Will getting a good PCI card hurt more than help?

I started out with a hp a610y. knew very little about pc's at first and thought I was doin good when I bought a BFG 6200oc PCI for 150. In comparrison a 6200 for AGP or PCIe would run ya 35 bucks. Now I've frankensteined me an AGP system together and have to wait couple months to pull a 7600gt. Man to get to this point took some money! For you, if you get good returns on your taxes I would wait and either do a build or by a new pc when Vista arrives early next year. Hope that helped.  

If your motherboard can only support a pci video card (you were talking about a video card right??) you would be better off saving your money to upgrade your whole system.

Unless all you want to do is surf the net, pci cards are mostly useless.

i'm getting a new comp 3-4 months, and i need something to hold me over, and integrated aint doing it.

Save your money, it's just not worth it............

Just checked newegg and it's really not.

outlw is not kiddin! take it from me. idiot me has the BEST pci card there is and it just sucks when it comes to gaming. now this card i have is hard to find and mind you i dumped 150 for it this past march. and that was an upgrade from a 5700 that i bought for 100 and it was an even worse card. Expect nothing for gaming and is OK for just surfin if your dead set on it!

K.. i really didn't read a lot of posts.. but my idea is buy a X1000 series so maybe you can use it as a physics accelerator if ATI thinks smart for all those who can't afford a mobo with 3x PCI-E X8/16

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTE2OCwxLCxobmV3cw=...


HARD OCP hardware review..

what if/any games do you play?

what if/any games do you play?


Lol i have to stick with like d2 and wc3

I used to play WOW but with lowest settings i was getting about 14 fps


and my specs are decent but vid card

p4. 2.8
1.25gb ram
then 64 onboard video.

i know cod2 plays great on a
c 2.4
2 256k ram
fx5200pci card

the smoke effects even look good.
and at an ingame setting of aax2.

but it goes to dx7.0 or 8.0 cant remember.


oh that is compared to a 6/7 series nv cards in pci-e
and ati x800xl series/9600pro.

So which card exactly did you get? The "best" gaming PCI card out is the Visiontek X1300. They're the only company that makes it in regular PCI.

You could see about getting a really cheap motherboard with an AGP slot and buying a really cheap AGP card. Your CPU is still decent in my book. Almost any P4 is still decent, and a 2.8 is the higher end of them.

You could see about getting a really cheap motherboard with an AGP slot and buying a really cheap AGP card. Your CPU is still decent in my book. Almost any P4 is still decent, and a 2.8 is the higher end of them.[/quote]


I'm going to college in the summer for CAD, i'm definately gonna want a core2 duo and somethign that can render at a decent rate.

Well that counts out pci  

I'm in a similar boat.

Got an older computer, PCI only, some kinda Celeron or another, totally outdated in terms of pretty much everything...
I've been a tried and true console gamer for 20+ years now, and I'm getting pretty jaded with what's out there at the moment. The sweet siren song of the PC is calling me back again.

I got 64MB on my integrated graphics, and it can putt its way around whatever oddball MMORPG I'm fiddling with at the moment.

I've been thinking of getting one of the many 128MB cards out there since there about the cost of an average console game; if it can boost my frame rate by a few more frames (enough at least to notice it) to the point where it's a bit smoother, than I think I can wait a few weeks on adding another game to the ever- growing pile.

I've got the wife's support to build a mammoth of a gaming pc come this summer once grad school is a thing of the past and I get a nice extra bonus of a few thousand now that our school district's decided to pay us a bit more competitively.

So is it worth it? Am I going to see a few extra frames and help make things a little bit smoother? I'm not looking to play FEAR or Oblivion on this machine- just trying to get a little bit more bang out of some of the 3d MMORPGs I enjoy.

Yep, time to go PCI-E. :-) They have PCI-E mobo's for socket 478, which you most likely have, right? But they're hard to find and pretty costly. You're looking at a whole new system. Most here recommend a Core2Duo on a socket T(LGA775) mobo. Is your current processor an Intel 478? 3-4 year old Dell perhaps? They love to "forget" to put on AGP card slots, even though their mobo could support it, and all they'd have had to do is spend another cent to have an asian solder one on. If you have a socket 478 prescott, I'd consider buying your old chip off you for cheap. I have a 2.2ghz one in my old system and could upgrade it. :-P

I hope you're gonna get rid of the old one altogether or you're going to a toasty house. Two prescotts.... ouch  

So which card exactly did you get? The "best" gaming PCI card out is the Visiontek X1300. They're the only company that makes it in regular PCI.

You could see about getting a really cheap motherboard with an AGP slot and buying a really cheap AGP card. Your CPU is still decent in my book. Almost any P4 is still decent, and a 2.8 is the higher end of them.



i have the 6200oc 256mb from bfg. i'll take your word that the x1300 is tops. i've given up on tryin to get any kind of a review about the 6200 or weather it's tops in the pci class. either way it's a moot point for me now that i've got an agp board and only need to get the 7600gt for it.

All I have to say is there is no such thing as a good PCI video card.

If you buy PCI, you're gonna get reamed.

Good videocard + PCI = Oxymoron.

-The String

Yeah read the first post. i said its a contradictory



and i know i need to get a new computer, lol I'm getting a pretty top of the line computer, its just i can't afford it yet, and i already know what i want, unless something major is gonna be revealed very soon. But tahnks for the suggestions on that. I think i'm gonna stick with the x1300

If you do look at PCI-E graphics, basically...the best values in the $160-200 range seem to be ATI cards, and the best in the low-mid seem to be Nvidia. The 7600's are good, the X1900's are good. That's not to say a 7900GS isn't a good card...but if I'm spending a good deal I'd lean towards ATI, unless I'm going top of the line. At least that's how it seems to play out in the current market.