Best AGP video card upgrade for 2015

[Ranulf]

So... I have an old machine (listed in sig) on XP that is currently running with a geforce 6600 (256mb) and I'm looking for suggestions on a worthwhile upgrade for it. This is basically for old games that don't work well with win7+.

I'll probably have it hooked up to a 1440 x 900 monitor or a 1080 one.

So far it looks like maybe a 6800gt or a ATI 4350 are good candidates.

 

[RussianSensation]

Do you have a MicroCenter near you? Instead of buying an old AGP card for $20-30, maybe just spend $60 on the A6-7400K bundle. You should be able to get 4-8GB of DDR3 for free with the next TigerDirect McAfee deal. I don't see why this system wouldn't work with XP.

Maybe someone nice from AT can send you their old AGP card for the cost of shipping. I know I would if I had any laying around but I sold all old GPU parts.

If you insist on AGP, look on eBay. Maybe $33 X800XT AGP.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

 

[soccerballtux]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1714889

I'd say the 1900xtx

 

[soccerballtux]

6800Ultra is worth it over the 6800GT IMO


also

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=28907301#post28907301

 

[NTMBK]

You can get a HD4670 with AGP.

 

[RussianSensation]

6800Ultra is worth it over the 6800GT IMO


also

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=28907301#post28907301

Considering his CPU choice, it practically makes no difference if he goes 6800GT, 6800Ultra, X800XL, X800XT, X850XT PE. It's all going to be the same performance given how slow his CPU is. Just get the cheapest. I have a spare E6600 rig around and I literally won't even spend $20 on it. Why? Because of this:

Look at that performance. If he is playing older games, there is no incentive to spend extra $ on a GPU with his CPU due to his severe bottleneck. Also, the more he pays for the AGP card, the more moving to an AMD APU starts to make more sense.

 

[Leyawiin]

Considering his CPU choice, it practically makes no difference if he goes 6800GT, 6800Ultra, X800XL, X800XT, X850XT PE. It's all going to be the same performance given how slow his CPU is. Just get the cheapest.

This is the truth. A couple years ago I resurrected an old XP 2500+ Barton OC'd to 3200+ (better than he has). I had a couple of AGP cards laying around I had used with it (7600 GS, X850 XT) and decided to try what should have been a much faster HD 4650 AGP. Absolutely no difference in performance since apparently the Athlon XP was at its limit with the 7600 GS or X850 XT. His 6600 (GT or plain) is about all it can handle and it ain't worth spending a dime on an "upgrade" for such an old rig.

 

[Spjut]

I don't know how vital it is, but AMD's DX9 cards lost driver support back in early 2010. Nvidia's last driver for its DX9 cards is from january 2015.

 

[tweakboy]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1714889

I'd say the 1900xtx

I agree.

 

[Ranulf]

Hmm, so the general sense I'm getting is, its not worth it to upgrade the 6600.

I don't have a desire to spend much money or rebuild the rig with some APU setup (no MC anyway, only Frys). I have my old E6600 sitting around doing nothing that I could use in that case. I also have a spare Barton around, a 3000+ maybe. I inherited that back from the relative I built it for, never bothered to see what its problems were.

This was just a thought experiment on if it was worthwhile to toss in a better card than the plain fanless GF 6600 I had in my old Athlon system that is still running (well last time I fired it up anyway).

Thanks for the replies all.

 

[hawtdawg]

ATI 4670 exists in AGP form. ATI 3850 also. There are 3850's on newegg, dunno where you'd find the 4670. I had an AGP 1950 Pro that was a pretty good card too.

 

[soccerballtux]

This is the truth. A couple years ago I resurrected an old XP 2500+ Barton OC'd to 3200+ (better than he has). I had a couple of AGP cards laying around I had used with it (7600 GS, X850 XT) and decided to try what should have been a much faster HD 4650 AGP. Absolutely no difference in performance since apparently the Athlon XP was at its limit with the 7600 GS or X850 XT. His 6600 (GT or plain) is about all it can handle and it ain't worth spending a dime on an "upgrade" for such an old rig.

game?

 

[soccerballtux]

I don't know how vital it is, but AMD's DX9 cards lost driver support back in early 2010. Nvidia's last driver for its DX9 cards is from january 2015.

this is worth considering. I didn't have the stats on my head but did bet they had better drivers

 

[soccerballtux]

use the Barton with a 6800gt. You already know the nvidia driver works. start with a known good

 

[Leyawiin]

game?

I tried Fallout 3, Skyrim (ha), Sacred and Torchlight with it. Torchlight actually played very well @ 1920x1200 with either the 7600 GS or X850 XT. So did Sacred of course (the original). The two Bethesda titles would either crash immediately or ran terribly - can't remember. I was basically going to do what the OP planned, but it wasn't worth it. Had it set up as a dual boot XP and Win 7 32 bit and it ran like crap. Couldn't even browse the internet without choppiness on most websites (audio popping and crashing on Youtube for instance). Time's marched on and websites today are just too much for it. It was a fun little exercise though (I wasn't out much - returned the HD 4650).

I still have all that hardware in a junk closet. I might as well take it to and e-cycling center - its useless.

 

[nenforcer]

use the Barton with a 6800gt. You already know the nvidia driver works. start with a known good

This is what I have a Sempron 3300 Socket A Barton w/ 512KB cache and a Geforce 7800 GS w/ AGP 8x.

For nVidia there is the Geforce 7950 GT which is the fastest AGP card they released but AMD continued to support AGP all the way up to the Radeon HD 4000. You need much more CPU horsepower, however. I couldn't even run Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on my rig above.

 

[TidusZ]

Use what you can get for free, I'm sure you can get a better pc than that for free online somewhere. I sold a computer that was probably 3x faster than that for a couple hundred dollars a few years ago

 

[SPBHM]

if you are going to run windows 98, consider the geforce FX series, it seems to have some of the best drivers/performance for older games, 6 series had worse support,

if it's only XP, any x1800/x1900 or 7900 is going to be fast for older games...

 

[Ranulf]

I'd probably run 98 or 2k on an old Duron 1ghz setup I have for games that old. This system would be XP only, either with the Thoroughbred 2100, a Barton or a C2D E6600.

I'll look up the 1800/1900 and 7900.

 

[Zorander]

ATI 4670 exists in AGP form. ATI 3850 also. There are 3850's on newegg, dunno where you'd find the 4670. I had an AGP 1950 Pro that was a pretty good card too.

Back in 2008, I upgraded from a 1950Pro AGP to a HD3850 AGP. It made a significant difference @1280x960 gaming, in particular with Red Alert 3 and Assassin's Creed. Correct me if I'm wrong but the 3850 is supposedly the fastest AGP card available. The 4670 is not faster.

Given the system age however, I'd personally be hard-pressed to spend more than $30 on an upgrade card. As was suggested initially, it is far more cost-effective to buy a CPU+Mobo combo.

Cheers!

 

[soccerballtux]

I'd probably run 98 or 2k on an old Duron 1ghz setup I have for games that old. This system would be XP only, either with the Thoroughbred 2100, a Barton or a C2D E6600.

I'll look up the 1800/1900 and 7900.

did 98 even have internet?

 

[soccerballtux]

Back in 2008, I upgraded from a 1950Pro AGP to a HD3850 AGP. It made a significant difference @1280x960 gaming, in particular with Red Alert 3 and Assassin's Creed. Correct me if I'm wrong but the 3850 is supposedly the fastest AGP card available. The 4670 is not faster.

Given the system age however, I'd personally be hard-pressed to spend more than $30 on an upgrade card. As was suggested initially, it is far more cost-effective to buy a CPU+Mobo combo.

Cheers!

1280x960...ah...man those were the days...

 

[SPBHM]

Back in 2008, I upgraded from a 1950Pro AGP to a HD3850 AGP. It made a significant difference @1280x960 gaming, in particular with Red Alert 3 and Assassin's Creed. Correct me if I'm wrong but the 3850 is supposedly the fastest AGP card available. The 4670 is not faster.

Given the system age however, I'd personally be hard-pressed to spend more than $30 on an upgrade card. As was suggested initially, it is far more cost-effective to buy a CPU+Mobo combo.

Cheers!

AC is from 2007, no surprise a GPU from 2007/2008 beat the 2005/2006 GPU by a decent margin, but realistically, if you are building a retro gaming AGP PC you should be targeting at older games, and in that case something as new as the 4670 might give you more headache with compatibility issues than benefit compared to the older card... if it's for playing 2007+ games, yes, just get a PCIE system.

the 3850 is the fastest or almost, it had 256 bit GDDR3 while the 4670 had 128bit memory, but the 4670 had improved efficiency, higher GPU clock and 32 TMUs vs 16... so it depends on the game, a 4670 with 1800-2000Mhz memory can beat the 3850 in many games

did 98 even have internet?

I've used Internet on Windows 95 (with IE 3.0, 4.0 or something), and it existed before that... you can still run some relatively new web browsers on win98 (I think I have Opera 9.64 on my win 98 PC, and also "K-Meleon" from 2014 or so, I think Firefox when I tested was to slow, but worked)

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Anything K7 will bottleneck newer AGP cards hard. If you want to use something NV4x/ R400 or newer you'll want to get a K8 system or better.

 

[babayarro]

The "best of the best AGP solution" is a Sapphire (or a factory-overclocked HIS) ATI Radeon HD3850 AGP...

With its 256 Bit architecture and 512 MB GDDR3 Memory and also the support for Direct X10.1 , the cards which are mentioned above are the "King" and the "Queeen"...

Just check the links below and see why they are the best...

HIS HD 3850 IceQ 3 Turbo Specs

ATI RV670, 720 MHz, 320 Cores, 16 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 512 MB GDDR3, 910 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP Specs

ATI RV670, 668 MHz, 320 Cores, 16 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 512 MB GDDR3, 828 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com