Ocing PIII 700 on an Abit BE6 (PCI video Card or AGP)

[Mattlock]

I am currently overclocking my PIII 700. Currently at 870 (7*124fsb). My TNT2 Ultra is limiting my Ocing and I'm considering a newer video card.

Should I get 1) A Geforce2/3 AGP or 2) the best PCI card I can find.

Since the PCI multiplier is 1/4 vs the AGP 2/3, I was thinking I could push my FSB higher with a PCI card but I am a newbie at OCing.

Just a thought.

Any feedback

Mattlock

By the way, what is the best PCI card out there?

 

[Rand]

Many modern AGP graphics cards are very accepting of out of spec AGP bus speeds.

I'd strongly recommend you to look towards an AGP card, even if it may limiti your potential overclockability compared to a PCI graphics card.
There are VERY few truly decent PCI gaming cards left anymore.
The Voodoo5 5500 and V5 5000 are far and away the fastest PCI cards available.
There are SDR Radeon's in PCI and GF2 MX400's in PCI but as both the Radeon and GF2 core is heavily relient upon AGP's advanced feature set they lose a considerable amount of performance by going to PCI, compared to the V5 which is only a few % slower in PCI compared to it's AGP dirivative.
A PCI GF2 MX400/SDR Radeon isnt going to be a huge boost from a TNT2 Ultra level card.

So basically if you want a decent PCI gaming card your stuck with the V5 pretty much.... and they are in extremely high demand being the only truly 'good' PCI gamers cards left. Due to the high demand PCI V5's sell for almost $180 usually.. compared to the $85 it's low demand AGP counterpart is available for.
For the $180 it would cost for a PCI V5 you could easily get a nice GF3 Ti200 or ATi Radeon 8500 in AGP which are both considerably faster cards.

 

[qeru]

well, I'm not an OC fan myself, so I can't help you here. but I can tell you not to get a pci card, as all pci slots (assuming you don't have any 64bit pci's) are on the same bus, which has a limited bandwidth. I mean, that's the reason the agp was invented, as the pci bus was too slow and too small. pci video cards are mainly for servers which ofcourse do not require a lot of bandwidth for video, like games or some applications do.

 

[Mattlock]

Rand,
Thank you very much for clearing that up. Think I will be going with the GF3ti200 (eventually)

Mattlock