What is the best agp board right now?

[qiddis]

Can anyone tell me what is the best agp board right now in store.
But before that, the board must be intel chipset and it will support core2 duo.
I don't care about the manufacture as long as it stable right out of the box.
And the most important thing, it cool and support sata and a few pci slot.
Ok, never mind bout that but please, let me know it.
Thanx for help. Let your kindness be bless my the god almighty.

 

[jitpublisher]

Only board I know of that supports Core 2 Duo and AGP.
ASRock are decent boards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115

 

[KyleSTL]

AGP + Intel chipset + Core 2 Duo:
Does not compute

Heck, even
AGP + Intel chipset + 775 doesn't exist
(915 was the first 775 chipset, and it has PCIe, and only supports P4 775 procs)

 

[airblazer]

Why would you even stick to AGP now?
The price of DDR2 ram is at an all-time low..video cards are a lot cheaper so for about 250 you get a massive boost to you pc..really a new one.

 

[KyleSTL]

What's is your current setup? And what is your plan with this AGP board? What are your current and future uses of the computer? We could make suggestions for the highest bang/$.

 

[haftarun8]

This motherboard, oddly enough, might be just the ticket I need to convert an old Northwood system into a decent HTPC. (only thing really slowing it down is the processor. It's got an x1950pro agp video card, and 2gb really nice OCZ DDR1 ram)

Any word on its compatibility with the Allendale cores? They're dirt cheap, and the FSB 800 would go nicely with this board since I'd just be re-using the old DDR ram for it.

even a 2.2-2.4ghz allendale coupled with the 1950pro would be enough to decode any 1080p H.264 video material now that ati actually put graphics acceleration in for that compression codec.

 

[KyleSTL]

If you're looking for H264 1080p content, I wouldn't use a X1950. I would start from scratch with a system like this:

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - $90 w/ free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Intel Pentium E2160 Allendale 1.8GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E2160 - $78 w/ free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116036

A-DATA Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VDQVE1A16K - $44
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211165

SAPPHIRE 100206L Radeon HD 2600PRO 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - $58 after MIR w/ free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102103

That's $280 to your door from Newegg. And the HD2600 has the best post-processing on the market right now. Despite being a great gaming card, I don't believe the X1950 has hardware-accelerated video decoding or any post processing. That will flood your CPU with the video decoding, and even a dual core Allendale struggles when there is no UVD/PureVideo help.

You can then turn your Northy machine into a decent older games machine or sell it on eBay (you could probably get $400-500, just because of the video card in it). That would net a profit of $120-220, and you'd have a purpose-build HTPC. Perfect.

Edit: I guessed you'd probably want a case (to contain it), and a PSU (to power it).

Antec NSK2480 (with Earthwatts 380W) - $115
WD 500GB HDD - $100-105

So at that point you're either $100 in or breaking even (with the eBay sale). And you can get an optical ($30) and you're good to go.

 

[KyleSTL]

Check out these articles:

Avivo vs. Purevideo, Round 1: The Radeon X1000 vs. Geforce 7000 ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/

AVIVO HD vs. Purevideo HD: What You Need to Know about High-Definition Video
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/06/08/avivo_vs_purevideo_hd/

AVIVO HD vs. Purevideo HD Part 3: Midrange and Low-end Card Performance
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/26/avivo_hd_vs_purevideo/

Integrated Graphics for Gaming or HTPC?
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/24/integrated_graphics_for_gaming_or_htpc/

 

[Guest]

MSI P5PE-VM
I had one before this system I just built and it worked with my ATI x800xl all in wonder and my DDR ram, C2D E6400 and SATA drive fine.

 

[haftarun8]

Thanks for the part list! That is quite a cheap pc and would certainly be enough to serve as a good HTPC, but as I recently made a HUGE purchase and don't enjoy the hassle of Ebay very often, I'm unfortunately limited here to $170ish absolute max.

I could've sworn they recently added full h.264 support to the x1900 series of ati cards (more recently than any of the tom's avivo articles). I can now just about play 1080p h.264 movies with my current P4, even the slow-ass quicktime .mov ones.

Before I upgraded my video drivers this wasn't the case at all. Just as you said, the 1950pro barely did anything to take the load off the cpu. I had trouble even playing 720p without a slammed 100% cpu and therefore frame skipping, etc..
I'm using catalyst 8.1, and first noticed a performance boost in 7.11 with the x1950pro. CPU is now hovering between 40% and 90% to my memory. I'll have to check it again using the same movie I did before just in case I'm wrong.

 

[KyleSTL]

I would say buy this instead:

SAPPHIRE 100219L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 AGP 8X HDCP Ready Video Card - $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102711

My dad was able to use the HD 2600XT (in PCIe form) and a Pentium 4 (3.2Ghz in 775 form) to play Blu Ray and HD DVDs.

I would say [strike]upgrade[/strike] change video cards instead of processors for that budget.

And for what it's worth, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units) lists "UVD" in the notes column of the HD2600Pro/XT, but not with the X1950. So many ATi created drivers to cover share the computing load, but doesn't actually have hardware-level decoding (speculation).

Edit:
Or this for even less:
SAPPHIRE 100217L Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 8X HDCP Ready Video Card - $87
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102709

 

[haftarun8]

I forgot that the 2600 series (and probably the entire future 3000 series) probably has a dedicated hardware chip on board specifically for decoding. I didn't realize ATi even made an AGP variant of that card! That sounds like the only real option for re-using my current computer as a HTPC without making drastic changes or doing a complete rebuild.

thanks for all your help on this!

 

[SpudTECH]

Swapping video cards seems to be the best way to go but if your still looking for a core2 mobo with agp then try this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115.