In need of a new graphics card....

[caravel]

The one I have, Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB AGP is really showing it's age now. "It was showing it's age a few years ago!" I hear you say... well it probably was, but now it's positively groaning when trying to run EB, and I would like to get MTW running a bit better as well.

The motherboard I have is one venerable GA-7VTXE+. This board has never failed me, never given any problems and has run everything I've thrown at it in the past, so I prefer to stick with it for now. The CPU is an Athlon XP 2400+, and the system has 1GB of DDR 266 SDRAM.

I'm not really up to speed with the latest hardware having lost interest some years ago. So what would be the best AGP graphics card to go for and which brand, Nvidia or ATI? I am looking for something fairly cheap, that will tide me over until I upgrade the whole lot in a year or so.

Thanks in advance


Caravel

[TevashSzat]

Hmm.....I'd say to just save the money and ride it out until you get the new system unless you are extrmely desperate then get EVGA 7600 GTS which is pretty good eunning fear at 32 fps, and half life 2 lost coast at 55 at 1280 x 960 and only costs $125

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

The GeForce 7600GT or the Radeon x1950 are really your only two options for decently performing AGP cards.

[TevashSzat]

They however cost alot of money and is kinda useless since he is going to get a new system. Better to get an okay one right now unless he plans to buy a good video card and then transfer it onto his new comp when he gets it

[sapi]

I agree with xdeathfire - don't invest heavily in outdated technology - you're better off saving up until you can afford a whole new system or taking the other route of getting a mid range card and using that for the time being.

[caravel]

I agree with xdeathfire - don't invest heavily in outdated technology - you're better off saving up until you can afford a whole new system or taking the other route of getting a mid range card and using that for the time being.

This is what I was looking for, a mid range card, to keep me going until I can upgrade. At the moment RTW is unplayable and even MTW is slow on the battlemap, so it is quite important. I'm not so worried about detail levels. I can run RTW with most settings at low or medium.

I've been looking at the X800 XL and XT and 6800 GT and GS. I've seen a few on ebay, but I'll have to look at those again in a few days when they're nearly finished.

[Husar]

Well, I was running the same CPu with a 6600GT and the CPU was slowing the whole system down, when I got a new CPU(Core 2 Duo), Gothic2 for example, ran perfectly fine, using the same graphicscard, so my guess is anything over an NVidia 6600series card would be a waste of money because your CPU would be the bottleneck anyway. If you get a new system, you won't want to use that AGP midrange card anymore anyway so I would go for a 6600GT from NVidia or Radeon 1600Pro(they are roughly the same, depending on the game).

[Andres]

I have a 2.4 Ghz processor, 1.5 MB of Ram and an ATI Radeon 9600

I can even run Medieval II acceptable, without shadows everything low, except the unit details (high); RTW runs smoothly, even on huge units size.

[caravel]

Well, I was running the same CPu with a 6600GT and the CPU was slowing the whole system down, when I got a new CPU(Core 2 Duo), Gothic2 for example, ran perfectly fine, using the same graphicscard, so my guess is anything over an NVidia 6600series card would be a waste of money because your CPU would be the bottleneck anyway. If you get a new system, you won't want to use that AGP midrange card anymore anyway so I would go for a 6600GT from NVidia or Radeon 1600Pro(they are roughly the same, depending on the game).

Good point, but that's going from the horrendous bottlekneck I have at the moment with the Radeon 9000 to a not so bad bottlekneck with the X800XL or 6800 XT. Whatever happens I'll need something, I'll just have to see what I can pick up on ebay.

@Andres: The 9600 would probably be ok but I can't see it anywhere new for less than about £90.00 I'll have a look on ebay and see if I can pick up a cheap one.

[Husar]

Good point, but that's going from the horrendous bottlekneck I have at the moment with the Radeon 9000 to a not so bad bottlekneck with the X800XL or 6800 XT.

Well, my idea was that if you spend 100$ on a 6600GT and your CPU limits you to 20fps in game x, then spending 150$ on a 6800(there is no 6800XT that I am aware of btw) while your CPU will still limit you to 20fps is just 50$ thrown out the window. It may depend on the game though if some game has low CPu requirements and many shaders, the 6800 may still be the better option but MTW is not that dependant on graphicscards, is it?

[caravel]

Well, my idea was that if you spend 100$ on a 6600GT and your CPU limits you to 20fps in game x, then spending 150$ on a 6800(there is no 6800XT that I am aware of btw) while your CPU will still limit you to 20fps is just 50$ thrown out the window. It may depend on the game though if some game has low CPu requirements and many shaders, the 6800 may still be the better option but MTW is not that dependant on graphicscards, is it?

I know what you mean, but it all depends on what I can get hold of I suppose. A 6600GT would definitely be fine if I can get it for about £25 - 30. MTW is more dependant on the CPU. On huge unit size it is very slow, with full stacks. It was quicker under XP though.

[caravel]

Well no 6600 GT for me. Every auction I've been bidding on has seen the 256MB card go for around £70 - 80 and the 128MB for £50 - 60. It seems I'm bidding against morons with more money than sense.

I can get hold of a new 7300GT 256MB for about £60 so that will have to do. (yes, I know that's around $120 but unfortunately we spend £££'s like $$$'s over here, in fact everything is much more expensive)

[Husar]

(yes, I know that's around $120 but unfortunately we spend £££'s like $$$'s over here, in fact everything is much more expensive)

You have that in Britain as well? You may want to adopt the Euro then since we also have the same prices only that the Euro is somewhere between the Dollar and the Pound.
Should I ever visit the US, I better take some money for buying hardware, it could make up for some of the costs of the trip.

On that card, I don't know whether the 7300GT is faster than or similar to the 6600GT, you might want to check that.

[caravel]

This place has been dubbed "rip off" Britain", and for good reason.

I have seen some benchmarks and reviews stating that it does outperform it and is much more oc'able (and I can actually get hold of it, which is a bonus). The GT version also seems to outperform the GS version of the 7600 overall.

[Andres]

@Andres: The 9600 would probably be ok but I can't see it anywhere new for less than about £90.00 I'll have a look on ebay and see if I can pick up a cheap one.

Have you tried looking for an ATI 9800? It's slightly better, maybe you can find that one on ebay?

[caravel]

Have you tried looking for an ATI 9800? It's slightly better, maybe you can find that one on ebay?

I've been looking but the pro ones are still going for £50+ and the non pro ones I'd prefer to avoid.


Edit: Hmmm how soft-moddable are the non pros? I've seen quite a few cheap Sapphires...

Edit2: Ok I've managed to bag a non pro 9800 128MB AGP for £27.00 Hopefully I'll be able to softmod it to the pro, if not, then it's still light years better than what I'm using now and will do the job until I upgrade the whole pc.

[caravel]

Ok so I received the Sapphire Radeon 9800 128MB AGP non-pro yesterday. I was getting it confused with the 9800SE at first, hence my reference to the softmod in the previous post. It is not necessary to softmod or hardmod this card as all 8 pipelines are functioning normally. The 9800SE, the cripple, has only 4 pipelines functioning. The rest are disabled because the core is basically defective, though often they can be softmodded or hardmodded and got working on the full 8 pipelines anyway, etc etc etc (the usual). With the 9800 non-pro it is only necessary to overclock. The success of this depends on the memory type on the board, and the quality of the GPU cooler (not bad in this case). The samsung memory is the better type, the infineon memory which is more common doesn't usually overclock as well, but in some cases can do almost as well as the samsung (though not often). I have the infineon DDR SGRAM, and have managed to get it up to Pro speeds without artifacts. Performance is still rather poor though, worse in fact than the 9000 under WinXP. I'm not entirely sure what's causing this but I'm getting rid of Win98SE tonight and reinstalling XP/SP2. Then I will be able to use ATITool again also.

[CybrGamr]

How did the Radeon 9800SE work out for you?

I have a AMD 3000+ with 1Gb of RAM and a 9600 Visiontek Xtasy w/256Mb RAM AGP, which needs an upgraded video card. I can play Civ IV and MTW fine, but M2TW runs horribly.

I am willing to spend $100-$125 to replace the card. Rebuilding will cost me $300-$400. If I can upgrade the video card and get another 12-18 months out of it, it would be worth it.

I was going to bypass the 6000 series to go right to a 7000 (7600 or better) or a Radeon x1650. DO you think these will be too much card to take advantage of the AMD 3000+ processor. Would a GeForce 6000/ATI x800 series be enough to improve gameplay? Was the 9800SE enough of an improvement over the 9600?

[caravel]

How did the Radeon 9800SE work out for you?

It wasn't a 9800SE, it was a 9800 non-pro. The Non Pro is in fact a pro with a lower core/memory clock. It has all 8 pipelines enabled. The 9800SE is a crippled version with only 4 pipelines.

I have a AMD 3000+ with 1Gb of RAM and a 9600 Visiontek Xtasy w/256Mb RAM AGP, which needs an upgraded video card. I can play Civ IV and MTW fine, but M2TW runs horribly.

Is that the Xtasy 9600 or the xtasy 9600XT? I don't think a 9600Pro card with 256MB was released by Visiontek, only a 128MB version?

With regard to getting MTW and RTW/M2TW running well on the same PC:

Caravel, I've found that for MTW and older Radeon cards (anything pre X1xxx series), that the Omega 2.6.53 drivers (based on Catalyst 5.7) are the most compatible. And, as you've found, don't enable AA - for some reason the game engine doesn't like it. These have worked great with soft-modded 9500 non-Pros, 9700/9800 cards, x800GTO2/x800XL/x850XT cards in my machines.

You can find the drivers in the archive here: http://www.omegadrivers.net/archive.php

Good luck!

P.S. Strongly recommend the use of Driver Cleaner Pro v1.5 (the free version) when changing drivers. It's available here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/U...essional.shtml
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745
http://www.overclock.net/downloads/1...pro-1-5-a.html

So it is likely you'll be using older drivers for MTW.

I was going to bypass the 6000 series to go right to a 7000 (7600 or better) or a Radeon x1650. DO you think these will be too much card to take advantage of the AMD 3000+ processor. Would a GeForce 6000/ATI x800 series be enough to improve gameplay? Was the 9800SE enough of an improvement over the 9600?

What processor do you have? Is that an Athlon XP 3000+ or any later Athlon64 series CPU?

The 9800SE, as I've said above, only runs on 4 pipelines and is a low end budget card. It's likely to perform worse than the 9600.

[BDC]

I had a 9800se before another of the remaining pipes decided to go all on its own. It performed a bit better than the 9600, but not noticeably. My friend got the same card at the same time and it worked fine as a 9800 proper. Damn him. The AIW stuff was useful enough though.

I have an x700 Pro at the moment and it's rather long in the tooth. I really wouldn't buy anything from the 9xxx generation anymore (unless you get it second hand for pennies). AGP cards are a total rip off, even if you can find them. I'd just screw it all and buy a console until you can get hold of a proper new machine once DX10 is well and truely rolled out.