Video Card suggestion--AGP 100-140$ Please help

This has been the topic of the day. This should help...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/1 [...] our_money/

In that price range, the X850pro gets my vote. For sm3.0 support, you're looking at a 7600GS, or X1650pro, but IMO anything less than a 7600GT isn't worth buying JUST for sm3.0.

Newegg currently has an X850XT for $139.99 plus shipping right now. If you can spring for the extra few dollars for shipping, I think that would be a good deal. I wish I could get one but the performace boost for me wouldn't be worth the time and money to me as I have an X800GTO modded to X800XL specs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102526

Which would you suggest and why:

Sapphire X850XT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102526

or

X850 Pro http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102606

Both are 140 dollars.
Both sound amazing.

thx man

Exactly. Dont buy a freaking X8xx series card, buy a 7600GT. It's a way better card that supports ps3.0 and isnt already outdated.

Here's an eVGA model for $129 before a $20 dollar rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130062

I'm drunk, ignore me

it might be cheaper in the long run to get a cheap mobo with pcie. that is what i am doing [along with a cpu i got a celeron right now]. a 7600 gt on agp is 200 bucks but a pcie is about 135. just a suggestion. personally thankfully its almost x-mas the wifey is buying my parts for me yay.

Well, the AGP card is only temporary, as I plan on upgrading to a Core 2 Duo e6400 OC'd. I wanted to go with crossfire, because from what Ive read crossfires can generally outperform sli, and for less.

But im impatiant, and the parents are buying, so I jumped right ahead lol.

Thx for the help tho, keep em coming!

Well, the X1650 would be okay and looks like a decent price after the rebate but here are a couple of other considerations:

X850Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102606

7600GS
Watch the clock speeds on the different versions. Particularly look at the memory speed as there is a lot of deviation between brands.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] ategory=48

The X850Pro would certainly be faster than the X1650Pro but it is near the top of your budget. I'm not totally sure if the 7600GS is better than the X1650Pro but I think it is.

ok, and wat is Vivo, or AVIVO?

Ah, AVIVO is ATI's platform for higher quality image and video.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIVO

Sry, it was a little off topic, I just always saw it on the graphic card specs.

Have any of you guys had any experience with nvidia's quaddro?

The quaddro is a great CAD card, but for gaming... not so much.

X850 PRO is a great card stock. If it mods, great, but you don't need to mod it to have fun with it.

I wouldn't recomend it.

Better question:

Do tweaked drivers do anything other than changing nvidia's (if u use nvidia) control panel options?

Both have the exact same features because they use the same core.

X850 PRO is a way better card because the clocks are so much higher.

Does the X850's 120 Mhz core clock advantage really overcome the X800GTO's 440 Mhz memory clock advantage?

those x8## cards are great but the one they dont have sm3.0
some future games are going to sm3.0.

the new splintercell i believe is, which means the x8## series
cards wont play it.

just something to think about.

The Sapphire cards (red ones I don't know about the blue ones) do seem to have a high rate of unlockability. In fact, I haven't heard of anyone who has tried and been unsuccessful. I have a Sapphire AGP X800GTO that unlocked to 16 pipes and I have helped several other people unlock their cards.

The heatsink on the red GTOs is not that bad and you likely won't be able to overclock it much even if you put a better heatsink on it. The memory will clock pretty high but the R430 core, which most of the Sapphire cards seem to come with, doesn't overclock beyond about 440-450 unless you volt-mod it. I have mine at 444MHz core and 528MHz (DDR-1056MHz) with the fan at 100%. I have ATItool set up so that it underclocks and slows the fan down when I'm not playing a game.

An unlocked X800GTO is about equivelant to a stock X850Pro and that is why I didn't recomend it in my earlier post. At the same price, you are better off with one you don't have to mod. In fact, I have heard that there is a chance of unlocking the X850Pro which would be even more awesome.

While I agree it's strange that they are going there right now (I think TWIBTBP has something to do with it too), I think this is the way things will be going for many new games though as the new 'base' can easily be established as SM3.0/OGL2++ with the Wii, PS3, X360 all sharing SM3.0/OGL2+ capable hardware, and the base of SM3.0 cards out there is large enough for the new 'must have' games to go that route, especially since it means slightly less work for the devs. I doubt that this will be something that the majority will do, more a minority play (and based on the Splinter Cell / UBi history I think this has more to do with dealmaking than programming).

I don't know. The GF6600 has all the features of the GF6800, it's the GF6200 series that has some removed features.

I wonder if it's an arbitrary thing where the game looks for the deviceID.

Yeah, the only thing I could think was, did the developers prevent the game from working on specific cards if they didn';t deem them fast enough? Seems like commercial suicide to me...

Then I did some research... it looks like Splinter Cell Double Agent is super buggy. Some peoplr are having success with the 6600 GT, but lots of people are getting all manner of bugs and problems. I guess this is just one of them.