Best AGP Card for an OLD system!

[Vin047]

Ive decided to return my Powercolor HD 3850 AGP card and get something else, so my question is, whats a good AGP card for an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ CPU? (I knw that this is an old CPU so latest gfx cards are gna be bottlenecked but surely there should be some performance gains?)

The main reason for this topic is that i was unable to get my 3850 card working properly. A friend of mine suggested that it could be because the card was designed for PCI-E and AGP support is unofficial. So I'm looking for the best AGP card, but a card that was designed (and officially supported) for AGP (not designed for PCI-E and modified by manufaturers like the 3850)

Also, as i said my CPU is AMD Athlon XP 3000+, so perhaps a gfx card that can be utilised properly by the CPU (since that could have been what was wrong with the 3850).

The most demanding game I would like to play right now is Red Alert 3 (which isn't supposed to be demanding anyway, but alas, my trusty Geforce FX cant cope anymore lol!

I'm open to both ATI or Nvidia (tho personally, after the hassle with this 3850 i prefer nvidia anyway!)

Thanks!

 

[customisbetter]

2600xt agp.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Is your "friend" sure there was enough power to get the card ( 3850 ) running ?

 

[rolli59]

+1 for power problem.

 

[Vin047]

swifty_morg, yh IVE (lol) made sure that there was enuf power. my psu is 450 watts (new) and the 3850 came with an a cable to connect it to the psu as well (because pcie requires extra power than agp). plus to make sure (after i tried all driver related problems of course) i even upped the voltage (well ok i set it to 1.6 volts which is what they recommend, previously i had it on auto)
hence i asked my friend and that was his opinion on the matter (he hates agp bus tho anyway )


thnx customisbetter, tho i looked into it and it seems the X1950 XT AGP is better? i dno, or is it because hd 2600 is last officially supported agp card by ati (well to my knowledge)? anyway thnx all the same

 

[megamanx00]

Did you download the drivers with the AGP Hotfix!!!!!!!?? If you didn't then you'll have the same problems with the 2600XT. What kind of PSU are you using by the way? How many amps on the 12v rail?

 

[Vin047]

yup. tried em all! drivers on cd, drivers from powercolor site, drivers from ati (including 8.5, 8.6, 8.10 official, 8.10 agp hotfix, 8.11 official, 8.11 hotfix) even tried drivers from sapphire site! (had to modify inf file etc to get it recognised)

of course before trying each new driver i made sure to FULLY remove previous drivers first!

tbh i did get it working, i tested it on red alert 3, and i managed to get drivers installed correctly with no installation issues, graphics settings set on ultra high, got a... decent frame rate (20 fps, so i guess it should have been better! but hey, CPU... lol)

The main issue was that videos/cutscenes in the game dropped to 1fps, and aero, which i had to disable after, was REALLY slow! (FYI my system was able to run aero fine with my geforce fx card! whats weird is i also noticed that on my fx card aero takes up like 1-2% MAX of CPU where as when the 3850 was put in it started taking up abt 20-30% of CPU!)

rolli59, are u sugessting i up the power even more? (like upto 1.8 volts?)

megaman, not sure on the exact brand of psu etc, jus had a look tho, it seems its actually a 550 watts psu! and according to the label, for output +12v, max current is 35A. Any good?

 

[Vin047]

you are not gna believe it... i got my hd 3850 working! and its pretty awesome! the culprit (it wld seem)................. VISTA!

(shlda seen that comin i guess)

thnx for all your help tho guys! (if u knw how to get this card workin under vista tho, pls let me knw )

 

[swifty_morgan]

GEE, thanks for letting us know the answer. Would you mind letting us know what the heck it was ?

 

[Vin047]

umm didnt i jus say...?

the culprit was VISTA

i tried drivers (vista drivers) when i had vista installed but no go, so as a last resort wiped hard drive and put xp sp3 back on. xp drivers from cd worked like a charm! (am trying out new drivers from amd site now)