Best AGP card (and best for the $)

[Obsoleet]

Looking for an AGP card for an old P4, but don't want to spend a lot because the whole thing isn't worth a lot. The PCI 6200 that's in it crashes when aero is enabled in Windows 7, well it works for a time but crashes once you do certain things in the OS (like hold the mouse over an application on the taskbar for a preview). The only other DX9 card I have would be a 5200FX which would probably be even less supported.

I was looking mostly at a GF7 AGP.. considering all things (still has driver support, has dual-link) it seems like a decent choice.
But for the same price I can pickup a new Radeon 3650 for $40 or $50, which from the benchmarks I've seen is on par with a 7900GTX http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_3650/16.html and has DX10. If I wanted to spend more, the 4670 is even faster but I don't think any AGP rig needs that, especially this one.

Anything I'm missing on the AGP front? Or am I on the right track with the 3650? edit- I think the 3650 I looked at was the 64bit version for $50, not the 128bit that would beat the 7900gtx.

 

[Cogman]

I'll give the same advice that has been given for the past 5 years. AGP is dead. Anything you get that is AGP will most surely be overpriced. Rather then throwing more money at a dead tech, invest in a new system. new, low level PCs are really quite cheap and should be considered.


That being said, if you really want to throw more money at a card that will be bottle necked by the dinosaur that is the P4, then I would go with the 4650 (not 70..) it is $10 more and a generation ahead of the 3650.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125281 <- link to what I'm talking about.

 

[toyota]

that 4650 is cost more than any old P4 system is even worth. I would look for something used before I dumped 80 bucks in that old machine.

OP, if you are interested I have a 6600 that works perfectly and would sell it to you for $25 shipped.

 

[dualsmp]

Tough call. I finally jumped the AGP ship and I held out for awhile. Here is Tom's hierarchy chart to determine best bang for your buck. Be sure to check which memory it has as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,2646-7.html

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I believe there are rather cheap 8400's out there that are either PCI/AGP and will fulfill your needs.

 

[Obsoleet]

I'm not on AGP as you can see from my sig. I'm definitely not clinging to AGP. I bought dual 6800GT PCIE cards on the 6800GT's launch day, some of the earliest PCIE cards out there.

The issue is that I have 3 partially functional AGP rigs (a P4 1.5ghz Willamette, two 939 rigs). Since I have enough parts to keep at least 1 decent rig going out of those 3 at any one time, I'd like an AGP card that will do a little better. I'm guessing that they'll be used for a while until I can't patch together a system anymore.

My father runs a helicopter simulator called RealFlight, has a full seat and cage to sit in for it, and I don't think it would take much but want something that isn't going to be as pathetic as the GF6200 that crashes just running Aero.

Considering how long I think the AGP parts I have will hold out (PSUs, boards, CPUs ect) I think a minor investment in a decent GPU would be alright. The 4650 linked looks good but would probably be the limit that I'd put into that PC as far as expense.

 

[RussianSensation]

$70 4650 1GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125281

 

[superccs]

Go with the best thing you can find on ebay. I recently sold an old AGP ATI x800 for like $40 and the guy who bought it was stoked.

 

[0roo0roo]

get the cheapest ati.
the p4 is so slow it doesn't matter.
x3 +mb was like 39 bucks at frys today
the p4 is probably as slow as a core2 1ghz or less. theres no point dumping money into agp at this point. the p4 is really not worth saving. let alone for flight sim. the scale of slow is off the scale, and its not even power efficient for use as a router or whatever.

 

[JWade]

geeks.com has a 4650 1gb agp card for $57 before shipping, use a coupon code to get 10&#37; since it is a non-geeks special, drops it down to under $52 before shipping

 

[nenforcer]

For Geforce 7 series you are looking at

Geforce 7800GS GDDR3 256MB AGP

Geforce 7900GS GDDR3 512MB AGP

Geforce 7950GT GDDR3 512MB AGP on eBay

However, these will all cost you more than a new Radeon 4650 / 4670 AGP.

You may run into power supply issues with the newest Radeon AGP cards because they are much more power hungry (more transistors) than the old cards.

 

[Termie]

If you're going to spend ~$70 on a 4650, get the one with DDR3 memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161308. Much higher memory clock. It's a shame, but the cheapest decently new-tech AGP cards are about $55, so it's hard to keep an old rig running on the cheap. But I appreciate the effort. My bro has my old Dell P4-3.0 running an AGP 7600gt and can play some older games (TF2, BF2) on medium settings.

Actually, this article will be helpful: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4650-agp,2383.html They test the DDR2 Gigabyte version other people have linked to in an AMD3800x2 rig, and find that even that dual-core CPU heavily bottlenecks the GPU in new games. But in older games/simulators, the effect wouldn't be as great.

 

[hiddensniper11]

Why not look for a used 6600GT or 6800GT? If you can still find any around...

 

[toyota]

Why not look for a used 6600GT or 6800GT? If you can still find any around...

I offered my 6600 since I have no use for it.

 

[hdfxst]

I have a sapphire 1950gt that's just collecting dust.I ran this card at pro speeds for two years.But it's a big card (a little bigger than a 4830)and has 2 molex connectors.If your interested,you can have it for 25 dollars

 

[Winterpool]

On a somewhat related note: what would be the best-value AGP card for non-gaming purposes, ie to accelerate video playback? Theoretically a decent graphics card could enable a circa 2003-4 computer (eg a Pentium 4 or singlecore Athlon) to play back H264 video (and H264-encoded Flash), right?

And AGP cards aren't crippled in any fashion when it comes to gpu video-decoding, no?

 

[poofyhairguy]

On a somewhat related note: what would be the best-value AGP card for non-gaming purposes, ie to accelerate video playback? Theoretically a decent graphics card could enable a circa 2003-4 computer (eg a Pentium 4 or singlecore Athlon) to play back H264 video (and H264-encoded Flash), right?

And AGP cards aren't crippled in any fashion when it comes to gpu video-decoding, no?

There is only one AGP option there: ATI 4xxx series cards.

If you want 720p or 1080p on a P4, then those cards are almost your only hope (only other option is yucky PCI 8400 GS cards).

With enough RAM a Pentium 4 could be a decent HTPC with these cards, but be careful with Flash- even hardware accelerated Flash uses more CPU than hardware decoded mkvs..

 

[evolucion8]

I bought an HD 2600 PRO 512MB for my Pentium 4 3.40C rig and it still severely CPU bound. Anything faster than the X800 SE will get bottlenecked by a Pentium 4.

Update: My Asus P4P800-E Deluxe died after serving me more than 6 years, great motherboard it was. I think that I will buy the same board again on ebay, looks sexy having a spare PC with the fastest and rarest Northwood Socket 478 Pentium 4 3.40GHz, they're not that common around here.

 

[Obsoleet]

Thanks for the offer toyota and everyone else. I found a card, a 7600GS (fanless), I think it will outlast the rest of my old socket A equipment. I went with the 7600 over the 6600s (which seem much more plentiful) because it was nearly the same price, has dual-link DVI (at least I could hook up a very large LCD to it if I wanted to) and fanless is the way to go.

I have all these parts from that era laying around (I inherit them when my family members ask me to build them new PCs at the price of parts), and for what I paid for the 7600, I think it was a worthwhile investment, while not going outside the bounds of the 300 to 350 watt PSUs I have for the socket A and Willamette system I have.


I looked hard at a 7800GS AGP, but the PSU requirements were too high and frankly would've been overkill on a 1700+, 1500+ or P4 1.5ghz Willamette (all the old AGP cpus I have available with systems). The 7600 will extract every bit of worth out of those old chips (yet still probably be overkill).