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AGP Midrange Half-Life 2

E

Ed1534

n00b
Joined
Nov 23, 2004
Messages
6
AGP, $150-250, Half-Life 2.....

What's my best chipset option? I am also looking at 256MB. Other games are UT2004 and Far Cry. I haven't had a real video card for a year and a half since my mobo caps blew and fried my OC'd all copper cooling Ti4200 - moment of silence on my behalf, please :(

I was out of the scene for a while, then I got back in, thought i had my bases covered, then realized that the cards I wanted were all PCI-X. So now I've had Half-Life 2 for a week and no play.....

So, right now I'm looking at ATI 9600 XT and GeForce 6600 GT/Ultra. Any good links for me?
 
Get the 6600GT.. there is no such thing as a 6600Ultra yet.
 
I can only find one 6600 / 6600 GT card in AGP. It is from a company called XFX who I've never heard of.

9800 Pro
9600 XT
wait for X-series in AGP (when?)
??????

I normally do all this research myself, but I have been out of the loop and *trying* to look at benchmark charts on a modem is like chinese water torture.

Help me!
 
if you get lucky you may be able to find a 6800nu, but a 6600gt would be the best bet, followed by a 9800pro
 
In the price range I'll also have to say your best choices are the nVidia 6600GT (AGP version), the 9800 Pro 256 MB version, the 9800 Pro 128 MB version, and maybe the 6800 non-Ultra if you can get it for around $250 or less (there were rebates and stuff this week).
 
You can get a BFG 6800 OC. It's a 12 pipeline card vs. the other choices you were looking at are 8 pipeline. Sometimes you can get lucky and unlock the extra pipes and have a 16 pipe card. They cost $250.

If you have a Best Buy in your area, they are running a sale where you can get the BFG 6800, Half Life 2, and FarCry for $250.
 
mbmadness said:
You can get a BFG 6800 OC. It's a 12 pipeline card vs. the other choices you were looking at are 8 pipeline. Sometimes you can get lucky and unlock the extra pipes and have a 16 pipe card. They cost $250.

If you have a Best Buy in your area, they are running a sale where you can get the BFG 6800, Half Life 2, and FarCry for $250.
Click to expand...

i can speak on behalf of this awesome deal :D
 
I ended up getting the BFG GeForce 6800 OC at Best Buy. I was very hesitant because it only has 128 megs of RAM and that's what my Ti4200 had 2 years ago. That and the fact that I had to buy another copy of HL2 and wait for a $105 rebate.
Most I've ever spent on a vid card, so I should be pleased with the results. The two little fans are clear and have blue LEDs to go with the inside of my case :) It also looks like a copper heat-pipe setup. Those would have been a good bullet points on the retail box...

Ed
 
6800 if you can swing it, 6600 GT otherwise, the prices tend to be really similar in PCI-e, but the AGP 6600 GT is like $50 more for some reason.
 
Ed1534 said:
I ended up getting the BFG GeForce 6800 OC at Best Buy. I was very hesitant because it only has 128 megs of RAM and that's what my Ti4200 had 2 years ago. That and the fact that I had to buy another copy of HL2 and wait for a $105 rebate.
Most I've ever spent on a vid card, so I should be pleased with the results. The two little fans are clear and have blue LEDs to go with the inside of my case :) It also looks like a copper heat-pipe setup. Those would have been a good bullet points on the retail box...

Ed
Click to expand...

I bet you upgrade again before you hit a really limiting 128MB bottleneck on your card.
 
Good choice there. The 6800 will blow everything else in that price range out of the water.
 
I went with the XFS 6600GT for my old Athlon XP 3200+ system. I figured the CPU might be a bit of a bottle neck for a 6800 or higher. Saved about $100 Canadian. I probbaly won't be keeping my AGP system forever so I figured I'd try and save some money.

Haven't received the card yet but I'm sure it will be quite an upgrade from my old Gefoce 3 Ti200. What a good card that was, got nearly 3 years of solid gaming out of it.
 
The PCI-E 6600GT plays HL2 great. I have a mild core overclock (535MHz) and good memory overclock (1200MHz) and HL2 is smooth at 1600x1200 w/2xAA and 8xAF.
 
________UPDATE________
Athlon XP 2400
1gig PC2700 (Corsair XMS, 2x512, single channel)
BFG 6800 OC
crappy Shuttle mobo
SB Live! Platinum 5.1

HL2 @ 1024x768 with ALL video settings MAXED OUT plays completly smooth.
CPU is at 100% 98% of the time. Actual FPS numbers with next update. Minor hiccups with big explosions and large outdoor areas. I found a tutorial for unlocking more pipelines on this card, and finally got some OCing software. Gonna try it out and let y'all know!
 
i have no idea what you mean when you say Cpu is 98% to 100% usage during the game.. ITS ALWAYS 100% !!
 
Ed1534 said:
I ended up getting the BFG GeForce 6800 OC at Best Buy. I was very hesitant because it only has 128 megs of RAM and that's what my Ti4200 had 2 years ago. That and the fact that I had to buy another copy of HL2 and wait for a $105 rebate.
Most I've ever spent on a vid card, so I should be pleased with the results. The two little fans are clear and have blue LEDs to go with the inside of my case :) It also looks like a copper heat-pipe setup. Those would have been a good bullet points on the retail box...

Ed
Click to expand...

good choice.
 
Using RivaTuner, I was able to unlock one extra pixel shader. Unlocking the 4 extra vertex shaders resulted in nasty artifacts for 3D, not 2D. Normal for the 6800 NU is 12 vertex and 5 pixel, I am now at 12 and 6. I ran a few timedemos in Half-Life 2 on Coast just before the crane - sound on low quality.

Stock pipelines on a 251 frame timedemo had an average FPS of 32.77 for 4 runs, with the extra pixel shader avg of 5 runs was 33.74.
2.96% increase.

Stock pipelines on a 4974 frame timedemo had an average FPS of 36.76 for 4 runs, unlocked average of 13 runs was 37.246.
1.32% increase.

Hopefully you guys will be able to unlock the vertex shaders...
 
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