Very Good AGP Card at Nice Price

[kyzen]

Tagging this for Friday. I need the best AGP card I can get for under ~$175

 

[BIGFOOTPI]

Heads up guys
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102609

SAPPHIRE 100131L Radeon X800GTO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
$138.99 free ship after $20 rebate

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Thanks! No; I've not benched any games...I really don't know how. I'm a huge gamer, but I just play them...and judge how they look. I have UT2004 loaded up and play it at 1280x1024. I can give you average FPS if you tell me what map (DM) to use.

Or, if you like, I'll DL and run a benchie for you. The card really is nice. I had software issues, but that may have been just me. Once I cleaned everything out and reloaded drivers it was fantastic!

In all honestly, as much as I like number-crunching, I just like to know if games "feel" faster or smoother. I don't run FPS benchmarks when I'm playing.

All the games I am currently playing (UT2K4/FEAR/Quake4/Far Cry) feel a little smoother but the biggest difference is the image quality. Like night and day. I can actually see a lot more textures on objects than I could before. Visually, it's a huge diff.

The fact that the X800GTO is a 256MB card helps out with the textures, I'm sure. My 9800 was just 128MB.

 

[BIGFOOTPI]

and if you like a Visiontek Lifetime warranty... (x800pro- faster 475mhz GPU than the the sapphire@400mhz, although 80mhz slower RAM speed.)
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant...duct_Code=190979&AFFIL=pricewatch&NR=1

 

[BadSweetums]

The Newegg Sapphire and Monarch Visiontek cards are great buys, if you need one last AGP upgrade.

My PowerColor card is working great. I have not benchmarked. I've been trying to sweeten the deal with overclocking and unlocking.

The memory won't overclock in any meaningful sense of the word, up 4 MHz to 904.5. The GPU took an 18% oc with no mods, 560.25 MHz.

Unlocking the other 4 pixel pipelines looks unlikely. Most reverse engineers appear to have moved on and I specialize in googling things out, not making great discoveries on my own.

The Newegg Sapphire card GPU will probably overclock as well as my PowerColor. So, you're looking at better (in a meaningful before you buy sense of the word) performance for a lower final price. The Monarch Visiontek X800 Pro card overclocked to 528 MHz (core) and 590/1180 MHz (memory) when tested by Bjorn3d. Maybe they needed to remount the heatsink. Great finds.

 

[kyzen]

So I'm ready to bite the bullet and do one last upgrade before I get a new system. Presently, I'm running:

Athlon XP 2800+
1.5 gigs ram
Radeon 9800 AiW PRO

Will I be better off with:

X800 GTO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102609

Or

X1600 PRO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102680

?

 

[The Raven]

Originally posted by: kyzen
So I'm ready to bite the bullet and do one last upgrade before I get a new system. Presently, I'm running:

Athlon XP 2800+
1.5 gigs ram
Radeon 9800 AiW PRO

Will I be better off with:

X800 GTO
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102609)

Or

X1600 PRO
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102680)

?

I'm not sure what you were tryin to do with those links but, here's some links to help you dedcide. But it looks like the X800 would blow the 1600 away. It has 256-bit interface and DDR3. However the 1600 has some newer tech and you could get the 512MB vers if you want more mem, so it all comes down to what you wanna do with it and what games you'll be playin. The TH charts are good for that because you can choose the benchmark. Good luck choosing.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=356&card2=369#
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

 

[The Raven]

Oh and I started a separate post for the 1600s here

 

[kyzen]

Looks like I fail at linking. Need to remove the ) from the end of the links... I edited my post