

There's a good bunch of Athlon 64 boards with AGP slot.

 

[brain_stew]

The X1950Pro is the only recommendation I'd give you. Buying one of ATI's new high end cards is just just going to be a waste of more money since the GPU will be extremely CPU bottlenecked. The X1950Pro is quite reasonably priced and will still offer quite a significant upgrade over your 6800gt without being far too bottlenecked.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

The X1950Pro is the only recommendation I'd give you. Buying one of ATI's new high end cards is just just going to be a waste of more money since the GPU will be extremely CPU bottlenecked. The X1950Pro is quite reasonably priced and will still offer quite a significant upgrade over your 6800gt without being far too bottlenecked.

Problem is those cards are $150 bucks to $250 bucks of which it's not really worth while spending the coin (which I'm slowly realizing) on a new card when it makes sense to spend that on a PCI-Ex2 card and build a new system. If it's sub $100 bucks fine, but I can't justify spending more than that.

 

[CurlySaysX]

ATI drivers are far better than Nvidia's right now.

Fox WXP - Nvidia provides better more stable drivers.
I went from a 6800GT to a 1950 and had nothing but problems trying to get the ati card to run properly.
In the end i had to use ATT And those AGO drivers.
Also, ATI doesn't support 1:1 pixel mapping.

 

[shinjijai]

Fox WXP - Nvidia provides better more stable drivers.
I went from a 6800GT to a 1950 and had nothing but problems trying to get the ati card to run properly.
In the end i had to use ATT And those AGO drivers.
Also, ATI doesn't support 1:1 pixel mapping.

Did you go from 6800GT to X1950 without cleaning the drivers/registry? if you don't, it'll mess up the system pretty bad... but the same could be said if you go from ati to nvidia as well.