Solid middle to high end AGP graphics cards

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Apart from the fact you may believe they don't exist. What's your take on the 7800 line or Radeons x1800 up?

 

In what context?
As a last upgrade for a five year old system or in an entirely new computer. The former probably isn't worth it (you'd be better off getting a slightly newer cpu and perhaps a 6600 or something) and neither is the latter (pci for futureproofing). For something in between, it depends on what else you have in your box really. Also atm buying any high end card is probably not the best idea, mainly because of all the directX10 cards that will be coming out in a couple of months.

 

Nah, in a new system, you don't want AGP. In fact, you may want some PCI-E 16 or something.

At the time being, I have the following:

Celeron 2.4 GHz Northwood core
ABIT IS7-E mobo
MSI GF5900XT (overclocked)
WDC something 7400 rpm or was it 7200... with 8 MB cache - IDE at any rate
DVD 16 LG (not like this matters a lot)

Theoretically, a great graphics card relative to mine should give more fps and quality increase in games (for other uses of my computer the current config is enough and often more than it) than CPU replacement. Additionally, my card will sell for +/-300PLN (100 USD), while a 7300GT with DDR3 memory (just a tad bit less powerful than 7600GS) can be obtained for 370, a 7600GS for 420, GT for 500 with change. The upgrade would thus be very cheap in the end after selling my old card.

The proc won't sell for more than 150 PLN (50 USD) and I can already find better ones for that price. A boxed PIV with some 533 FSB and 2.X GHz will cost under 300. Around 3200 for a Prescott 3 GHz. However, for that, I would need a better cooler than my stock Celeron one. I get 55 degrees Celsius under load in games, and the air duct I've ordered, plus the sysfan I'm about to, will decrease it further, but a Prescott is much much sweatier than some low-frequency Northwood-based processor.

As a rule, I don't think Celeron D would be that great in my case, as while it's a good processor, better than older full PIV's, it's sweatier than quite decent Northwood PIV's. My cooler may not be enough. A brand new cooler means additional cost, means it becomes less profitable.

And I'll probably have around 1300 PLN (350 USD0 on my hands by Wednesday. However, our prices here are different from American ones (ratios between similarly differing products may be similar, though), so this is just for approximate reference.

Core Duo 6300 is around 630 PLN. A great mobo is for 450, but a 200 PLN one will do as well. A gig of DDR2 RAM would cost 300 with little change. That's still between 1100 and 1200 PLN, while I'll need a GFX card too. Selling my old parts could net some cash still (150-170 proc, 200-210 mobo - that's the price, yep, it's a goodie, 150-170 RAM), but I'd rather give them to someone in the family with a worse computer or something.

Another factor is that I don't play many games. It's rarely more than two at a time - an RPG and Warcraft 3. That, and older games, of which some pose some challenge to my computer, but that's just the laggier designs. For websurfing and writing documents I don't even need what I have now.

All in all, I just want to get a bit more fps in games and get on current terms with Pixel Shaders and the like.

The alternative is cheap cooling solutions - 10 PLN air duct (shipment included), two 80*80 fans for 10 PLN each, inside PCI slot fan for 20 PLN to put under VGA (I already have copper heatsinks on the RAM - and the chips are located around the gigantic copper fan) for more overclocking. It would probably give me satisfaction, doing something like this. And Celerons overclock well.

Ah, and my power supply is 350W. May not be enough for Core2Duo, 7800 etc.

All in all, I just wonder what would be the best and can't help thinking it would be the card. I don't want to incur any additional expenses by accident, such as needing a better cooler ASAP or something not working etc. I especially like the cheap replacement ideas because, well, come on, one really can sell a 5900XT for 300 PLN and buy a 7600GS for 420 here.

 

Should be fine for a Duo (they use a lot less power than a typical P4). As for a 7800, yeah, that should use a tad more power, 350W should still be fine for it though, as long as you don't go sli (which you can't with your current mobo)

This article just popped up a toms hardware and would probably answer your first question remarkably well. Just keep in mind that your overclocked 5900XT would run a tad faster than the 9700 they used, and your Celeron would run a tad faster than their athlon).

Out of curiosity, what games is it strugling with? If it really isn't that bad, or you can manage with low detail mode you may want to hold off until directX10 cards become more prevalent, not to neccesarily buy a dx10 card, but rather for the cheaper prices occuring as a result.

[ January 15, 2007, 14:58: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

The games I play are Warcraft III TFT, Neverwinter Nights I (II came out before I had much opportunity to play around with modules; Daggerford, some HotU battles, and generally patch 1.68 make it challenging at times, though normally I get full details and full fluency), Neverwinter Nights II (need I say anything?), Spellforce I got for Christmas, Fallout Tactics (noticeable fluency deficiencies probably due to power/memory issues whether of the system as a whole or just GFX). I sometimes play Crusader Kings or Medieval. There's a reason I don't buy more games than I already have, though. I would appreciate the additional power already as it is, while the difference in price between my card (I will probably net about 100 USD equivalent for it, if not more) and mid-range series 7 models isn't great.

As such, I can either get the strongest they have for AGP, or whatever pays off the best, e.g. paying 330USD for a 7300GT DDR3 with 1.4 ns RAM chips and a Zalman cooler (which is a tad slower than 7600GT and a totally different thing from the DDR2 version, let alone the normal 7300, and should overclock well with the Zalman), then selling mine for 300-310. Benchmark-wise, that card would be about twice as powerful as mine, before OC, and should OC better. If it has thermal sensors, I might as well get a PCI slot fan under it, blowing outside the air Zalman sends down, and when I really feel like it, I could put a heatsink on the other side of GPU, for some more extreme OC. And if I burn the thing, I won't cry because it's a low-end card, not a state-of-the-art-former-high-end like my current one.

 

The 7800 would be the card to go with, if you don't mind the extra expense. But the ATI card seems the real winner in FS's test

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/xfx_geforce_7600_gt_agp_review/default.asp


I found this interesting:

 

So am I getting a correct hunch that nVidia or ATI would trim down the AGP versions of PCI cards in order to make AGP ones perform worse and kill the platform?

Back in the time, AGP wasn't perhaps the best choice over improving PCI, but these days PCI looks to me like a big disappointment that hasn't actually happened but very well should have. The only benefit from PCI-E that I can notice is cheaper price. And, sadly, maybe that PCI-E cards will be comparatively better as a result of nVidia and ATI policies.

For the moment, I've pretty much made up my mind to go for one of the following, in the order of power:

- nVidia 7300GT, DDR3, Zalman version, 1.2 ns memory chips; either Galaxy (the reference card) or full reference timing - again, preferring Galaxy
- nVidia 7600GS, DDR3 - let's face it, the DDR2 version sucks
- nVidia 7600GT, DDR3
- ATI x1950pro - it looks like this card simply pwns the rest
- nVidia 7800GS - disputably on par with the above, but I believe it's worse, plus the price is bigger on the nVidia card

My reason for buying the 7300GT one: Unlike the crappy GS version or the DDR2 GT version, this one offers efficiency little below 7600GS DDR3 and, consequently, little below 7600GT; additionally, RAM is very fast with 1.2ns, what's more, there's a Zalman there for overclockers, what's even more, the price of even the Galaxy version is about 130 USD in my currency - and my own card may well sell for close to this. Thus I'll have a very cheap upgrade leading to doubling my graphics card performance alone. Additionally, when they release series 8 on AGP, or even simply more models on PCI-E, the prices of series 7 will drop. Might even actually go for a series 7 card of a higher grade and swap it cheaply. Will see. Though I'd rather buy a high-end card of the previous generation than a low-end new thing. The one sole con (bearing in mind the price to performance ratio) is 128 MB RAM.

My arguments in favour of 7600GS DDR3 are that it's basically 7600GT with 60 MHz less on the GPU. That's basically it. If the price is cheap enough, it's like the 7300GT trick to have much gain for little cash. Another big pro is 256 MB. But not 512 MB, no, that card can't hold it. I think 128 bit cards with 512 MB just can't do it right.

My arguments in favour of 7600GT are that, well, after all, it's a solid and widely benchmarked and supported mid-range card without the problems of low-end components. It's solid. It's not a wunderkind like Galaxy 7300GT DDR3 Zalman, but it's solid. Additionally, it's not a GS, so that's also a bonus - you know, full version, no budget stuff markings etc.

As for the Radeon, I've seen many tests and benchmarks and it looks to me like it seriously pwns anything below 7800GS and tends to pwn GS as well, being more on par with 7800GT or even 7900. The card is like 7600GT + 33%, whereas the price difference is smaller. One con is that they often put DDR2 on this card. I imagine it drops it to little better level than 7600GT, which probably becomes a better purchase that way.

And now some of the specifics of my system:

A new processor (for very, very cheap buck) has arrived, which is a PIV 2.6c. It has proper 800 MHz FSB (with quad-whatever) and offers Hyperthreading. I don't know the exact dates, but I suppose it might have been developed after early Prescotts or under some influence. In games, Prescotts are often outperformed by older Northwoods and we're talking about the best of Northwood. Additionally, it dissipates at least 10W less of heat. What does it mean? Yep, better overclocking. Bigger differences from stock speed. These processors run at 3.5 GHz with air cooling from the popular series not exceeding 50 USD.

I'll be putting the processor in tomorrow because I don't have any thermal paste yet and I'm not being too impatient. I've taken a look at Dual Channel specs from Kingston and Infineon and it looks like 400 MHz DDR1 (what I have, and from Kingston incidentally) in Dual Channel mode exactly matches the effective 800 FSB from the processor. With the Celeron, it simply ran the same as some old SD RAM 133 MHz, I think (and at any rate, 133 was the frequency).

Back to overclocking, though, at the moment, I'm planning my new airflow and hunting down the right fans. In fact, my last standing concern is whether to do it rearward or frontward (i.e. sysfan expulsion, 5.25'' intake; or 5.25'' expulsion, sysfan intake). But I'm inclined to go for frontward because the expulsion fan would be bigger, so the flow should be more silent (negative setups are more silent for all I know), plus I can hang a silenced small fan on the PCI slots (lid removed) under VGA. The only benefit from rearward would be that the 5.25'' intake would benefit from a three-hard-drives-sized square channel to blow air through. Oh well, if you have an opinion, I welcome it and urge you to share it.

As you can see, there's going to be some good airflow, so mounting a heatsink on the other side of GPU should also do some good (heck, Papst fans are on a promo, so might even do double-fanning...). This means OC. For the card as well. Zalman versions will likely outperform stock coolers and should be good for initial level overclocking already from start. The better the card is for overclocking, the better for me. I suppose the 7300GT DDR3 1.2 ns Zalman toy for 133 USD is an overclocker toy and you generally don't cry if you burn it. I do tend to believe that kind of RAM overclocks better than slower response time RAM from higher models, let alone DDR2.

The last thing to mention is the system RAM. If I'll be overclocking CPU anyway, I might as well push the FSB a bit (although my mobo officially stops at the 800 quad figure, it can go higher in manual settings, I think, so step by step... if I care enough to spend time testing...) when I find some heatsinks with nice clips.

All in all, the system is going to take power from good airflow allowing more intense work (and the mobo has voltage options in BIOS, so hurrah), plus good bandwidth on components. Instead of very expensive solutions, I'll just do more planning, make creative use of good bargains and put some cash into ease of use (things like teflon sliders and a steel/glass mousepad, getting a good soundcard instead of integrated stuff etc). Thus I don't want a low-bandwidth graphics card and would be glad to avoid such a bottleneck as a 128 bit memory bus card with DDR2 memory could be. Heck, my 5900XT has DDR2 and 256 bit interface.

So, all in all, it's just four models I'm considering.

Aha, one more concern: I wouldn't like to pay for something that limps in older games, older meaning like the 3D Mark 03 or 05 times. I want it to be at least as good as my 5900XT was in such games. They say and some tests show that x1950pro doesn't deal as well with those as nVidia cards do. Still, if I get a card which is powerful with new games, I might as well start buying new games (my financial situation is improving and it's quite pointless to pump cash into the computer and save money on games to play on it ). It's been a long time since my last car racing fun and it's not like I'd hate to play some FPS with my best buddy on the Internet (his kind of games, but we both liked Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer in the old time ).