Probably been asked a billion times... which agp graphics card?

[richardpstanton]

Hello all

My pc is a Fujitsu siemens scaleo T, pentium 4 3.4ghz with ht, 1gb ram,
which came with a 256mb radeon 9600xt graphics card.

Would I be right in thinking that the graphics card is holding me back
with regard to games performance?

If so I'd like to upgrade to something speedier. It's an agp
motherboard and presumably there's going to come a time when noone is
making agp cards anymore. I don't want to buy a card today only for
prices to tumble or a faster one to come out tomorrow. Question is,
has that time arrived and if so which is the fastest/most appropriate
agp card for my system?

thanks in advance for any advice you could give me and apologies if
this has been asked ad nauseum

Richard

 

[Bob Cronin]

Hello all

My pc is a Fujitsu siemens scaleo T, pentium 4 3.4ghz with ht, 1gb ram,
which came with a 256mb radeon 9600xt graphics card.

Would I be right in thinking that the graphics card is holding me back
with regard to games performance?

If so I'd like to upgrade to something speedier. It's an agp
motherboard and presumably there's going to come a time when noone is
making agp cards anymore. I don't want to buy a card today only for
prices to tumble or a faster one to come out tomorrow. Question is,
has that time arrived and if so which is the fastest/most appropriate
agp card for my system?

thanks in advance for any advice you could give me and apologies if
this has been asked ad nauseum

Richard

I think AGP is pretty much at end of life (in that very few vendors are
still bothering with it, especially at the high end). If you want to
stay with ATI the fastest AGP card available from them is the X850 PE. I
have it on a machine very similar to yours (3.4 GHz P4, 2GB Corsair low
latency RAM). I have ea 20 inch LCD with native 1600x1200 resolution so
run all my games at that setting. I get decent performance in most of
them even with AA turned on. Despite this I am beginning to feel the
need for better and have started thinking about an eventual migration to
PCI-e. Hope this helps.

 

[tod]

The X1600 is just coming out in AGP.

 

[Bob Cronin]

The X1600 is just coming out in AGP.

How does the X1600 AGP compare to the X850PE AGP board?

 

[tod]

Not as fast, but has newer features.
The X1600 is faster then the X700.

 

[Frederick Pileggi]

It always boils down to what ya can afford... Here is a link to how the
X1600 compares to the X700 when you look at the comparison charts.
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/rv5xx/
Then go to Tom's Hardware and look at the VGA charts where you can see
X850PE vs the 700 and get a warm fuzzy where you might stand getting the
X1600
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/24/vga_charts_vi/index.html

Not as fast, but has newer features.
The X1600 is faster then the X700.

 

[richardpstanton]

thanks for your replies.

So if if was you and you wanted to buy an agp card to last the life of
the pc would you buy one now or wait, and which one?

Richard

It always boils down to what ya can afford... Here is a link to how the
X1600 compares to the X700 when you look at the comparison charts.
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/rv5xx/
Then go to Tom's Hardware and look at the VGA charts where you can see
X850PE vs the 700 and get a warm fuzzy where you might stand getting the
X1600
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/24/vga_charts_vi/index.html