120 - 150 Dollar budget

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brewcrew814

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2005
Messages
134
Hiya everyone,
I'm going to pick up a GPU in a couple weeks for my brother, I was hoping for some feedback. He's running a
9600 PRO AGP
1024 MB (PC2700 DDR SDRAM)
AMD Athlon XP, 2157 MHz (13 x 166)

Like myself he's not going to be building a comp for 9 - 12 months. I'm not sure what powersupply he has ATM. He has a HP he bought from CompUSA. Anyway, I'm looking at these two GPU's and was wondering which would be the best.

This one only has GDDR2 memory.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2427400&CatId=318

This uses GDDR3 memory, wasn't sure how much of a difference it would make.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2201323&CatId=318

My Brother/Nephews use mainly for WoW, CounterStrike and most likely will be playing Vanguard. I wanted to get him ready for the release. Any input would be appreciated.
Also, If you have a better suggestion than the 2 listed I'm open for that also :D
Again, I'm trying to stay from 100 - 150 dollars, This comp will be used approximately 9 more months before a new build.
 
The good news... WoW and CounterStrike will run good on both cards
The bad news...... Vanguard needs LOTS of video horse power and will run like crap (not even 10FPS on low settings) on both. You will need an X1950 pro or better (ATI) or 7900GT or better (Nvidia) for playable results
 
Thanks for the reply,
What do you all think about these then? Only thing that would worry me is if his powersupply could handle it. I will have to ask him to crack the case open. What would be the minimal powersupply needed to run this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161070

I didn't see a 7900 in AGP flavor just a 7800.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046

I guess I will just have him pitch in and have to go over budget a little bit. Main reason they will need an upgrade is to play Vanguard. I figure if they could squeeze another 9 - 12 months with this upgrade another 50 bucks shouldn't be bad. Thanks again.
 
You will be CPU limited...


Your most likely wasting money on such a old system with no upgrade ability...


Pickup a 7600 or x800 series in the mean time and turn some stuff down on games that don't run too well..
 
find a cheap x8xx series card or geforce 68xx gt or gs card. This way the bottleneck wont be much of an issue. besides, the games you state are not that graphic hungry as already mentioned. I'd even recommend a 6800nu since they oc well and can be unocked. You won't need much more than a 128mb card....256mb is perfect for what you're considering.

gl.
 
I think for the price and based on your system the 6800 should fit the bill just fine.

You could get the X1950 or the 7800GS but im willing to bet you dont even have a PSU up to snuff for those 2.

Not to mention those 2 would be overkill for your current setup.

Vanguard is not done yet so dont buy a card based on beta testers opinions. Im sure by the time its released and maybe a couple patches later it will be playable at low settings with the 6800. I highly doubt they are going to market the game to the top 5% of folks who live on the bleeding edge of hardware especially since thier an MMO. games like oblivion can pull that crap but MMOs would be screwing themselves doing that.

My reccomendation is to get the 6800 for now to hold you over and save some cash to build a new rig. I think that with vista launches and ATI rolling out the R600 youll see some damn good prices on many different computer parts here pretty soon. Thats when i would buy the good stuff.
 
I would get a card to play WoW and CounterStrike. You are planning on upgrading in 6mo + so why waste money on a video card that will not be able to make the switch. To use the X1950Pro (or any of the higher power cards you will need to upgrade to a newer powersupply that can put out at least 20-25amps on the 12v line (I'm sure your old one will not)
 
he should be able to play wow and cs source on that 9600 already?? here is what im doing... since my old video card took a crap im in the hunt for a video card.. im gonna buy a cheap-o 256mb 100 dollar video card. just to hold me off till vista / DX10(or w.e its called) etc... then 9 months down the road when say r600(ATI fans) or 8800(nVidia fans) come way down in price which they will... most games hypothetically will have dx10 support vista support and etc.. now if ur a young kid just save up ur money for 9 months down the road that u can do a sweet build..end of story... so try installin cs source on that 9600 and it should run fine may not look the best but it will work trust me it will be worth the wait..
 
I don't recommend getting the 6800 XT. It only has 8 pixel pipelines, compared to 12 on the vanilla 6800 and the 6800GS and 16 on the 6800GT and the 6800 Ultra. I'd just wait until the new build (or build the new one after R600/refreshes). Like everyone else said, to play newer games like Vanguard well you'd need to dump at least $200 into an AGP card and it's not worth it for what looks like an Athlon XP ~2600+ with 1GB of 333MHz DDR RAM.

Source should run on the 9600 Pro.
 
Thanks a lot everyone for the advice. I will be forwarding this to my brother and I'll let him decide. He'll know exactly when he's going to uprade better than myself :D I was just going to pitch in some of the cash to help out. Thanks again.
 
actually they have 8! at least im pretty freaking sure unless you unlock them and thats not guaranteed. i see someone has a 70$ x800pro 256 on the for sale section that wouldnt be to bad.. i would personally upgrade the mobo to use pcie not sure if they have those mobos i know 939 and 478 assrock have pcie/agp boards for 30$ and get a 7800gt or faster card.. when spending that much might as well get something worth the money.. 7600gt is horrible value imo
 
iam looking to upgrade to a x1950pro
i got a X800XL AGP made by ATI
if you want my old card i would sell it to you for the price of that pro

right now i can play WOW and CS source @ 1680x1050 with maxed sweetings on my 20 inch LCD widescreen
runs fine i just want a little more power for BF2142 and fear so i can play smooth at native res on my lcd
 
okay, i really have to say it. what's the point? You're better off saving that money up for a better overall system. the CPU is limiting, the motherboard is less efficient and AGP graphic cards are more expensive than their faster PCIe counterparts. I don't see the benefits of going AGP. For 150 dollars on PCIe, you can get a 7900GS which scores around 7000 on 3dmark 05 stock, 9000+ after overclocks on 3dmark05. Those AGP cards could only dream of hitting those numbers on benchmarks and gaming in general. even if you got your hands on an X1950Pro, your CPU will bottleneck.

but if you're wanting to upgrade anyway, an X800 series cards would be good (non-vanilla and non-SE). That's probably as far as I'd go on AGP and actually wasting money on an AGP graphics card.
 
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