The best AGP card to buy.

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lovelyx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 21, 2005
Messages
164
Hi!
I decided to sell my xbox and buy an expensive video card. The thing is that i don't know much about video cards, but as I read, I think a Radeon x800 is the best option. I'm thinking about the XT version, manufactured by Asus.
You think this is the best option? (The money is not a problem)

However I was wandering if the upgrade has a point.
I have a:
AMD Sempron 2600+
512 Ram 400mhz PC 3200
A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard

Will my system be up to the video card?

Thanks for your attention.
 
If money isnt an option just get a BBA (Built by ATi) X800 XT PE (APG).

Your system should be able to handle it as long as you got a quality power supply over 350watts.
 
read some reviews, like the vid card roundups here or at other places. the x800 xt isn't necessarily the best for the games you might like. also it depends on your price point an nvidia card might be cheaper and just as fast.
 
Finding a PE is nearly impossible. The X800XT can be found from places like Newegg or you can get better pricing by buying directly from the vendor...Visiontek comes to mind as they offer theirs for like $479.

However, given the rest of your system specs the X800 Pro or 6800GT isn't a bad choice because you would already be so heavily CPU limited.
 
Either the X800XT-PE or the 6800Ultra. Either one would be great. But check the reviews and see which is better for the games you like. If you like more OpenGL games then go nVidia. If you like more Direct X games go ATi. If it's a push down the middle I'd say go nVidia for the simple fact that it's Direct X performance much lower than ATi's, but the same can not be said for ATi's OpenGL performance.
 
Thanks Ver1tas, I have read a lot of reviews.
I just wanted to read some opinions of end users.
:)
 
Well, there may be another problem, I live in mexico, and I just may get only the most popular version of the most popular manufaturers. So finding a PE version could be kind of difficult.

Un4given said:

However, given the rest of your system specs the X800 Pro or 6800GT isn't a bad choice because you would already be so heavily CPU limited.

Sorry I dont get the "you would already be so heavily CPU limited" part.
 
it depends on what ur tryin to play. dont buy a x800 to play counter strike. my opinion. Go with the 9800 pro or xt if u want untill the price of cards go down. i have a 9800 and ive played counter strike source fine. but its up to u.
 
Well thats the problem, I dont have any game in mind. I was too busy with my xbox.
I currently own:
Doom 3
Silent Hill 3
Hitman Contracts
and some old games.
 
If I could find one I would get the Gainward Golden Sample 6800 Ultra/2600
 
lovelyx said:
Hi!
I decided to sell my xbox and buy an expensive video card. The thing is that i don't know much about video cards, but as I read, I think a Radeon x800 is the best option. I'm thinking about the XT version, manufactured by Asus.
You think this is the best option? (The money is not a problem)

However I was wandering if the upgrade has a point.
I have a:
AMD Sempron 2600+
512 Ram 400mhz PC 3200
A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard

Will my system be up to the video card?

Thanks for your attention.
Click to expand...

Umm...folks..he has a Sempron 2600+. I think the X800XT PE might be a just a "tad" bit of overkill for his rig. He even only has 512 MB of Ram. Nowever if the thread starter plans on getting a A64 sometime soon...then maybe the higher end card is a better choice.

For your proc/RAM combo I would recommend a 6600GT or 6800NU. Nothing more.

-tReP
 
I agree. As a single video-card, I would say the X800XTPE has the most overclocking headroom and is faster at most games than the nVidia board(althoug the 6800Ultra or GT are still more than enough for today's games).
 
Trepidati0n said:
Umm...folks..he has a Sempron 2600+. I think the X800XT PE might be a just a "tad" bit of overkill for his rig. He even only has 512 MB of Ram. Nowever if the thread starter plans on getting a A64 sometime soon...then maybe the higher end card is a better choice.

For your proc/RAM combo I would recommend a 6600GT or 6800NU. Nothing more.

-tReP
Click to expand...

I concur. Anything more than 6800NU/X800Pro will be a waste of money on a low end rig like that.
 
As TRep said, your system would be bottlenecking the videocard's performance.

I had an old 1.6GHZ P4 with 512mb cheap RAM running with a 9800XT and the card had nowhere near the performance it should. I brought the card over to my friend's and tried it on his 3200+ with 1GB Geil and the porformance substantially increased by around 40FPS(literally).

Your system's Bus speeds and operating frquecies would be insufficient to accomodate the card's powerfull performance. I would suggest upping your system first and then go to a vid.

Also, is your PSU up to the task of a brand new off the shelf high end vid card?
 
lovelyx said:
However I was wandering if the upgrade has a point.
I have a:
AMD Sempron 2600+
512 Ram 400mhz PC 3200
A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard

Will my system be up to the video card?

Thanks for your attention.
Click to expand...

I don't think putting a top of the line card in your system is gonna be any better than a middle of the road card. You system will never push a current generation card to be used to it's fullest potential. I would opt for a 6600GT or a 6800NU. That would go nicely with the rest of your system, and you may not have to sell your X-Box to afford one.
 
I think a 6600GT or 6800nu would be a better match for your processor. You aren't going to get much extra fps by going with a more expensive card due to your CPU.

Also, I'd take the 6800GT over the x800xt if you go that route.
 
Now I have a Readeon 9250 128td.
Is the upgrade worthy, to a 6600GP?
By the way, is that card only 128mb?
 
If you have a specific budget, perhaps we can provide some more options. For example, getting an AMD64 3400+/new motherboard/extra 512Mb RAM/6800nu will give you a much more rounded games PC than just splashing all the cash on an XT PE or 6800U given the comparative lack of RAM and CPU speed.

Even waiting a couple of months and upgrading to a PCI-Express AMD socket 939 system with an X800XL could reap its rewards, assuming the XL ever hits the shops at its mooted $299.
 
card memory isn't important. don't pay atention to it. 6800nu is the limit, i'd say. I got one and I'm very happy with it.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Either the X800XT-PE or the 6800Ultra. Either one would be great. But check the reviews and see which is better for the games you like. If you like more OpenGL games then go nVidia. If you like more Direct X games go ATi. If it's a push down the middle I'd say go nVidia for the simple fact that it's Direct X performance much lower than ATi's, but the same can not be said for ATi's OpenGL performance.
Click to expand...

The fact remains that there are far more Direct X games out, than OpenGL. This trend seems to be continuing as most of the recent releases were Direct X. The ratio is probably somewhere around 80% Direct X, 20% OpenGL.
 
Sorry mulpsmebeauty, I just have bought the computer.

BountyHunter, How much time will i play with the 6800nu , before it gets obsolete?
 
lovelyx said:
Now I have a Readeon 9250 128td.
Is the upgrade worthy, to a 6600GP?
By the way, is that card only 128mb?
Click to expand...

Either a 6600GT or 6800nu will be lightyears faster than the card you have now, and both will last you quite a while.

eVGA 6600GT
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-220&depa=0

eVGA 6800
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-202&depa=0

Either one of these the great, the 6800 is faster when you use AA/AF since it has around 6gbps more memory bandwidth than the 6600GT.

Either one of these would best match your CPU and be the best way to spend your money.
 
The 6800nu won't be obsolete for several years (by which I mean it'll be unable to play the newest games on the lowest settings), but it'll be struggling to play the latest games on medium settings probably in a couple of years. This is purely me speculating. Of course medium settings usually still look good, but it sounds bad describing something as 'medium'.

The 6800nu is a really good card and will run all of today's games at 1280x1024 with little effort. You still want to look at another 512Mb RAM if you can though. 1Gb is the minimum for serious PC gaming nowadays.
 
lovelyx said:
Thanks Ver1tas, I have read a lot of reviews.
I just wanted to read some opinions of end users.
:)
Click to expand...
heh, well a lot of people just expect people to decide for them, i personally like my 6800 oc, the 6800 gt is also really good.
 
Well, as you can read, it seems i was reading the reviews of the wrong products.
im planning to buy another 512mb ram memory, so i can take advantage of the dual channel memory.
I read the 6600GT has ddr3 meory an the 6800nu doesnt, does that amkes any difference?
 
lovelyx said:
Well, as you can read, it seems i was reading the reviews of the wrong products.
im planning to buy another 512mb ram memory, so i can take advantage of the dual channel memory.
I read the 6600GT has ddr3 meory an the 6800nu doesnt, does that amkes any difference?
Click to expand...

The 6600GT has DDR3 memory @ 1000mhz but it only has a 128-bit memory bus
the 6800 has DDR memory @ 700mhz but it has a 256-bit memory bus

Therefore:

6600GT:
1000mhz * 128 / 8 = 16gbps memory bandwidth

6800:
700mhz * 256 / 8 = 22.4gbps memory bandwidth

Even though the 6600GT has faster memory, since it has only a 128-bit memory bus, it actually has 6.4gbps less memory bandwidth than the 6800, therefore the 6800 is significantly better even though it has slower clocked memory.
 
Thank you all a lot for your patience and your answers, you have been very helpful.
 
lovelyx said:
Trepidati0n

Can you tell me the reason, with more details.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The cool part about the Big Boy cards (X800XT and 6800 Ultra) is that they can do BIG resolutions + Big AA/AF. However, to support that they need a an equivalent big CPU.

Here is a way to look at it. You have Guy A and Guy B. Guy A can pick 10 pickles and hour and Guy B can put 10 pickes in a jar per hour. Overall It takes them two hours to do a jar of 10 pickles. Now while guy B can do his job while guy A is picking the next set, alot of pickle farmers are not so bright so tend not to be efficient at doing this. So it takes even longer than 2 hours for a Jar of Pickles Then lets say we fire guy B and replace him with a guy who can pick 15 pickles per hour. Guy B can now do his job faster but he has some "dead time" waiting for guy A to do his job. Also Guy B cost 3x more per hour to hire. So really you cost for pickles per hour goes up and not down by getting the better guy.

This is effectively what you are doing. You will see some good performance increase by going to a Big Boy card but you not be getting as much as you can for that what you paid for it.

A prime example is my system. I have a 3200+XP, 1 GB Ram, 6600 GT rig. If I run it at 2500+ I tage a huge performance hit in terms of FPS...almost 25%! Now in order to get that 25% back I would have to buy a $400+ card instead of a $200 card.

Your Semp is like running a duron...the games need that cache and extra horse power to feed the Vid card as best as they can. The worst thing for a video game rig is a gimped processor. Worse yet is little memory. If you can get a decent video card and dump money into the proc/memory (the memory for hitching and the proc for a nice FPS boost).

I would be willing to bet few Georges that if you bought an X800 Pro and X800XT and compared them side by side you would sill maybe only a few FPS difference
@ at high AA/AF and res. Even tomorrows game are becoming more CPU intensive and RAM demanding.

So with your rig...I would cap your self at 6800NU or X800PRO. Anything beyond that is really giving somebody alot of money for maybe a few more FPS. If you have a A64 rig...the 6800 Ultras/X800XT are the correct card.

-tReP
 
Your best option would be getting a 6600GT or 6800nu (whichever you can afford) and another 512MB of RAM. Being able to run dual channel on an Athlon XP board wont matter much though because your only going to gain maybe around 3% in performance if that. The Athlon XP's dont make use of dual channel very well because they are only dual pumped instead of quad pumped like the Pentium 4.
 
I would say a 6800 nu or a 6800Gt would compliment your rig rather well. Anything more and you are going to have bottleneck issues with your cpu and your ram.
 
I wouldn't worry about your new card becoming obsolete. If you buy a card that is matched well to your computer such as the 6800NU as has been suggested, then all of your computer components will live, grow-up, grow old, retire and finally pass away together.
 
Thanks for all your opinions.
Im definetly buying more ream, but maybe a month afte i buy the video card.
Can you belive here in mexico the x800xt is around $70 dollars?
I decided for the 6800nu, and it costs $45 dollars.
Someone said to me that a geforce vidcard would work better with my motherboard than an ati vidcard.
I have an asus a7n8x-e deluxe.
At the time, here in emxico 64bit processors and motherboards are to expensive.

By the way, thanks for the explanation Trepidati0n.
 
lovelyx said:
Can you belive here in mexico the x800xt is around $70 dollars?
Click to expand...

Are you shit'n me? Thats in US currency? Are there any online mexicano stores to order from? lol

Why aren't you buying a bunch if their so cheap and selling them on ebay for a big profit?
 
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