The lesser of 2 evils

Well if you trust Tom's, then check out this link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/05/the_best_gaming_video_cards_for_the_money/page7.html

According to the table on that page, the 6200 is one tier higher than the 9550, so I would suggest the 6200. Or you can scour eBay for a used AGP Geforce 6600 or Radeon 9800 for $20-30.

1 last question. It's been a long while since I've even dealt with AGP. Are cards listed as AGP 8x backwards compatible and can go down to be used in a AGP 4x machine?

Yes, it will run fine at 4x. I actually ran a 9600XT for years at 4x. You'll take a slight hit in performance, but it's not going to be halved. I still have that old card. If you were nearby I'd probably let you have it.

I can assure you that the 9550 will outperform the 6200 i played prey on medium settings with 800x600 smoothly.

but have you tried the 6200? (I'm not arguing, I'm just noticing a potential flaw in that statement)

Well, it depends on the exact model of 9550 and 6200 you have, but here are the general specs of each that I could find:

ATI 9550
AGP 4X/8X
128-bit
Core Clock: 250MHz
256MB DDR
DirectX 9.0c
Memory Clock: 200MHz (400MHz DDR)

nVidia 6200
AGP 4X/8X
64-bit
Core Clock: 350MHz
256MB DDR
DirectX 9.0c
Memory Clock: 275 MHz (550MHz DDR)

So it looks like the only advantage the 9550 has is a better memory bandwidth. The higher clock frequencies of the 6200 might offset that advantage though.

It depends on what type of 6200 you have. A 6200TC or 6200LE:TC will run slower because of their turbo-cache memory which borrows from system memory. Looking back at the older VGA charts, they don't have the 6200 in AGP or a 9550, but a 9550 is just a 9600 with some lower clock speeds, so you can compare a 6200 to a 9600 and see that the normal 6200 performs better then a 9550. At least in the couple of games I looked at.

disregard

i had the 6200se 64mb and a 128mb radeon 9550. (i build a lot of used systems from parts and see a lot of different hardware  )

i like benchmarking stuff i didn't use before so i benchmarked both cards with 3dmark 2001 and 2003.

i can't remember the exact scores but both benchmarks were faster on the radeon. then i tested nfs underground and the difference was very clear: on the ardeon it played nice with decent settings, the 6200se was struggling and 1024 was hardly playable.

i tested on a 3000+ athlon64 system with agp slot so cpu was not an issue.

both cards were higly overclockable but even here the radeon was better. don't get me wrong, i like nvidia cards just as much as the ati's, the 6200se was BAD! i doubt a vanilla 6200 is that much faster that it outperforms a 9550......

best idea maybe?: sell one system and with the money fix your main system! can't be all broke..........must be fixable

I'd say the R9550 will tend to win out on average, howver the only GF6200 benefit is it's ability to 'play' games that are SM3.0 only, although play them might be an overstatement of the situation. And also there's no OpenEXR style HDR support for the GF6200 so it can't do HDR on old games either.

In general the R9550 should outperform the GF6200, unless it's one of the very early crippled GF6600s sold as a 6200 that have the rare ability to be unlocked.



That site is terrible, it's simply a popularity contest with no rules (PS you can vote multiple times). Did you notice that the only area on their lists that the R9550 loses to the GF6200 is the 'overall' which has way more votes than any other section? I think like wiki that site is too influenced by fanbois voting up/down their choices. Hey I'm gonna go vote me up the XGI Volari Duo now.  

I wouldn't trust that site with my or my friend's money, nor would I recommend anyone else do so.

Thanks

since you have 2 cards.... you could always OC 1 to dangerous levels.... (ok, not serious there but you really could OC without much worry)