Buying My Last AGP Cards

[durgin]

I need some sage upgrade advice from more experienced video experts on specs for the right card for my usage. . .

I've got a couple of fairly decent o/c'd Asus boxes, but the video cards have seen their time. I don't want to build new machines with PCI-e yet, or migrate off Win2KPro to XP when Vista is coming. So I'm looking to prolong my useful system lives another year or so. Video is probably the sore spot; I've got old ATI Radeon 9000 Professionals. I'm looking for the best bang-for-the-buck improvement, given usage and expected system lifespan.

I never play games. My use is primarily Internet browsing and research. On a slow day, I have MSIE, Firefox, and Opera open, plus a couple of other minor applications like Excel. So maybe only 40 active windows. When I'm busy, that's 60 plus. Usually at 1280*1024 32bit. though I go up to 2048*1536 sometimes when photoediting in NikonView and Paint Shop Pro.

I've looked at the ATI camp's X1600 Pro 512 and Sapphire's X800GTO 256 (GDDR3). And wary of the X1600 from this forum - memory I'll never use, speed I'll never see. The X800 series at 256 with the better DDR3 looks more promising on price-speed. On the nVidia side, I'm less experienced. The 7800 series are out of reach for a pair of cards, so I'm left with whichever 7600GS or whichever 6800 would be the best 2 * $150 or so card.

So my questions are:
- will more than 128MB help with switching between my many windows ?
- does the DDR3 matter that much?
- do I even care about pixel pipelines ?
- which models/brands would you suggest, and why ?

 

[Ika]

I don't believe changing video cards will make any difference for what you do, since it's all in 2D. IIRC, your CPU and memory are taking most of the load.

 

[Maxspeed996]

Originally posted by: durgin
On a slow day, I have MSIE, Firefox, and Opera open, plus a couple of other minor applications like Excel. So maybe only 40 active windows. When I'm busy, that's 60 plus.

Only 40 - 60 windows open? The only time I've ever seen that many open at one time is when a friends PC was infected with a worm , and it was trying to mail copies of itself all over the internet , and the firewall caught it. , and the windows popped up so fast he couldn't close them fast enough.

 

[Maxspeed996]

Originally posted by: Aflac
I don't believe changing video cards will make any difference for what you do, since it's all in 2D. IIRC, your CPU and memory are taking most of the load.

:thumbsup:

 

[Ayah]

The only thing that would really upgrade your sig's rigs would be dual core..

Video cards are nearly worthless for 2D applications

 

[durgin]

Thank you all for the swift and decisive responses.

My conclusion is that higher end cards, AGP or PCI-e, aren't really going to do anything for my usage. Graphic processor speed isn't going to help. 128MB already exceeds the requirements of a 1600*1200 32bit screen.

From looking at clock speeds and such, I'd thought my 9000Pro was becoming an old clunker. I gather there really weren't any trailing-edge cards (for 2D use) made after that which provided substantially higher display painting and window swapping speeds? (Enough to search out and upgrade to)

 

[aka1nas]

Maybe AGP 6200s. Honestly, you are more likely I/O or RAM limited if you have that many windows open. Are you running over 1GB of RAM in those boxes? How fast are the CPUs? What is your peak commit charge in the Windows Task manager?

Edit: and actually, newer nvidia cards can accelerate some window drawing function using nview.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: durgin
Thank you all for the swift and decisive responses.

My conclusion is that higher end cards, AGP or PCI-e, aren't really going to do anything for my usage. Graphic processor speed isn't going to help. 128MB already exceeds the requirements of a 1600*1200 32bit screen.

From looking at clock speeds and such, I'd thought my 9000Pro was becoming an old clunker. I gather there really weren't any trailing-edge cards (for 2D use) made after that which provided substantially higher display painting and window swapping speeds? (Enough to search out and upgrade to)

I'd maybe look into upgrading the RAM in your boxes if you're set on spending money. I don't think that there is anything out there that will speed up your window draw speed other than having enough memory and CPU power to keep switching between all those applications.

The only 'upgrade' that I'd suggest for your video card would be to a Matrox card, because those are suppost to have notably better 2D quality than offerings from nVidia or ATi.

edit: And you're not wrong about thinking that your 9000 Pro's are clunkers. They are, but they are not what is holding you back.