Looking to buy new graphics card need recommendations

[jbrownos]

I've been looking into buying a new graphics card to replace my old Geforce 4 4200 Ti that I've had for over two years. I'm looking at something in the new 6800 line or possibly a 6600GT when it is available. Considering that I have used my current card for ove two years, I will probably be using this new card for quite a while. So my question is with some of the new cards going to PCI-express, am I going to have problems using an AGP card if I decide to upgrade my motherboard in a year or two? Right now I am thinking about waiting for the 6600 GT to come out in AGP form and buying one of those. If I do buy a PCI-express I would have to buy a new motherboard just for that reason and I don't really have the money to spend on that and a graphics card.

On a side note, if I decide to buy a 6800 and I only get 128MB of DDR instead of the 256MB/DDR3 would I notice a substaintial difference?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

 

[natto fire]

Personally I think AGP Is going to be around for a while. I mean they just recently completely phased out ISA entirely. The AGP 8X bus has yet to be entirely saturated, especially with cards that have large amounts of memory and do most of the transferring on-card. As per your second question, you will probably notice a difference on newer games. Thats twice as much memory for the video card to store texture data and work on it much faster than if it were have to fetch it from the HD/system memory.

 

[Shagga]

This kind of shall I wait question has plaigued us all at some point in time. There is no right/wrong you just have to be practical. If you are extremely impatient, like me for instance, I tend to live for the moment. AGP is and will be around for some time to come. If you were thinking of changing your motherboard in lets say a couple of months I personally would wait albeit very difficult I'm sure. However, if your intending to wait 6-12 months before you change motherboards I would buy the AGP card and one more specifically with 256MB of RAM and DDR3 preferably and certainly if your going to keep it for a couple of years.

Are you a gamer, what do you use your computer for mostly. Do you really need to upgrade yet if you just browse the web and use Excel/Word applications and the like. This sounds easy I know as most technology enthusiats want the fastest and newest nechnology now and waiting is just not an option. I know for a fact, a number of people on this board, myself included spends a fortune on new technology only to see the price reduce by 50% a few months later.

[edit]

Gotta go. Door beel just rang and my 256MB/DDR3 6800GT AGP card has just arrived.

 

[nageov3t]

go with AGP.

by the time PCI-X becomes the norm, it will be time to upgrade your motherboard/video card again anyways.

 

[caz67]

AGP