I am in the process of assembling old parts for a dedicated Everquest dual box. Currently I have a Shuttle AN35N Ultra MoBo, Athlon 2200 chip, 2X512 PC2700 RAM, Maxtor 120gb HD, 52X CD Rom, Antec 430 PS, and a Lian Li case. The 2200 stock is 1800, but I have unlocked the chip and it will do 2.2 OCed. I was initially going to rob the 4600 out of my current 2-box and replace it with an old Radeon 9000, but I have since decided not to downgrade that machine quite so much.
SO, in short I need advice on which video card I should purchase for this dual-box. I would like to match the 1600X1200 of my primary machine, but that is not imperative. I do not think Everquest is that graphics intensive of a program, so any card may perform at those resolutions.
My concerns with this purchase are being CPU limited on higher end cards, buying to much performance for a dual-box machine, and spending to much money on an AGP card that will not be used in future system builds.
My thoughts so far:
1. Buy a 6200 and attempt to soft-mod it to a 6600.
2. Buy a 6600 and overclock it.
3. Buy a Radeon 9600xt used.
4. Buy a Radeon 9700 pro used.
5. Buy a Radeon 9800 pro used and mod it to XT.
6. Buy a 6600gt and OC it.
7. Buy a 6800 NU and OC it.
8. Buy a 6800GT for primary machine (Athlon 2.5) and move current 6800NU card to dual box.
Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions or welcome. Feel free to discuss the options I listed or offer some of your own. I will probably make a decision sometime this weekend.
SO, in short I need advice on which video card I should purchase for this dual-box. I would like to match the 1600X1200 of my primary machine, but that is not imperative. I do not think Everquest is that graphics intensive of a program, so any card may perform at those resolutions.
My concerns with this purchase are being CPU limited on higher end cards, buying to much performance for a dual-box machine, and spending to much money on an AGP card that will not be used in future system builds.
My thoughts so far:
1. Buy a 6200 and attempt to soft-mod it to a 6600.
2. Buy a 6600 and overclock it.
3. Buy a Radeon 9600xt used.
4. Buy a Radeon 9700 pro used.
5. Buy a Radeon 9800 pro used and mod it to XT.
6. Buy a 6600gt and OC it.
7. Buy a 6800 NU and OC it.
8. Buy a 6800GT for primary machine (Athlon 2.5) and move current 6800NU card to dual box.
Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions or welcome. Feel free to discuss the options I listed or offer some of your own. I will probably make a decision sometime this weekend.
