agp 8x card

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Pain

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The OP's got an 1800+. If he had a 3200+, I'd say go for it.

That's what I said.

IRT topic, you could also find a 2500+ on ebay and maybe boost your system a bit more, if the board will support it. But, there is a point of diminishing returns on this current machine, so you have to decide if $200-250 is worth it to upgrade it, or to put it towards a new machine.

ADDED: I mean, if the MB would support it, one might consider this. Then add the $90 for a 7300gt or 6600gt, and another 512M for $50, and for 200 bucks you get a pretty nice boost in performance.
 

Athalus_nubie

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If you can afford it, now is as good time to build a new system, prices are lovely and low on almost everything, and your old system is pretty much at the end of its life anyways ;p
if ya cant then go for an 9800, as anything more would be bottlenecked by your CPU.
 

Athalus_nubie

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http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/10/agp-platform-analysis/page6.html

Or you could draw on your own experiences of building computers, which should tell you that upgrading a graphics card in an old system never performs as well as the same graphics card in a new system with higher specs.
Not all games are going to be bottlenecked by CPU preformance but enough are that it should be a vaild concern. Also in that article the CPU is a XP 2500+ which as you should know is much less likly to prove a bottleneck than a 1800+.
 

Pain

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It's very much game/engine dependant too. But, you said that too.

In this first article, we wanted to see if an Athlon XP 2500+ would bottleneck today's newest AGP cards. It would seem that the answer is a resounding "sometimes". Depending on the game, some will bottleneck early, and others will give powerful cards like the X1950 PRO some legroom before limiting the maximum frame rate.

Because of everything already said in this thread, I would personally stick to something in the 6 series or mid 7 series nvidia cards, or the equivalent ATI product for that machine. I would also weight if any further platform upgrade would be good for my particular needs, like adding another 512M of ram and perhaps upgrade the processor if it is possible on that motherboard.

For less than $200 as I have shown above I think you could get a fairly decent upgrade in performance. It would of course depend on each individuals needs and if they were planning to build a completely new machine in the next year or so. For me, based on the games I like to play, the upgrade would be worth it for the cost. Your mileage may vary.
 

Malazan

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None.

Buying a 16x SLI/XFIRE motherboard over a 8x SLI/XFIRE board simply because of that is a complete waste of money.

For example the 650i only offers 8x SLI the 680i offers 16x SLI, but the 680 is a £100+ more expensive, if the 16x is the only reason you would choose the 680i over the 650i then you have just thrown £100+ down the drain.
 

JJMAN

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Thanks for the help guys.I guess I'm gonna have to save a few bucks an get me a 6600 GT.

You could try the 7300GT AGP. $113.99

($83.99 after $30.00 Mail-In Rebate)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150198


On the note about the 4x vs 8x. I had an AMD Barton 2500+ on a NF7s board (8x) and my buddy had a Asus (Somethen or other 4x) and we both had 9700Pro's back then. The benchmarks were identical nearly. As a matter of fact in some cases he beat me but I think thats because his cpu ran the test better overall.
There was nearly NO difference between systems with him being forced to run at 4x and me at 8x. The best benchmark at that time for us that "MIGHT" take advantage of the 8x was 3dmark 03.

I think the whole thing is is when your running any game and sock the resolutions up and turn on the pretty lights and just overall mustard, its only then that there "MIGHT" be a difference. Most games then didnt have (that I know of) textures that exceeded the 128mb's on the 9700pro. I dont know 100% and maybe someone here does, but I think the "ONLY" time that 8x even becomes (marginal) any benefit difference is when the textures are bigger than the ram on the card and it access's the data across the AGP bus at either 4x as apposed to 8x.

Don't sweat your 4x at all. It's absolutely nothen to worry about. :)
 

pauldh

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Yeah, AGP 4X vs. 8X is not the issue. I've done alot of testing with a 6800U on the same rig but setting the bios to 4x. The difference is less than 1 fps average from what I found.

Anyway, the issue is most AGP 4X only mobo's also have a slower CPU and ram paired with them. That's where the bottleneck comes in which in this case XP1800+ /PC2100 will hurt performance. But that cpu and ram on an AGP 8X mobo would still hurt performance the same.

I'm still amazed how many people think AGP 4X will kill the performance compared to running 4X, yet they don't look at the bigger picture like a just what a slow AXP or a P4 Willy will do to the performance.