Not another AGP GPU thread...

[KieranCoghlan]

So I'm (still) in the market for a good AGP video card to make my current
PC last as long as possible (I don't want to give up my Nvidia
soundstorm mobo, plus budget doesn't allow a new mobo, cpu, AND gpu,
especially when the current mobo/cpu work great).

The 7800gs
seems to be the best choice, but at $250+ it's just a little
unreasonable for such a situation (i.e. delaying the inevitable). The
~$150 range seems more reasonable to me.

Also, I don't like to base purchase choices on the possible potential of a card *IF* it
overclocks well, and/or pipelines unlock successfully. I prefer to buy
a product based on stock performance, then if it mods well, then great
that's gravy, but I won't wish I'd spent $20 more for the other one or
something like that, if it doesn't o/c or mod well.

Given that, how would you rank the current crop of AGP cards? 6600gt, 6800gs, 6800gt, 7600gs, 7800gs?

What about ATI agp cards? I don't know anything about ATI cards, as I've
been an nVidia guy for years. But where would an x850PRO, x1600pro/agp
or an x1600xt/agp etc., fall in this ranking? I like the comparison
site,
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

but I don't really understand a lot of the numbers,
except that bigger is probably better... but sometimes a card is higher
on some numbers, lower on others, and I'm not sure how that plays into
actual overall performance.

I'm strongly considering either the
6800gs or the 7600gs based on price, but not sure which is the better
performer. I'm slightly leaning toward the 7600gs, simply because of
the extra features that the 7-series offers (e.g. hdtv
encoding/decoding, possible Vista compatibility, etc.)

This computer is used for everything
from 3D games to media (divx encoding/playback, etc.), to CAD... but
it's really the games that drive the desire for a new card.

My
system: video card is a GF4 4600ti 128MB agp 8x, my cpu is an AthlonXP
3200+, 1GB of Corsair XMS TwinX pc3200 ram, 21" Sony G500 crt monitor.

Thanks for any advice...

 

[Nightmare225]

Definitely the 7600GT, it just came out and performs similarly to the 7800GS.

 

[Stumps]

going of the system specs you provided you would probably be better off with a 6800GS/GT or X800 series card....the Athlon XP tends to be a pretty big bottle neck for even those cards.

I replaced my good ole 9700pro with a 6800GT on my old XP 3200+ and I had a reasonable jump in performance..enougth to justify the cost of the upgrade, but shortly after that, I replaced my old XP 3200+ with a A64 3000+@2.87ghz and that jump was huge...it certainly showed that the cup had been holding back my 6800GT by a fair bit.

Even at stock 3000+ speeds the 6800GT was more than 30% faster than when used with the AXP.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

The best bang for the buck at $150 is the refurbished X800 GTO for $119 or X800 Pro for about the same, direct from ATI's Clearance Basket. I have three NF2 (s462) systems in use, all with different MBs. Abit, Asus, DFI. XP-M 2600, XP 3000, XP 2800. I've run Oblivion with the XP-M and the XP 3000, and it ran nicely with either a 9800 XT or an X800 XT-PE. The XP 3000 and a GF 6600 GT is not so good. Compared to the other two, the image quality is awful. If you only plan to run games based in OpenGL, then by all means, try nVidia.

Originally posted by: Stumps
going off the system specs you provided you would probably be better off with a 6800GS /GT or X800 series card....the Athlon XP tends to be a pretty big bottle neck for even those cards.

I replaced my good ole 9700pro with a 6800GT on my old XP 3200+ and I had a reasonable jump in performance..enougth to justify the cost of the upgrade, but shortly after that, I replaced my old XP 3200+ with a A64 3000+@2.87ghz and that jump was huge...it certainly showed that the cup had been holding back my 6800GT by a fair bit.

Even at stock 3000+ speeds the 6800GT was more than 30% faster than when used with the AXP.

I haven't tested a high medium quality nVidia, unless you count the FX 5900 plain in there (it was totally destroyed by Oblivion). Right now, DirectX is on the upswing, and shaders are in heavy use. ATI has managed to guess the trends more accurately than nVidia in regards to shader technology, and can soundly beat nVidia (on Oblivion certainly) in Dx9. The X1600 Pro is a bargain, at around $110 FOR agp, purchased online. It is slower than an X800, but has some extra graphics capability (ignore the 512 MB model of the X1600).

There is a gap between the X1600 and the X1800 that the Geforce 7600 cards slot into, and they are very quick, but the AGP prices are still above your $150, last time I checked. I do not like the price/performance ratio for the Geforce 6xxx cards much at all. They seem overpriced to me for two year old cards.

 

[Summitdrinker]

Good thread, I'm in the same boat, my ati 9800 died, so I have old a ati 7200 in there now, looking to up grade, but don't want to spend lots a money

I have a Pent. 4 2800, 1GB of ram at 2x400, agp 8X

unsure how my system compares to your power wise

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: Summitdrinker
Good thread, I'm in the same boat, my ati 9800 died, so I have old a ati 7200 in there now, looking to up grade, but don't want to spend lots a money

I have a Pent. 4 2800, 1GB of ram at 2x400, agp 8X

unsure how my system compares to your power wise

A 7600gs or 6800gs is perfect for your system specs.
A 7600gt agp is the best (more exspensive) option. You might need to overclock your processor for this one.

 

[WT]

Best bet is to wait for a 7600GT price drop to below $110, or hold out longer for other cards in the line to drop, such as the 7800GS or 850XT.

 

[KieranCoghlan]

Power-wise,

I have an Enermax 350W ps, forget the exact model... whispersomethingorother... it's good, but only 350W

If you look at the "my rig" link in my sig, you'll see I have a dvd-rom drive, a cd-r drive, and two hdd's running, plus a floppy (yeah, I should just take that out... don't even know if it works still!)

It looks like the 7600GT will be $173 at newegg WHEN it comes available... that's on the high end of what I'm willing to pay, and a refurbished 7800gs is only $30 more (or so) at $205... Hard to draw the line.

What are the benefits (if any) of the 7-series GF gpu's over the x800 series and gf 6-series? I thought I read somewhere that the 7-series would be ready for some aspects of Windows Vista that the other cards won't do... true?

 

[KieranCoghlan]

Here's another question... if as Stumps says, my AthlonXP 3200+ (no o/c) is going to be the bottle neck for anything like a 6800gs or better, then maybe I *should* just save the cash and get the 7600gs/agp? I mean, maybe a better way to look at this is, given my cpu, am I going to see any improvement as I move from 7600gs to 6800gs, to 7600gt, to 7800gs? If I'm going to be cpu limited, will I even see an improvement among these cards? If not that really makes the decision easier...

Thoughts?

 

[orangat]

Your cpu is not such a bad bottleneck to be getting the 7600gs - which is a mediocre card and not worth the money. The 7600gt is pretty good for the money since theres not much choice for agp. If you want to spend less, I'd second the x800gto recommendation, it should be much significantly than the 7600gs for the same price.

This article benchmarks the 7600gs
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_7600_gs_preview/default.asp

 

[CaiNaM]

even if the cpu is a bit of a bottleneck, a better performing card will still allow higher settings (aa/af) and higher resolutions, which are typically gpu bottlenecks.

my advice is to get the best you can afford..

 

[KieranCoghlan]

Originally posted by: CaiNaMmy advice is to get the best you can afford..

Well, that brings me back to my original question...

Can we rank in order, the available AGP gpu's? Including both nVidia and ATI?

I think this would be pretty usefull for lots of people... then one can just decide their price and choose the card that best fits that price...

With all the choices it's hard to keep up... I know this is true of all gpu's, but since the choices are more limited for AGP bus, I thought it might be more reasonable to rank them. I'll give it a try, see if you agree or disagree... This is just a guess for the most part:

nVidia AGP:
6600 gs
7600 gs
6800 gs *
7600 gt *
6800 gt *
7800 gs
* not sure about the order of those three.

The 7600gt is a weird one... people say it's almost as fast as the 7800gs, but it has only a 128 bit memory path. But then, it also is a 7 series card, with hdtv de/en-coding, transparent AA, etc... which the 6-series lacks I think?

If someone could list the available ATI agp gpu's in some sort of order, that'd be cool, too.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: KieranCoghlan
Here's another question... if as Stumps says, my AthlonXP 3200+ (no o/c) is going to be the bottle neck for anything like a 6800gs or better, then maybe I *should* just save the cash and get the 7600gs/agp? I mean, maybe a better way to look at this is, given my cpu, am I going to see any improvement as I move from 7600gs to 6800gs, to 7600gt, to 7800gs? If I'm going to be cpu limited, will I even see an improvement among these cards? If not that really makes the decision easier...

Thoughts?

It all depends on what you want to upgrade to and when.

If you are planning to hang on to your AXP system for another 6months or a year then go for a reasonably fast card like a X800GTO or 6800GS or even a 7600GT.

But if you are planning to jump on the PCI-E band wagon(we all will have to eventually)in the near future (next 6 months or so) than a 7600GS wouldn't be a bad idea, nice and cheap and miles faster than your old ti4200.

 

[kmmatney]

I know that the X800GTO usually overclocks like mad, but at stock speeds the 7600GT is a faster card, and NewEgg gets more in stock in a few days, for the LeadTek card at $173. If you plan on keeping the system for a while longer, then the 7600GT would be a good idea. If you are upgrading sometime soon, then the $125 X800GTO or 7600GS would make sense. According to Toms Hardware interactive charts, the X800GTO and 7600GS are about a wash at stock speeds.

I was in the same boat back in January, and decided to sell my old parts and go PCIE. The net cost was very small, and my current system is way faster than my old Athlon XP 2400+.

 

[happy medium]

lowest to highest

6600
6600gt
6800
6800gs
7600gs
6800gt
7600gt
7800gs

I also have a 350 watt Enermax,but I have a 26 amp 12v rail.
My system
pent 4 3.06 533 bus overclocked
7800gs overclocked
7200 rpm hardrive
2 dvd drives (1 burner)
floppy
4 case fans
led lights on my case

If your Enermax has 18 amps or more (12v+ rail) you should be fine.

Next, your cpu is dead even with mine in terms of power.
You can run a 7800gs without much of a bottleneck,but it would be better if you overclocked it a little as I did.

Finally a 7600gt is very close to a 7800gs until you get into high bandwith resolution,because the core (560)and memory (1.4) runs so high. The stock 7800 runs at 375 core ,1200 memory. One thing though the 7800gs overclocks real well because of the 7800 core. Mine runs everday at 490 core,1.44 memory. At this speed it will beat a 7600gt easily,because of the 256bit memory bus and 16 pipes.

Hope this helps

Edit : My old card was a ti4400 overclocked to 4600 speeds and I have triple the performance now.

 

[Summitdrinker]

great info guys

 

[KieranCoghlan]

Happy Medium: great stuff thanks. If the main difference between the 7600gt and the 7800gs is apparent ONLY when getting into higher resolutions, then I probably should try to swing a 7600gt, because I'm not a resolution guy. 1280x960 is plenty for me.

Kmmatney: I appreciate the info. I *really* want to make my mobo last as long as possible... I really like the sound from the soundstorm audio chip (MCP-T). I've got an optical digital cable piping the AC3 stream straight to a Yamaha HT receiver connected to Energy surround speakers and sub. For almost every thing I do, this machine is fantastic. I'd just like to extend it's gaming life as long as possible. Plus, I can't justify the $$ expense nor do I have the time to do a full mobo/cpu/gpu/ram upgrade to switch to PCIe.

Now... anyone care to rank lowest to highest the current crop of ATI agp cards? (and then splice them into the nVidia rank list?)

That'd be GRREAT.... m'kay?

 

[Captante]

I'll narrow the choices down for you:

Sapphire/ATI X800GTO - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102609 *(Performs pretty well as is, but may be able to be modified to perform about the same as an X850 XT with a BIOS flash... of course you could also kill your card)

-or-

Leadtek/Nvidia 7600GT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122009 *(Supposed to be in stock very soon)



These are really the best bets in an AGP card right now considering that unless you buy a refurb or open-box 7800GS, you'll end up paying +/- $100 more for it.. the modified X800GTO/X850XT is faster then any of the older ATI cards & actually a tad faster then the 7600GT in many benchmarks, but it doesn't support all the visual bells & whistles the Nvidia card does, also the 7600GT runs a lot cooler & draws much less power as well... take a look at this review doing a direct comparison between all the contenders & you'll see what I mean:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=2031




Edit: Considering the price, this X800XT AIW looks interesting too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102492

 

[happy medium]

i'll do my best highest to lowest

super high end:

7800gs+(gainward) (24 pipe & 7900gt core)AGP
7800gs+(gainward) (20 pipe & 7800gt core)AGP

high end:

7800gs -------
x850xtpe------all very close
7600gt---------
x800xtpe------

mid end:

6800gt
x800gto
7600gs
x800xl
6800gs
x850pro

low end:

x1600pro
6600gt
6800
x700pro
6600
x1300pro
7300gs
x600pro
6200


stock no modifications

 

[KieranCoghlan]

Happy and Captante, thanks!

HM: interesting that you put the 7600gs above the 6800gs... I thought most people were placing the 6800gs almost as high as the 6800gt. IMO, the 6800gt is out of contention because it is $200 -- way too much for a 6-series no matter what. For $200, I'd just go with a re-furb 7800gs.

I think more and more that the 7600gt is the way to go, even given it's puny 128-bit memory bus. $173 is still a lot for me though... we'll see.