Graphics Card recommendations

Here we go again :o)

I'm looking for something cheap-ish (less than £60) with at shader model 3.0 and decent speeds, and probably about 256 MB. I've done some research on graphics cards, but i'm out of the loop nowadays. Any ideas? Cards to avoid? Best cards for this price range?

Needs to be AGP, as i don't have a PCI-E slot :o(

If i can steal £17 from the missus, would this be a good choice. Reads ok to me...

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=21140&category_id=125&manufacturer_id=0

I just ordered an ATI HD 3850 512MB AGP card for £75 + VAT. IT's the fastest AGP course you can get apparently. I should have it delivered tomorrow.

Alternatively, go for an nvidia 7600GT 256MB AGP card, they're fast enough for any current game and available for around £50

Both these cards support shader model 3.0

I can stand ATI drivers, ive had no end of problems with new drivers on my agp x1950pro.

I was pretty amazed by the performance of the 7600GT I bought. It was about £60 I think.

Don't tell me that Pete!!! I'm really looking forwar dot trying it out. This is my first ATI card, I've been either 3dfx or nvidia up till now.

I have a 7600GT AGP too. Mine was about £70ish nearly two years ago - think I got it from Overclockers, simply because CCL didn't have a better equivalent at the time.

For the most powerful AGP cards you serious need to check your PSU has enough power. I had a 460W (a good make) which I was running 2 Hard drives, 2 optical drives, SoundBlaster Audigy2 (with external box) and some USB devices PLUS my X1950PRO but I don't think it was enough as the PC randomly hung every so often (It didn't hang before I put that card in). Anyway, I tried out the Radeon 2600XT which needed less power BUT the card is a disaster, with hideous DX7 speeds, so steer well clear. Now I've bought a 700W PSU (a good make) and plugged the X1950 back in. Hopefully it won't hang but it's not been in long enough to test properly.

Mine just totally works fine on XP SP 2 with Catalyst 8.9. My card is a GeCube.

AGP cards are really hard to get in the UK I've found out. Also I checked out some charts on toms hardware to compare speeds of the cards I found were available.

The fastest you can get is a AMD/ATI 3850 (watch your power supply), medium is a 3650, and the cheapest reasonable solution i would say is a X1650/512MB for dunno €50 for instance, unless you wait until they release any of their 4xxx cards for AGP. nVIDIA on AGP only is an option if you want perfect OpenGL support because their cards are outdated since quite some time there.

I've order a 650w psu with my ati 3850 as I currently have a 350w supply and my 6600gt complains on occasion about lack of power.

Does it actually complain with an error message or just bomb/hang?

7800GS is good if you can find one, and uses hardly any power, there are passively cooled ones out there for people that want a quiet system too.

Nice suggestions thanks. I'll probably go for the fastest AGP one. I got a 500W power supply and not much else running, so i reckon i should be ok.

/me checks cclonline

As I said in another thread about PSUs, its not just about Watts.

Check the output of the +12V rail on your PSU - these days it should be at least 20A. Less and you're more likely to have problems.

Modern hardware is more and more dependent on the 12V rail, whereas several years ago the 3.3V or 5V rail would be more used (PCI graphics cards, for instance, use 3.3/5V). The upshot of that, is that a lot more is being asked of the 12V rail and you need all the amps you can get.

How to check? This should all be clearly labeled on the side of the PSU.

Yeah my 700W has multiple 12V rails with big fat amps well over 20A. Made sure of that. No crashes today either.

/me checks... My 12V is 20 amps. I made the mistake of buying a really cheapy PSU before, so i went for a named brand this time. It cost me, but i think it's worth it :o)

Grey, those fat amps sound painful...

I also have fat amps in my office but they are the Marshall 100W variety ;-)

Hey, I have some questions for this Gfx thread; which is faster, AGP or PCI? Is there a difference between PCI & PCI-E? And if so, how does PCI-E compare to the other two?

I think PCI is slower than AGP, and PCI-E is vastly faster than AGP. PCI-E v2.0 is even faster. All the latest video cards use PCI-E v2.0.

The reason most modern video cards don't use AGP any more is because AGP is so slow it drags the speed of the video card down - a modern video card can render things faster than they can be fed in through AGP.

PCI was pretty dam slow. I'll need to check my motherboard to double check it DOESN'T support PCI-E. Is the slot the same as an AGP?

Different slot.

@Ross C: If you have a 9800 Pro in an AGP slot then you won't have a PCI-E slot, you'll just have plain PCI slots which you can forget putting a graphics card in.

Ah well, looks like i'll be sticking with the AGP.

A question though. If an exact same spec of graphics card were to be put in an AGP slot and a PCI-E slot, how many times faster would the PCI-E be?

Is it a factor of 2 or 3? Just curious, as it may be worth my while upgrading to a newer motherboard and buying a slightly cheaper card.

I don't think the same card in pci-e would be much faster at all. You're talking maybe 5% at most. The biggest factor would be the new motherboards memory and CPU speed that'd make up the difference.

Agreed. The bottleneck with modern cards is now how fast your CPU is.

It depends on the game, actually. If the game is dynamically streaming a lot of data to the card, using a lot of particle effects, advanced physics, etc., you should see a huge performance hit because of the reduced bandwidth to the card. As to just how much of a difference in FPS, I don't know.

PCI: 132 MB/s
AGP 8X: 2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 16x: 4000 MB/s
PCI Express 2.0 16x: 8000 MB/s


True - if you have an old CPU. A modern 3 GHz CPU is 4-5 times faster than a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU I think, and that's with a single core.

CPU will limit you, and RAM will limit you, but so will AGP.

I recently "upgraded" my PC, which means I got a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, PSU, case, etc. - in other words, my computer is so outdated even after just a few years, it would be a waste of money to add a video card to it that it wouldn't be able to fully make use of.

So PCI-E is not that much faster, only 2 to 4 times as fast.

Quite insightful, thanks :o)