Best AGP card to upgrade an old system for gaming?

[Shaitan00]

An age old question, and I know I am going to get a lot of ^$@# for asking but, I am looking to buy an AGP video card to upgrade my old system (my 2nd system) for gaming. I find that most of the newer games, when looking to simply play (just playing at LOW everything) can't even do that much with the hardware I have (I assume mostly due to Directx & Sharder Model not allowing me to even try - as well as other things). So I am looking for a cost-effective upgrade to allow me to continue gaming just a little bit longer...

Current System Specs:
Pentium 4 3.0GHz (HT)
2.00 gigs of OCZ RAM
ATI 9800pro 256megs (is it really that bad?)
Native Resolution = 1440x900

Now I know of a bunch of options - but of course I am looking for the best hardware for the price, I don't want to buy a $200 AGP HD3850 if it is completly bottlenecked by my system and would perform as good as a $50 2400Pro (for example) - there would just be no point...

Some of the Options I've seen:
2400PRO ~ 61$ (VisionTek)
2600XT ~ 75-150$ (PowerColor or HIS 512MB)
3450 ~ 55$ (Asus AH3450/HTP/256MB)
3650 ~ 100-110$ (Asus, Saphire, HIS, PowerColor)
3850 ~ 150$ (Saphire or HIS

Now, so I can look like a total moron, my goal would be to be able to play things like Scared 2, Diablo III (when it comes out), and Unreal Tournement III (at lowest possible graphic settings) - and hopefully some of the new stuff to come out over the next 12-24 months before I upgrade the 2nd box to something better.

So - any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

 

[justinburton]

3850 would be the best. It has the most updated chip on it, DirectX 10.1, the most stream processors, highest clocks... The 2600XT has slightly more memory bandwidth but it is 2 generations old.

Check out these great comparison charts: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131, http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/132

 

[Blazer7]

The 3850 is indeed the best AGP card out there and since you're looking to another year or 2 with this machine, it's the one to get. I've recently upgraded a friend's PC very similar to yours with a Sapphire 3850 and according to him it was worth it. Have in mind that you'll need at least a 450W PSU.

BTW, there's already a thread for AGP cards here in the forums so you may wanna continue this there -> Best AGP Video Card? ATI? NVIDIA?

 

[Stumps]

with a 3ghz P4, a 3850 would be overkill for that system, but it is pretty much the fastest card availible for AGP...and yes a P4 would severly bottleneck it.

To be completely honest with you, other than maybe the 3650 or 2600XT I would probably look for a X1950 Pro, 7800GS or even better a 7600GT sure they are DX 9 cards but they are still very fast AGP cards and would offer better performance than any of those cards other than the 3850, which pretty much wipes the floor with them....but even a X1950 Pro is bottlenecked by a P4.

just something to think about.

 

[IlllI]

i think older gen is the way to go too. there comes a point where its not worth investing too much into new hardware for an old system.
also unless he is using vista, he wont be able to take advantage of those dx10 'goodies'

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: clandren
i think older gen is the way to go too. there comes a point where its not worth investing too much into new hardware for an old system.
also unless he is using vista, he wont be able to take advantage of those dx10 'goodies'

Even then using a 3ghz P4, DX 10 is pretty useless, as any half decent DX10 is badly bottlenecked by the CPU, even the DX9 cards I listed are bottlenecked to some extent by a P4, especially the X1950 and to a lesser extent the 7800GS and 7900 series AGP cards.

 

[Stumps]

I did some testing a few years back for some older AGP threads (maybe Apoppin, Keys and a few others may remember them, it's been a long while since I played with AGP Performance setups) which showed that on a Athlon XP 3200+ (2.33ghz, 166FSB version, not 2.2ghz 400fsb) a 6800, 6800GT and a 7800GS pretty much performed the same in most games and adding a X1950pro yielded at best a 7-10% gain over those cards, and only at very high resolutions, going to a 3.4ghz P4 (Northwood) didn't change the picture very much at all...although IIRC Apoppins old OC'd P4 extreme edition (I think he had it at 3.7 or 3.8ghz) with a X1950Pro was almost lineball with my old A64 3000+@2.87ghz, AGP X1950 Pro setup.

Ahh those were the days....

maybe I should bring my old AGP setups (I still have 4, an AXP, a P4, an A64 and my trust C2D AGP rig) out of retirement for some benchmarking purposes...could be very interesting

 

[francisA]

I previously ran the x1950xt on a P4C800-E mobo with a 3.0 clocked at 3.45GHz and it works well enough driving a 1920x1200 monitor. Did Call of Duty 4 with no AA and most settings on Medium. On Call of Duty 5, it was struggling a little but still not bad. Currently using the x1950xt on a cross-over board, 4CoreDual-SATA2 with a E5200 clocked at 3.5GHz and it's doing much better on both COD games.

On a P4 at your native resolution, I would say the x1950xt is a good match. I didn't even let ATI overclock it to the max. Found the max overclock with ATI Overdrive and brought it down 2 notches to make it run cooler.

 

[Denithor]

I'll give you the same advice I gave in the other AGP thread (linked above):

Intel e5200 $83
Asus P5KPL $55
Kingston 2x1GB DDR2-800 $24
Powercolor 4830 $85AR
OCZ 500W PSU $25AR

Total: $272AR

About $120 more than the 3850 alone and you get much improved performance for your whole system while you're at it. That will beat the fastest AGP card made without any of the AGP issues (poor drivers, etc). You should probably also upgrade your harddrive at this point, those things aren't designed to last forever and if yours is probably pushing five years if you haven't replaced it since building a P4 system.

If that's too much for you to take, just get the cheapest 2600XT you can find and throw it in there. Anything else will be horribly CPU bound, especially at the low resolution you run.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The HD2600XT would be the best choice, giving you the best performance at the lowest price without a huge bottleneck. In newer games the HD2600XT would be just as fast as the AGP 7600GT, 7800GS, and HD3650. The HD3650 was basically a die shrink of the HD2600 series and the reference clock speeds of the 3650 are slower than the 2600XT's. Oh and I don't think the 2400 Pro should even be an option.