[SOLVED] Trying to pair GPU with my hardware

[70431]

Teach me to understand how to make a good guess if GPU will be a good pair for the system. Please and thank you.

Motherboard
BIOSTAR M7NCG 400
400 MHz system interface speed
3GB of RAM
AGP 8x
CPU
AMD ATHLON XP 3200+
400 FSB
2.2 GHZ
L1 Cache 64KB
L2 Cache 512KB
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon XP 3200+ - AXDA3200DKV4E.html
GPU
ASUS HD3450 512MB AGP
GPU Clock 600 MHz
Memory Clock 500 MHz / 1000 Mbps effective
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-3450-agp.c553

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

given the performance possible with this system there's really nothing from the last 4-6 generations that this system could utilize to their full potential.
they don't even manufacture AGP cards anymore so you would have to find something pretty old that is used.

just search eBay or similar for the highest end Radeon HD card you can find that uses the AGP interface.

your best bet would be to use this thing for target practice and update to a modern system.

 

[70431]

Thank you, for your reply.
No, I wont use this for target practice... I'll solder new capacitors if it stops working. I enjoy older games than I do new games and I don't want to emulate Windows 98-- I rather use real hardware.

 

[BFG-9000]

Your board can accept any 1.5v or 0.8v AGP 4x-8x card. I would not suggest that card because it uses a bridge chip (it's a native PCIe GPU and the chip "translates" this to AGP which requires specially aware drivers) which for Ati can truly be a PITA to find working drivers for. It's worth dealing with this if you are talking about the fastest AGP card ever made in the HD3850, or the 2nd fastest HD4670, but for such mediocre performance it's just not worth the hassle.

You'd likely be happiest with an older DX9 card such as an X800XT or some flavor of 6800 or 7800/7900 given the use case of such a computer. It's not going to be fast enough to play DX11 games anyway

FYI that computer does not support SSE2 so cannot run Firefox, Chrome newer than v35, Office 2013, or 32-bit Win7 after the Mar2018 update. So it's best suited for use as a retrogaming computer, especially for those 16-bit games that don't run on any 64-bit flavor of Windows

 

[70431]

well I have a small form factor PC. I already have a 6200 GeForce 512MB for Win98 PC games and just wanted another card for when I boot into Vista or XP. To play like League of Legends or Minecraft (Java) which would be pushing it and terms of play-ability.

 

[70431]

Ah, well I cant run LoL due to not having SSE2. Oh well, not important. There other games like Need for Speed underground.

 

[BFG-9000]

HD3450 really isn't much faster than your 6200A since it has so much slower memory--a shame as otherwise the GPU would be nearly as fast as the mighty 9700 Pro in DX9. It can just launch the few DX10 games there are, which the 6200A cannot.

The raw pixel and texel numbers actually seem to correlate pretty well with performance in old games that don't use many shaders (i.e. less shader-heavy than F.E.A.R. from 2005) provided you have adequate memory bandwidth to back those up. The HD3450 just doesn't

FWIW, the 7000 series also uses a bridge chip but I do have a 6200 with a bridge chip (to 32-bit PCI!) and the drivers never gave me much trouble. The AGP versions of X800 and 6800 were native AGP like your 6200A but I don't know of any that will fit in a SFF. They also require auxiliary power, usually via a molex or floppy power connector.