The hunt for a new graphics card continues...

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Paraclete

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
71
Well after numerous attempts to get that 7600 GS working and failing miserably i decided to go back to best buy again and discuss returning the thing. Turns out most all of them that they have sold got returned to the store with similar problems so they gave me my money back no problem, so the hunt continues for a new card, heres what i need...

- 200 dollar spending limit
- AGP ONLY
- must support games like marvel ultimate alliance, ghost recon advanced warfighter and auto assault
- NO 7600 GS's :rolleyes:

So...what should i go for here...
 
I didn't realize the price premium that AGP carries. You can get a new NF4 motherboard with PCI-E slot for 754 and a PCI-E 7600 GT for lesss than that. I realize that you have to change out the motherboard, but that's a small price to pay to get a PCI-E slot for future upgrades. Plus, if you want to keep that 7600 GT when you finally build a new rig, you can, unlike the AGP version of the card.

Here's a 7600 GT for $105:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130062

And an Abit NV8 for $59.99(I mention it because it's a 754 NF4 board with PCI-e, and I had good overclocking luck with it, but there's a few others to choose from)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127220

A little more work to get installed, but a bit cheaper and a better upgrade path that will get you out of the AGP hole.
 
Jonsey said:
I didn't realize the price premium that AGP carries. You can get a new NF4 motherboard with PCI-E slot for 754 and a PCI-E 7600 GT for lesss than that. I realize that you have to change out the motherboard, but that's a small price to pay to get a PCI-E slot for future upgrades. Plus, if you want to keep that 7600 GT when you finally build a new rig, you can, unlike the AGP version of the card.

Here's a 7600 GT for $105:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130062

And an Abit NV8 for $59.99(I mention it because it's a 754 NF4 board with PCI-e, and I had good overclocking luck with it, but there's a few others to choose from)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127220

A little more work to get installed, but a bit cheaper and a better upgrade path that will get you out of the AGP hole.
Click to expand...

Interesting, i like this idea very much.
 
Even before the MIR in the video card, it's $5 cheaper than the AGP 7600 GT. Should be enough to offset the extra shipping cost of the mobo.
 
im a little unfamiliar with the brand, you are confident that it is a decent quality board? Needless to say name doesnt really mean much lol when i built my bros computer last year, new egg sent me a dead chaintech twice, and then 2 dead soltek boards to replace the chaintech boards, it wasnt until the 5th replacement board that i finally got a working motherboard, and even then the onboard sound never worked properly. Will this abit board work well with my other parts, such as processor and ram, and my thermalright xp-90? I want to ensure that all the other parts are compatible before purchasing.
 
Paraclete said:
im a little unfamiliar with the brand, you are confident that it is a decent quality board? Needless to say name doesnt really mean much lol when i built my bros computer last year, new egg sent me a dead chaintech twice, and then 2 dead soltek boards to replace the chaintech boards, it wasnt until the 5th replacement board that i finally got a working motherboard, and even then the onboard sound never worked properly. Will this abit board work well with my other parts, such as processor and ram, and my thermalright xp-90? I want to ensure that all the other parts are compatible before purchasing.
Click to expand...

My wife's PC was pretty much like yours; she had a AMD64 3200 and the excellent chaintech NF3 250 board, great combo, it's just AGP.

With the NV8, her 2.2 GHz processor is overclocked to 2.5 GHz. The board needed a bios flash to overclock well. That was a year ago, though. They may have a better shipping bios on the board now. It doesn't have a lot of features, but for the price, it works OK. Only problem we've had so far is that the northbridge fan is starting to die after a year of constant operation.

Check the pictures at Newegg for clearance issues. I think that it only has two RAM slots, so if that is an issue for you, beware. Right now, my wife's is water cooled, so I don't know how your HSF would do on the NV8, but you should be able to get a good idea from the newegg pictures.
 
theres just one thing im still concerned about, and thats those 7 series geforce cards, i dont want to continue to run into a problem with freezing and crashing if in fact it is a defect in the card line, if i were to buy ATI, what would be the best choice PCI-E wise for that price?
 
If there were some ongoing defect with the 7-series, do you think anybody here would be running them?

The best thing you have for ATI in that range is the X1600 series, which are not competitive with the NV 7-series in that range.
 
Paraclete said:
theres just one thing im still concerned about, and thats those 7 series geforce cards, i dont want to continue to run into a problem with freezing and crashing if in fact it is a defect in the card line, if i were to buy ATI, what would be the best choice PCI-E wise for that price?
Click to expand...

The X800 GTO and X800 XL are close to the $100 mark. They are similar in perfomance, but I think I'd rather have the 7600 GT at this point. Similar performance and better features (with sm 3 support).
 
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