BEST PCI (_not_ Express) CARD w/DirectX 10?

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frivolousme

frivolousme

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May 30, 2009
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Hi there everyone. About a week ago I posted a request for suggestions on my AGP PIII computer. The entire stats for my build can be found here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=33&post=265165

■The first AGP 9800 card to arrive turned out to be a different card than the one Overstock was advertising (thus returned).
■The second vendor I ordered from shipped out used merchandise (thus returned).
■The third vendor had enough wit to call me before processing my order to clarify exactly what it was I was ordering. Upon mutually agreeing that what his website displayed was not what he would be shipping me, that order was also cancelled.
Where I'm at right now is that I'm going to try one. last. time. to approach this from a hardware standpoint. After this, I'll just get Pivot Pro and keep using my sturdy Radeon 7200.
Click to expand...
Now I don't know why this never occured to me before but I'm sitting on one of the most generously-apportioned motherboards ever to have been made. I of course have AGP . . . but I also have 5 PCI slots, and — while they aren't PCI Express, they are nonetheless motherboard-friendly PCI slots, and expand my options for upgrading my video card considerably more than I could hope to accomplish with a dying AGP standard.

So I'm starting this new thread to get ideas about the best PCI card I could get that isn't PCI Express, and since there seems to be a nice selection of them still being made I'm going to ask for suggestions on any brands/chipsets you can recommend that are DirectX 10 Ready. This was something I was willing to compromise on if I went with AGP, but I see no reason to have to forfeit the option with PCI; indeed, I've found one brand that looks promising:

POWERCOLOR (PCI) HD 2400 PRO 256 MB
http://www.powercolor.com/eng/products_features.asp?ProductID=3840
This card can be had for a modest $55 or so. It takes the equivalent of two PCI slots, but that's of course not an issue for me because with the motherboard I have, R..O..O..M is not an issue (to say the least heh heh). Here's a picture:
1011565263.jpg

What I'd ideally like is to be presented with at least one alternative option so I can compare them using the GPU video card comparison tool:
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

Thanks again for any help & suggestions you can share! :hello:

frivolousme
 
I probably should have qualified my request. I definitely do not want Jaton or Sparkle brands. Jaton's website sucks btw. :pouah: I'm going to need to have monitor rotation built into the driver, and while I do want DirectX 10, I'm less concerned with speed than I am features (eg. 1 hookup on the Jaton vs. 3 on the PowerColor). Oh also — I only have a 300 watt power supply, so that cooks it for the Jatons (require 400) (pun unintentional! really! lol).

I really would prefer to stick with ATI, even if they're not the fastest gun in the west. Features. A generous range of sizes (1920 X 1200 at a minimum). And DirectX 10.

Any other suggestions? 😗

fm
 
WTF are you talking about Willys?

Pointless. PCI is about 1/16 the throughput of AGP 8X, but still about 1/4 that of AGP 2X, which is about 1/2 the throuput of single PCIe let alone PCIe Graphics, so why do you think PCI is 'not a compromise'? Sure you can put the card in your system, but it's not going to perform very well at all.

If you're gaming, then really there's little reason for you to go the DX10 route, you won't be able to enable a single DX10 feature on those cards and do anything with them.

If you're using it for 2D or developing, then it's a worthwhile thing to look into, otherwise if you're thinking of gaming then just buy a cheap barebones PC or a second hand PC. PCI will be a heck of a bottleneck even on weak cards like the HD2400/GF9500, and even your Pentium 3 is going to make it pointless to do anything in DX10.
 

It might be better, but it's a moot point since I obviously can't find one advanced enough to qualify for the latest AMD driver, which I need to rotate my monitor. Read the thread I referred to. I'm not going to waste my breath repeating it.

And I'm not shopping for another AGP card. Period.

I'll get the PowerColor PCI card. The jerks at :pfff: AMD will allow their driver on it (I've checked) and it has enough features to satisfy me. Thank you Mindless and AKM for the Nvidia recommendation, that's good to know if/when I might need a more powerful card.

fm
 
Recommend a HD 3850 AGP like what I have. Incredible video card that is bottlenecked by my CPU and most definitely would be by your CPU also. HD 3650 AGP might be up your alley as well for less price and it is all the power your CPU can support anyways most likely.

You don't want PCI, that bandwidth cripples whatever you put in it. Jaton and Sparkle have the best PCI cards but if you don't like those companies then check out the EVGA 9400GT PCI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130499
 

T3k, I was looking at the Evga ATI boards, primarily. The model you referred to is an Nvidea chip, right? Do Nvideas have monitor rotation built into their drivers? and if so, how does the Evga monitor rotation feature compare with ATI's? can it be hotkeyed? is it a hassle to access?

fm
 
Yeah, those AGP ATI cards are always a pain. ATI pretty much just lets the board partners do that to move chips that would otherwise not move (3850, 2600XT). AMD/ATI doesn't want to invest the time and money into making sure the drivers properly work with various AGP configurations when the market is too small for them to justify doing so and they have other things to worry about right now. Board partners just hack the drivers to make them work, but they don't want to spend all that money on certifying the drivers.

Anyway you may as well stick with the 2400 Pro. It's not like you can do much gaming with that old P3 😀. If it was me (And I didn't have a GF3 or a box of old GFMX4 and Radeon 9 series cards) I'd just get like a used GF3/4/5 or Radeon card from eBay. Sometimes people sell various cards like that in a lot and even if they aren't sure about them most of them work, if you buy from a reputable seller anyway. Personally I have too many AGP cards pulled from various computers as it is. Heck I still have a working TNT2 card in there somewhere 😀.
 

Yyyyyyyup. :evil: That was my thought. I don't do much gaming, but if there's one thing that's annoying it's being told I need DirectX xx before being permitted to even try to play the game. I like the thought that I have it tucked in my back pocket in an emergency.

How right you are about AMD. If ATI were still in charge I doubt they'd be nearly so parsimonious with backward compatibility. I just hope that by the time I'm ready to build my next computer the industry will have settled on one standard and stick to it for something longer than the time it takes a load of laundry to dry lol. Between graphics cards and USB, the two technologies just exhaust me!!! :pt1cable: People laugh at my laugh SCSI system. Hyeah, and I'm not being hounded every other week to get something new that will work.

This old 2400 will be just fine and as long as I can rotate my monitor nobody will get hurt. :clin:

fm
 
lol you're funny (no offence)
Why are you so in love with your old system that you cant buy a new rig? Any modern system would be like 50 times faster in just about anything... (I gazed through the other thread as well and still can't figure out what you actually do with your computer and why you're so determined to use portrait mode...)

Just face it, no matter how glorious your system was back in the -90's, it's pretty much obsolete by now. See, no support anymore, no one is making any truly compatible parts??

if you 'need' those scsi drives for 'speed', just get SSDs with sata2 interface.... and installing windows media center on a PIII rig was pretty weird move, IMHO
 
^+1. Heck I have seen refurbed Pentium 4/Pentium D / X2 PCs for ~$120-150 AND they come with PCIe slot. Get one of those and let the PIII go. You are wasting money on a dead system.

This is the cheapest build I could put together that will pwn the hell out of the PIII AND let you play most recent games(1024 or 1280 with little-mid detail) and DX10 compatible.

BIOSTAR G31D-M7 LGA 775 $40
4GB DDR2 800 RAM $45
Corsair 400CX $40 after MIR (Overkill for a cheap system, but I refuse to skimp on the PSU)
Rosewill Case $20
WD 80GB SATA $35
Celeron E1400 (Dual Core) $50
ASUS 4670 $60 after MIR

Total: ~$300

If you want the SCSI drives get a ad on card or replace them with current gen SATA II drives, which I'm very sure ARE FASTER than the old SCSI drives. Just transfer over your data, which would probably take a few hours depending on how much data you have (my guess less than 300GB)
 

This is what you get when you submit me to the equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to read the New York Times, 7 days of shopping for a video card I shouldn't even have to buy and otherwise didn't need in the first place ( :finger: AMD :finger:) (which, incidentally stands for Amalgamated Morons from the planet Dolt), and then having not one but 3 different vendors admit the last time they had the AGP card I wanted in stock was shortly after the invention of glue.

Git over here, git in that slot, and rotate my monitor before I get carpal tunnel in my neck! This isn't a tennis match I'm watching, it's the goddamned New York Times I'm trying to read. Hmmph. :lol:

fm
 

But there's no reason to when the world is full of generous, well-capitalized people like . . . like you! . . . to buy tomorrow's technology, vet it, rate it, and beta test it for me.

See, I let you do the buying! See, then I show up when it's been demonstrated to work. You don't mind, do you? Paying for it, I mean?

If we're really lucky they may even have USB figured out . . . ten years from now. :clin:

fm
 

Loathe though I am to admit it, I do nonetheless need from time to time to view spreadsheets — Torah style, in other words. 😗

fm
 

Mmmm. Well that's one of the more intelligent observations I've read in this thread. This is true. Sigh, as misfortune would have it, nothing seems to be breaking down. It just keep working, and I have yet to run into a single application that won't run tsk. :lol: I'd stand ready to open my bank account to industry, and . . . they keep building it to work on my computer.

What's a girl to do? :vip:

fm
 

Er, you erm . . . you uh did understand that my monitor rotates? :heink: See, that's the problem. The monitor rotates; it's the driver that . . . uh, maybe someone else can bring you up to speed on this.

fm
 

Ah, my bad. Yes some monitors do come with that; mine (a 24" NEC) presumes that if you had enough money to fork over for an NEC you must have it to burn. Jesus wept. :lol:

Before AMDolt sent me on this wild goose chase the ATI rotate feature of the driver I'd been using for years worked like a charm. Someone mentioned their confusion at my installation of XP MCE; that makes two of us. I picked up this OS on a Fry's deal for about $75 thinking, well, at least I can get out of the security sieve that is Explorer 5.5. I didn't need to upgrade from W2K; for $75 I bit.

Having been made to kneel before AMD, I did first however explore whether there was a 3rd party utility out there that could do what AMD knows perfectly well my card is capable of doing . . . but just won't. I tried iRotate (nothing) and downloaded Pivot Pro. But right around this point I just felt it was ludicrous to have to have yet another program running just to compensate for AMD's parsimony. It takes a uniquely contemptuous company to disable a feature it had enabled for the prior ten years!! for no other reason than spite. Let's just say AMD isn't in my will.

All bitter humor aside, what Kari said is correct: What will drive my decision to build my next computer will likely be some software -or- hardware component that I can't live without. For me that is PORTRAIT mode. At some point one of four things will happen (in order of preference):
a) $55 . . . the HD 2400 card arrives and gives me back a feature that AMD took away for spite
b) $40 . . . even the HD 2400 won't rotate with AMD's latest driver, and I buy Pivot Pro
c) $75 . . . I uninstall XP MCE, reinstall W2K, and live with a dangerously insecure browser (IE 5.5) present on my system, even if disabled
d) $x,xxx . . . I build a new computer

There is nothing more uniquely intrusive than having to view a monitor screen that (for whatever reason) you don't like. It is the very face of one's computer. If anything had the potential to drag me into a new computer build, it is this; and I'm painfully aware of my limited options, believe me.

fm
 
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