Best PCI Video Card for Gaming

[shtdawg]

Whats the best pci video card for gaming? Thanks.

 

[xSauronx]

i dont think theres even a "good" one for gaming now, maybe a gf2 non mx card if theres even one to be found, otherwise perhaps a radeon 7500 or somethin...

 

[PhoenixOfWater]

what about the 9500 PCI?
and I think ATI was try to come out with a 9700 PCI...

 

[Boobers]

Hercules Radeon 9000 PCI (IMHO) is THE best PCI video card right at this second, but at $140 it's priced itself right out of the market. It can only be purchased in the US from their website and is a very large PCI card that does not fit in small cases.

For that price, you could buy a new motherboard with an AGP slot and a Radeon 8500 AGP card...

I just bought a used PowerColor Radeon 9000 64Mb PCI card for $50 and it worked very well in a Compaq that had Intel 810E integrated video. The 3DMark2001SE score went from ~450 to over 3000 with a 1.1Ghz Celeron.

 

[heliomphalodon]

Originally posted by: Boobers
I just bought a used PowerColor Radeon 9000 64Mb PCI card for $50 and it worked very well in a Compaq that had Intel 810E integrated video. The 3DMark2001SE score went from ~450 to over 3000 with a 1.1Ghz Celeron.

Glad you like that card!

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: PhoenixOfWater
what about the 9500 PCI?
and I think ATI was try to come out with a 9700 PCI...

The PCI bus would really hurt performance on either of those cards quite a bit, methinks. Dropping down to AGP 1-2X gives noticeable framerate hits with those cards...

 

[Frodolives]

It's a moot point that you take a performance hit with pci bus if he doesn't have an agp slot. We should have empathy for the millions of folks saddled with such systems, it's not always as simple as "get a new mobo". I once had such a system, and it was beyond my means to do anything more than get a nice little pci card.

The price and variety of pci cards are surprisingly attractive now compared to 2 or 3 years ago I can tell ya. I don't remember particulars but I know I saw some interesting pci choices at newegg.com this week while thumbing through video cards.

 

[eplebnista]

PowerColor Radeon 9000 64Mb PCI

 

[spanky]

it's not always as simple as "get a new mobo". I once had such a system, and it was beyond my means to do anything more than get a nice little pci card.

why was that? if u have an agp slot... u should be able to get an agp card that will perform better then a pci card at the same price no?

 

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by: spankyOO7
it's not always as simple as "get a new mobo". I once had such a system, and it was beyond my means to do anything more than get a nice little pci card.

why was that? if u have an agp slot... u should be able to get an agp card that will perform better then a pci card at the same price no?

probably because getting a new MOBO would have requires getting a new case, and a new power supply, and all kinds of garbage that sometimes makes it not worth the effort to do it.

 

[Frodolives]

Exactly so Edipis Reks. And since you mentioned that I should remind shtdawg to be mindful of his power supply when doing this upgrade. It's shameful what tiny little ps' you'll find in some of those proprietary systems. I knew a guy that had a Gateway PIII 8xx+ghz system and it had a 90 watt ps.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Don't worry about the PCI bus limiting you as much anymore. Remember the bus was the limiting factor when the video cards only had 4 megs of RAM, not 64 or 128 that is standard now. This is also the reason why there was no performance increase in AGP 6x to 8x, cause the cards are not using the bandwidth. I would be willing to bet that you will not see much of an increase from AGP 2x - 6x either. Not that I know of anyone doing a test on this.

Hey Anand you think you can do a performance test for modern video cards with 64meg or more video RAM for the benifits of using AGP 1x vs 2x vs 4x vs 6x vs 8x, and possibly PCI?

That would be the true way to find out, but I suspect that the performance hit would not be as high as you think for a card with 128 megs video RAM.