Best AGP card for ~ $200

[NateSLC]

I've been an ATI boy since the original Radeon DDR, but it looks like any ATI vs. 6600 GT comparable card at the $200 price point is only available in PCI-e.

I have an Athlon 3200+ on an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe with a Radeon 8500 DV (64 MB). It's time to upgrade as the other box with the same CPU/Motherboard and a 9600 AIW (128 MB) kills it in new games. Even RC Tycoon 3 is semi-unplayable.

I could just get a 9600 for the other PC, but it seems the sweet spot for value is around $200. The 6600GT seems from the reviews I've looked at to be the best choice, but I'd like some opinions from the anandtech souls before I purchase.

Please advise o' great ones.

 

[m4ch0dude]

Well, as much as I dont like nvidia, I gotta tell you that for now the 6600gt is the most bang for the buck you can get at that price range. My little bro is actually building a system, and he got a refurished 6600gt for like $140. Definitely a solid card for that money.

 

[nick1985]

being a "fanboy" for any company is just retarded. why would you purposely shoot yourself in the foot?


anyway, a 6600GT is the best at that price IMO

 

[NateSLC]

Hey Nick1985. I said ATI boy, not fanboy. I must say that I tend to find things that work for me, and stick with it. It's a common trait among us humans.

However, when the price difference increases to a significant amount and deviation from the known is worth it... I ask for advice. Please don't paint me into the fanboy wall for being human, but again, thanks for the advice.

 

[cubby1223]

Okay, I just gotta ask, how could you have been an ATi fan since their original Radeon days?!! I can see Radeon 9500/9700 and beyond, but the original? I owned an original Radeon, those drivers made the computer completely useless! I couldn't even get good performance out of notepad... yes, I'm not joking, scrolling in simple notepad was reduced to a painstaking crawl...

I went for the ATi plunge for a while when it was a definate no-brainner, 9800 vs. 5900, but I was waiting to switch back to nVidia because you're not only future proofing yourself, you're also getting a boat-load better backwards compatibility with games from 4 or 5 years ago during the infancy of DirectX.

Also, ATi is just killing themselves by not releasing x-series low & mid-range AGP products. Doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
Okay, I just gotta ask, how could you have been an ATi fan since their original Radeon days?!! I can see Radeon 9500/9700 and beyond, but the original? I owned an original Radeon, those drivers made the computer completely useless! I couldn't even get good performance out of notepad... yes, I'm not joking, scrolling in simple notepad was reduced to a painstaking crawl...

I went for the ATi plunge for a while when it was a definate no-brainner, 9800 vs. 5900, but I was waiting to switch back to nVidia because you're not only future proofing yourself, you're also getting a boat-load better backwards compatibility with games from 4 or 5 years ago during the infancy of DirectX.

Also, ATi is just killing themselves by not releasing x-series low & mid-range AGP products. Doesn't make any sense to me.

I think he's already explained this... He used what works for him, and apparently, the Radeon DDR did what he wanted it to. I previously had a Radeon DDR, 7200, and a 9700 Pro, and all of them worked fine with Windows - Linux was a different story. Either way, if you had the issues you described with Notepad, something was wrong with your system. Personally, I prefer nVidia as well, and I highly recommend the 6600GT as the choice bang for the buck card today, but to question someone's past purchaes when they indicated that they were happy with them is not relevant and not helpful.

 

[kmmatney]

Hey, I owned an original Radeon LE and it was awesome. It was $65, and after flashing the BIOS to the normal non-LE bios, and a modest overclock, I had the performance of a $150 card. Best purchase I ever made.

Edit - I do agree that its pretty lame for ATI not to have an AGP card at the 6600GT price point. I guess there is the 9800 Pro, but the 6600GT beats it pretty handily. A 9800Pro at $150 would be more enticing.

 

[Cdubneeddeal]

OH yeah? Did you guys ever have a Radeon 32meg SDR PCI? The worst card I ever owned. Drivers were horrible. I stuck with nvidia for about a year or two after that and finally took the plunge and went with a 9500np. That was a great card, then bought a 9700 pro..even better card. Now I have a 6800nu unlocked..ever better card. I would have went for an x800 pro or above but the prices are just too ridiculous compared to my current card. I have noticed as others have that the 6800's have crappy 2d. When bringing up "my documents/my pictures" it takes forever to load the pics. But with my previous card (9700 pro) the pics came up in a flash.

Back to the topic. Your options are pretty limited for $200 but a 6600 GT is almost a no brainer.

 

[impemonk]

where can I buy an ice cream maker for my computer? I saw an oven thing but they need an ice cream maker.

 

[TekDemon]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
Okay, I just gotta ask, how could you have been an ATi fan since their original Radeon days?!! I can see Radeon 9500/9700 and beyond, but the original? I owned an original Radeon, those drivers made the computer completely useless! I couldn't even get good performance out of notepad... yes, I'm not joking, scrolling in simple notepad was reduced to a painstaking crawl...

I went for the ATi plunge for a while when it was a definate no-brainner, 9800 vs. 5900, but I was waiting to switch back to nVidia because you're not only future proofing yourself, you're also getting a boat-load better backwards compatibility with games from 4 or 5 years ago during the infancy of DirectX.

Also, ATi is just killing themselves by not releasing x-series low & mid-range AGP products. Doesn't make any sense to me.

I never had those problems with the original Radeon...but I do remember horrible initial drivers crippling it's performance versus my Matrox G400 in Star Wars Racer...I was shocked that while the old video card I thought I was upgrading from could run the game at 1600x1200 silky smooth, the supposedly much more powerful radeon was pathetic in comparison and made that resolution unplayable...

But on the other hand I'm pretty sure Quake3 ran somewhat better...although I do find it ironic that these days ATi fares better with D3D than OpenGL when back then it was getting it's butt handed it to it in non T&L D3D games by the Matrox G400...

Man, I really wish Matrox had released something better than the Parhelia in terms of 3D performance...even though the G400 didn't even really have OpenGL drivers (they made miniGL's for a ton of games then eventually got a working OGL driver for it) it was still unbelievable with the miniGLs...made my machine a real champ =)

And my Matrox card actually had issues...it only ran at AGP1X for some reason...and refused to run at 2X...it was a faulty card in terms of that, but I blame that more on the shady online store I bought it from than Matrox...plus it still benchmarked the same so I didn't really care.

Anyways, back to Ati, my radeon eventually got better drivers, and I liked the neat video features it had...for example the DVD per-pixel adaptive deinterlacing, the neat video-in feature on my Radeon VIVO, the cool video-overlay on alpha channel thing...etc. I used the video in with a VCR to watch TV on my computer freshman year of college and it was great...plus if I wanted to record something I could record it onto my hard drive OR my VCR (otherwise known as never ever using my VCR lol).

 

[TekDemon]

P.S. You really don't know horrible drivers until you've had to wrangle with an Ati 3DExpression+ PC2TV PCI card in Windows 95...
I don't even think I need to go further than saying that driver updates would often cause your system to no longer function unless you reinstalled windows.
And I don't mean that you could boot into safe mode and fix the problems, oh no, safe mode died along with windows.

I forget the countless hours I wasted trying to fix it without reinstalling windows, only to have my spirit crushed.

So to me, Ati had made insane leaps in usability since those days by the time I got my Radeon VIVO lol...

 

[NateSLC]

Anyways, back to Ati, my radeon eventually got better drivers, and I liked the neat video features it had...for example the DVD per-pixel adaptive deinterlacing, the neat video-in feature on my Radeon VIVO, the cool video-overlay on alpha channel thing...etc. I used the video in with a VCR to watch TV on my computer freshman year of college and it was great...plus if I wanted to record something I could record it onto my hard drive OR my VCR (otherwise known as never ever using my VCR lol).

This statement sums up why I used the Radeon DDR. I was more of a casual gamer in the days so I may have been lucky with the drivers. I must agree with most here that the drivers improved immensely, and became a moot point.

Looks like the 6600GT it is. ATI needs to get the x700 Pro out in AGP and make it a tad bit cheaper than the 6600GT if they want to be competitive. Seems strange ATI doesn't have a full line of mid range cards. Isn't that what they make the most money on?