Help me pick.

I am having a really hard time deciding which card I will get. I have it down to two cards.

SAPPHIRE 100131SL Radeon X800GTO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102002
$149.00
-I know that this card will not do SM 3.0. The only game that is a problem with is Oblivion. I don't think there is going to be any games out with in the next year or two that REQUIRE SM 3.0. I would like to do HDR in Oblivion, but I would rather have better frame rates and use bloom. I think this is the faster card of the two, but I am having a hard time finding benchmarks that compare the two.

~OR~

XFX PVT42KUDE3 Geforce 6800XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150157
$142.99
-This one will do SM 3.0. From what I have gathered, the XT's in Nvidea cards usually mean it is the worst in the line. Benchmarks on this card are hard to find, but the couple I could find rank it about the same speed as a Vanilla 6800. The specs on this card seem good: 256 GDDR3 Ram, 256 memory interface. The clock is a little slower that the x800. I would be able to use HDR with this one, which would be cool, but not a neccesity.

Ultimately I am looking for the best performance. This is the last upgrade I will be making to my current computer.
Specs:
Athlon XP 2600
1Gig Ram 2100
Current video card: 9600xt 128ram AGP

Which card would you choose.

I am limiting myself to a $175 price limit, shipping included. So if anyone can find a better card for under $175, let me know. I am still open to suggestions, but these are the best that I could find so far.

I plan on ordering one tonight.
Thanks for the help!!

That's what I thought, but I couldn't tell for sure. The specs on the 6800xt sounded good.

Thanks for the help.

Tomshardware did some benchmarks on AGP back then, here's the link.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/0 [...] _mark_2005

X800 is a much better graphic card than the 6800XT

As everyone is saying, of those two X800GTO for sure. If you can wait a couple weeks for this card to ship, it's $139 shipped free and faster than a X800gto. - http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2699206

Over this last weekend I had the 100131 (note, no SL) OEM version of the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO.....

When it was working it worked great! About 8 times faster than the Radeon 9550 it replaced. But it has some kind of thermal defect in it... when the ambient temperature was less than 70 degrees, my computer wouldn't boot. No POST, no video signal, no sounds, nothing. (this was in the morning)

Put in a larger power supply in the afternoon, put it back in and it worked like a charm. The next morning, same problem.

So I RMA's it. The 100131 is out of stock/discontinued so new egg is refunding me.

But when the card was working it was wonderful, so I just ordered the one mentioned above, the 100131SL Retail version from new egg. Can hardly wait until it gets here. The price difference is $9.00

I had heard the same thing about the X800 showing up the 6800 as well, and it even out performing the X1600 (which is what I was going to get to begin with as Best Buy has them on sale).

I chose the x800gto, and I just spent the weekend using it. It is an awsome card. The performance gain from my old 9600xt is astounding.

Great buy!!

Thanks for the help.