Grapics card for AGP x8

[Aussierox]

Hi I am thinking of upgrading my grapics card from my Nvidia Geforce fx 5600 to something better. According to my manual my Asus p4p800 motherboard has 5 pci slots and 1 agp X8 slot and I was just woundering what is the best nvidia card (preferably) or other grapics card that an agp slot can support and is it all that much better than the fx 5600?

Thanks to anyone who can offer any help on the matter!

[ninevalleys]

ok, simple secret, you can nearly get ANY graphics card for AGP slots BUT they cost a FORTUNE and are special order. so if you want to be picky and have the money you could do that.

HOWEVER! Ebay is the place to go! i know you can get a Nvidia 6800GT for AGP 8x, which is a nice card and can play anything short of DX10 (not that there is anything out atm for that) with about medium graphics. you could get a 7300GT which is worse than the 6800GT. a Nvidia 7800GT of GS is also available for about $200- $300 aus. BUT the best you can get is a ATI X1950 PRO which will cost between $300 -$400 and is significantly better than any mentioned below. there are a few more options but those are pretty much the common ones.
firstly check to see how big your PSU is...?

i personally would go with in this order
ATI X1950 PRO 512mb
Nvidia 7800GT
ATI X1950 256mb
Nvida 7800GS
ATI X1650
Nvidia 6800GT
Nvidia 6600GT
Nvidia 7300GS

hope this helps. it comes down to how big you PSU is and how much space you have in your case. oh and how mcuh cash you got to spend

cheers NV

[Archangel]

Looks to me like you can get a GeForce 7800 GS for AGP. That's at least 2200 faster than a 5600... ;-)
Seriously, it would be a _lot_ quicker. It's two generations newer, and you know how fast these things move...

I personally won't touch an ATi card, their drivers are ****house. YMMV.

[recurve boy]

I personally won't touch an ATi card, their drivers are ****house. YMMV.

Only on Linux. I had an ATI in my old windows box. It was pretty good

[ninevalleys]

the ATI X1950XTX is the best value card considering performance on the market. i wanted one of these cards but my local shop didnt have one so i bought teh 8800 GTS. i have played around with a ATI cards, they work well, ive had less hassle with them than my 8800 combined! the 7800GS is a good card but the X1950 runs circles around in performance. a lot of Nvidia fanboys have moved to ATI due to driver issues (Vista) and same in reverse. to play games either of the two would be more than fine

NV

[Archangel]

Only on Linux. I had an ATI in my old windows box. It was pretty good
What do you mean 'only'? FreeBSD and Solaris are in the same situation.
(technical note: FreeBSD has some issues because their kernel interfaces aren't quite adequate. nVidia are still ahead of ATi.)

And it says something to me that one company can be bothered going to the effort of supporting their consumers regardless of their choice of operating system, while the other can't.

[ninevalleys]

i see where you are coming from here, i havent tried solaris or linux so yeah. but for windows they are just as good as Nvidia, and may even be better with their next DX10 series coming out
NV

[Eberbachl]

And it says something to me that one company can be bothered going to the effort of supporting their consumers regardless of their choice of operating system, while the other can't.

C'mon Archangel - you know Linux users don't really count!

They should be able to write their own drivers anyway.

The power of community!

:p

[Aussierox]

Thanks very much guys for all your help I found teh X1950 Turbo super cooling model on ebay but theres so many different models of the X1950 alll with dif specs like some have 256mb ram others have 512mb I dont know which one to buy lol.

[lil_dennett]

since i have just got myself a 8800gt i have a 6600 with 512 that i would like to relocate to a new home.. oh it is all PCI-E power so let me know if any one wants it... or if there is a trade that could be made..

[Aussierox]

since i have just got myself a 8800gt i have a 6600 with 512 that i would like to relocate to a new home.. oh it is all PCI-E power so let me know if any one wants it... or if there is a trade that could be made..
That would be nice but I dont have any PCI E slots only 5 pci and 1 agp how much would it cost to get a MB that has PCI E slots and can take dual core intel pentiums and plenty of ram? (just as a matter of interest for mabye christmas or something)

[Archangel]

That would be nice but I dont have any PCI E slots only 5 pci and 1 agp how much would it cost to get a MB that has PCI E slots and can take dual core intel pentiums and plenty of ram? (just as a matter of interest for mabye christmas or something)
Not much, PCI-E is pretty standard now, as are dual core chips. Every motherboard's been able to take more RAM than your poxy operating system can use for eons now.
Probably in the vicinity of $100-200, but Ninevalleys will probably know more...

[recurve boy]

And it says something to me that one company can be bothered going to the effort of supporting their consumers regardless of their choice of operating system, while the other can't.

Yeah, it's not worth supporting Linux. What are you going to do with all that power on a Linux box anyway? Play Tux at 500fps? :P

[Eberbachl]

Yeah, it's not worth supporting Linux. What are you going to do with all that power on a Linux box anyway? Play Tux at 500fps? :P

:rofl:

That would be super-tux!

http://www.abclinuxu.cz/images/screenshots/6/8/68531-Tux%20Racer-51876.jpg

:D

[ninevalleys]

seriously a motherboard with a single PCI-E slot can take DDR2 Ram between 553 and 800, and would be fine for dual core will set you back $80, for somthing nicer id spend around teh $150 mark, and for SLI (nvida cards) about $250 - $300. i had a Gigabyte MB for my Core 2 Duo which had single PCI-E can take up to 667RAM that only set me back $80, though i upgraded to a DFI Lanparty 680i which is designed to SLI, and tons of other stuff (overclocking) for $350. end of the day MB are cheap as chips... BUT if you decide to buy a AGP card then change to PCI-E MB soon after its obvious you will have lost $300 on a card that may be hard to get rid of

NV

[Archangel]

Yeah, it's not worth supporting Linux. What are you going to do with all that power on a Linux box anyway? Play Tux at 500fps? :P
What are you going to do with the power on a Windows box? Run your spyware zombie bot thing at 5000 spam e-mails sent per second?

[Archangel]

:rofl:

That would be super-tux!
Actually, that's Tux Racer - Supertux looks like this:
http://osx.iusethis.com/screenshot/supertux.png
It is hard to keep track of them all, Tux stars in so many places ;-)

[recurve boy]

What are you going to do with the power on a Windows box? Run your spyware zombie bot thing at 5000 spam e-mails sent per second?

Duh. Games. And Vista!

Thanks for correct us about Tux Racer?

[Archangel]

Duh. Games. And Vista!
Ah sorry, I forgot - in Vista, you need all that power just to run the GUI. I can see where that'd be popular with graphics card manufacturers...

[Eberbachl]

Holy cow - there's actually a game called supertux?

That Tux sure does get around.

:p

[The One]

Holy cow - there's actually a game called supertux?

That Tux sure does get around.

:p

Naughty little penguin...

[Aussierox]

firstly check to see how big your PSU is...?

cheers NV

Im just woundering how do i check My PSU theres no sticker on it