Best Value Card for Strategy Games

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HGC

Senior member
Dec 22, 1999
605
0
0
Take my advice, don't buy the refurbs! I got the card today, besides being bent, scratched and greasy, it crashed repeatedly even just with the Windows desktop open.

I love Newegg, but I think their open box policy is stated in a confusing way. Some aspects of the open box policy are on the disclaimer when you place your order, others on the RMA info you see when you request an RMA, and others on the RMA FAQ. I know I'm responsible for not reading all the fine print, but I had the mistaken idea that the item, while cosmetically challenged, could be returned in 15 days without a restocking fee if it is flat out defective :(


 
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orangat

Golden Member
Jun 7, 2004
1,579
0
0
Originally posted by: HGC
Take my advice, don't buy the refurbs! I got the card today, besides being bent, scratched and greasy, it crashed repeatedly even just with the Windows desktop open.

I love Newegg, but I think their open box policy is stated in a confusing way. Some aspects of the open box policy are on the disclaimer when you place your order, others on the RMA info you see when you request an RMA, and others on the RMA FAQ. I know I'm responsible for not reading all the fine print, but I had the mistaken idea that the item, while cosmetically challenged, could be returned in 15 days without a restocking fee if it is flat out defective :(
Click to expand...

I bought a refurb video card before. It was packed with all the odd and ends including the free games even though the disclaimer said it was oem/white box condition. It had no visible evidence that it had been previously tampered with. And it ran well without any glitches while I had it.

 
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orangat

Golden Member
Jun 7, 2004
1,579
0
0
Originally posted by: HGC
I'm currently using a Radeon 9600XT, and can't run Age of Empires III smoothly at 1600 x 1200. I'm looking to upgrade my card for this and similar games, such as Civilization IV. I don't really care about frame rates in shooter games.

Any ideas? i was thinking maybe 6800GS or 7600GT. I'd rather not spend a lot of money, but will if it'll make a big difference. Thanks!
Click to expand...

AOE is a resource hungry game and playing it at 1600x1200 is probably not going to be possible on a cheap card. Get the 6600gt or the x1600pro.
 
apoppin

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
0
alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: HGC
Take my advice, don't buy the refurbs! I got the card today, besides being bent, scratched and greasy, it crashed repeatedly even just with the Windows desktop open.

I love Newegg, but I think their open box policy is stated in a confusing way. Some aspects of the open box policy are on the disclaimer when you place your order, others on the RMA info you see when you request an RMA, and others on the RMA FAQ. I know I'm responsible for not reading all the fine print, but I had the mistaken idea that the item, while cosmetically challenged, could be returned in 15 days without a restocking fee if it is flat out defective :(
Click to expand...
refurbs are always a crapshoot . . . sometimes you really "score" . . . i would never do a refurb if i didn't have "time" to wait for RMAs. ;)

telephone or email NewEgg CS . . . i bet you get the restocking fee waived [if you buy something else] . . . they are usually pretty cool [mention this thread] ;)

go for an x800 or x850 series . . . [preferably the xt] . . . or the 6800GS should fit your needs.

good luck and update us
 
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dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
8,558
3
76
No AGP card would really have the muscle to handle Age of Empires 3 at 1600x1200 at maximum settings perfectly smoothly in a massive eight player battle. However, there are plenty that can do it perfectly smooth at 1280x960.

I would suggest that you save up some money until you can afford something better than an X1600XT. From benchmarks, it appears that the X1600XT is only marginally faster than a 9800 Pro, which I know for a fact is not fast enough to run AOE3 at 1024x768 maximum smoothly.

This would allow you to play AOE3 at 1280x960 at maximum details and pull more than 60fps minimum most of the time.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102570R
 
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Fox5

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2005
5,957
7
81
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102688
X850XT, $139 after $20 mail-in rebate. Far far faster than anything else in the price range.

Oh, you need AGP? Yeah, that complicates things a bit, especially when you could get that X850XT and then get a PCI Express motherboard + cpu for about another $100-$120 on top of that, which brings you up to about the cost of the AGP card.
 
H

HGC

Senior member
Dec 22, 1999
605
0
0
I'm thinking now to get one of the AGP X800GTOs from Newegg. I saw one guy couldn't unlock to sixteen pipes, that's why I went for the refurb X800XL. Interesting to read that some guys had success with the refurbs. Just the luck of the draw I guess, but I'm done with them.

It seems I was able to improve performance a bit by changing AGP aperture to 256 MB in the system BIOS, overclocking my 9600XT by about 15% with ATITool, and moving 512 MB of RAM from another box raising the total to 1.5 GB.

I'll update this thread for any strategy gamers stuck in AGP like myself.





 
H

HGC

Senior member
Dec 22, 1999
605
0
0
Originally posted by: HGC
Take my advice, don't buy the refurbs! I got the card today, besides being bent, scratched and greasy, it crashed repeatedly even just with the Windows desktop open.

I love Newegg, but I think their open box policy is stated in a confusing way. Some aspects of the open box policy are on the disclaimer when you place your order, others on the RMA info you see when you request an RMA, and others on the RMA FAQ. I know I'm responsible for not reading all the fine print, but I had the mistaken idea that the item, while cosmetically challenged, could be returned in 15 days without a restocking fee if it is flat out defective :(
Click to expand...

I explained this to NewEgg customer service online chat. They agreed that the open box disclaimer doesn't mention the no replacement only refund mandatory restocking fee, and agreed that that should be stated at that point in the process, and sent the suggestion up the line. Because of this and since the product was defective, they waived the restocking fee.

NewEgg rules. I change the :( to a :D.
 
Sonikku

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,901
4,927
136
Those cards have a reletive high success rate of unlocking to X800XL speeds. If you get REALLY lucky you might get one that unlocks to X850XT speeds, but that's unlikely. Still, the x800GTO is the best bang for your AGP buck.
 
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Lord Banshee

Golden Member
Sep 8, 2004
1,495
0
0
Personly i think shader model 3.0 makes a big difference in AOE3 so i would stick to a card that can do that.
 
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dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
8,558
3
76
SM3 also completely destroys AOE3 performance. Not even a Geforce 7800GS could run AOE3 at 1280x960 with max settings and SM3 at even 30fps.
 
H

HGC

Senior member
Dec 22, 1999
605
0
0
Latest update, for the AGP guys:

NewEgg took back the X800XL refurb no problem, and no restocking fee. While I was troubleshooting that card, I noticed AGP aperture was set to 64MB. I upped it to 256, and added 512MB system RAM I had in another computer, and overclocked my 9600XT by 15%.

Amazingly, Civ IV runs beautifully now. I have it at 1400x1050 all settings high, no AA. It looks and runs so good that I've decided to hold on for a year or more and upgrade to AM2 or even whatever comes after that. In the mean time I may start to upgrade by getting the same power supply as dguy6789, 500W Fortran BlueStorm. I did a lot of research and that seems like a great value

I haven't tried AOE III yet, I'm curious how that wil run.

Do you all have AGP aperture maxed? I never thought about that but it seems to make a big difference with an old 128 card.
 
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dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
8,558
3
76
Many people would recommend against a dual rail power supply like mine, but personally, I have never been as satisfied with any powersupply as I have been with this one. This power supply has lasted through three systems and has been flawless the entire time, plus, the sleeved cables are really nice. Most people that I know would run AGP Aperture at a setting equivalent to the size of the video card memory. I have never heard of such drastic performance gains that you seem to be experiencing comming from just increasing the size.
 
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dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
8,558
3
76
People say that dual rail is not really beneficial. Most people say it is better to get a powersupply with a super beefy single 12V rail than one with two moderately powerful ones. I need to do more research on the subject as I have not really taken the time to do so as of yet.

 
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