The goal is 111 or 126 fps I guess...


I have a geforce 6200 with 128mb and my bus is AGP-8

what is the best card I can get for ~ 100 USD ?

[edit]
this maybe?
http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... sa=title#p
[/edit]

AGP? Can you even buy AGP cards still? (Looks...)

Here's a disgusting card for $80:
[strike]http://www.wegotbetterdeals.com/zotac-nvidia-geforce-8500-gt-graphics-card-zt85tek2pfsr-1-gb-gddr2-hdcp-dual-link-dvi-vga-hdtv-tvout-turbo-cache-pci-express-video-card-p-767.html[/strike]
edit: NVM - see PPS.

Kinda stupid though. 1GB of memory is 1) more than any game save maybe on the Far Cry engine will use, and 2) more than you could possibly shove down an AGPx8 pipe with any efficency.

If you can find a DDR3 AGP card with a quarter of that memory, it'd likely provide much better performance (this one is DDR2). However, I dunno if AGPx8 has the pipes to channel DDR3.

As for 126 fps (what refresh rate do you use?) that'd depend on the game. It'd likely be possible in Quake3 engine games, and *maybe* in Half-Life1 engine games (easily if you have the old WON versions). I doubt you could pull it off under any modern engine though.

PS. The one you linked there is PCI-E - it will no workie with your AGP.
PPS. So's the one I linked. >< Search engine failed.

This one is AGP, about $90: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... AGP%20card

BFG is always good brand.

There's an XFX 7600GT AGP (also good brand), but I can't find it on the cheap. They want way too much for an AGP card - but this tends to happen when tech hits the fading end. If you can get a GT instead of a GS, it's worth dropping a model revision for. (ie. 7600GT > 7800GS) There are exceptions, but they usually involve a factory overclock (EVGA's KOs or BFG's OCs). [On a side note: Avoid EVGA, especially if you do a lot of 'legacy gaming', and avoid ATI, if you use OpenGL.]

I've read articles that say an 8800GT AGP exists - which would be much better, but I don't see a place to buy one.

With older tech like this, your best bet is likely Ebay. :/
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Thothie

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 0&csid=_23

or maybe this

http://www.amazon.com/nVIDIA-GeForce-76 ... B0032GS1FK


I do a bit of legacy gaming, some dos based games and other shenanigans. 111 or 126 fps would be in ns of course, it's about the last thing I can do to improve I also have far cry and hl2 and other assorted goodies that I revisit occasionally


or a few of those 76000gt for 85 buy it now....

Buy a new motherboard you cheap bastard

Tough call there... The BFG will give you a much better range of legacy compatibility, but the nameless brand is undoubtedly EVGA - while the GT will give quite a bit better performance, the brand is is notoriously bad for bios, compatibility, and range of features. You'll likely find crucial features missing from even DOSBox, unable to HW scale, and the like. Still, if you play Farcry, you'll need all the help you can get...
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Thothie

I can only find xfx for ~150 :'(

At that price just get a new mobo and a 4830, 200fps easy

Might not want to go with an ATI if yer primarily an OpenGL gamer, but yes... He could likely replace the motherboard and a get better PCI-E graphics card for less than $200 combined... Granted, he'd probably have to replace the memory and CPU as well, and perhaps PSU too... So... Jeeze, he's just screwed isn't he?

Sooner or later, however, you'll have to jump that hurdle.
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Thothie

The silent style (IE heatsink no fan) seems kinda sketchy, but that is everything I want for 20 bucks... Will the bellow work on XP if it was "made" for vista?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUSTeK-COMPUTE ... 2c652aca77

others:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BFG-Nvidia-GeFo ... 564a2b7d81

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BFG-NVIDIA-GeFo ... 4603a558f7

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VisionTek-ATI-R ... 2c65115270



Any thoughts folks? I'm still looking to upgrade my graphics card, and then after I do that it's just new computer time. Target is ~$50 for a graphics card, hopefully some sort of HDMI out, I just want a 512mb I'm starting to struggle when watching streams and such.

By the gods… Still under AGP, and intend to stay, aye? I take it NS2 is straight out…

The good news is that nVidia cards, be they designed for Vista/7 or XP, will always work in both directions. Worst case scenerio is that you may need to go to www.laptopvideo2go.com and find the proper drivers.

ATI, not so much so. Some ATI cards designed for media protected systems will not have compatible drivers for the direct hardware access of XP. The other way around, however, so far as I know, doesn't happen - though a lot of the legacy ATI support in the Vista/7 drivers are entirely dependant on emulation, so the performance of older cards under the newer OS's is sometimes exponentially worse.
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Thothie

swell I was leaning NVidia anyways


I'm throwing $50 max at this rig before I do another full build coming up here with ~6-800 $ I just have 2 needs (at 1k each) infront of my want so it may be a while


I'm starting to struggle on high quality full screen streaming (youtube and the like)

my comp is ancient but it did what I needed (play ns, watch stuff) but now it's time to give it one last boost before it's on to the next one

I know it's still bunk but I resolved to one day get a better graphic card for this rig before it was brand new build time

and how does this sound for ~15-20 bucks?

6200 128 mb --> 7300 GT 512

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-Corporatio ... 3f17945411


watchoo think thothies?

At $10, I'm not sure this is something worth contemplating.

Further, the upgrade would be so minor, that I'm not sure it'd even be worth the effort of installing the card.

This 6800XT might be a larger upgrade for the same price, provided the AGP type is compatible:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeForce- ... _500wt_949

Memory isn't going to help you so much for the problems you describe, so much as a change in pipes will. You're going to need either a 6800GTX or a 7800+ to see any real performance increase. I thought they made 8800GT's in AGP, but I suppose not.

Well, there's this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-Corporatio ... _500wt_949
But I'm not sure if the user's descript is accurate - picture looks like PCI. (Squints)...

Yeah, that sure does look like PCIx16. Oh well... If you do find an 8800AGP, it may let you off the upgrade for another year, depending on what yer after.

edit:
Close as I can find to something decent, though prob out of price range:
http://www.amazon.com/BFG-Nvidia-Geforc ... 669&sr=1-9
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Thothie

ach 8800 appears to be PCI-E. I dunno if my mobo (p4m800-m) can hang with DDR3... and yeah BFG was always gnarly cards


hmmm, do you think I could hypothetically do better frame rate ns with the 10 buck card or it will still be negligible? I can't keep a solid 76 fps while moving with the 6200. The pipes (card talking to mobo? how the card goes about rendering stuff?) is what limits the rending of full frame higher res vid and not the RAM available to the card? I guess that 6800XT would be better than the 7300 gt in the $10 range?


also any suggestions on a new computer build in ~$800 range? some sort of HDMI out / multiple monitor setup nothing to intense cause I don't really hit up modern modern games / render / compile / edit music / etc

What the motherboard can and can't handle is irrelevant when it comes to the memory on the graphics card. That's between the GPU and its memory. CPU/mobo don't enter into that conversation until after the fact.

Half-Life and games of that era rarely load more than 64-128MB of textures total. There's no texture swapping mid game under the Goldsource engine. There's no texture swapping at all when it comes to Youtube videos. So, yeah, the amount of GPU memory isn't your problem here. The same video card with 2GB DD3 would likely make no difference, if such a thing existed.

One thing you might try is, if you use Chrome, is get YousableTubeFix and set it for hardware acceleration mode. Under XP, at least, it'll allow Youtube to use direct hardware access - though it doesn't work cleanly for all cards. Think there's some hybrid options as well. (Also, beware that your GPU won't help Youtube bandwidth issues, no matter how awsome it maybe.)

But yeah, a 6800GT or, preferably, GTX would flatten a 7200, which is just really lacking in the pipe department, being nerfed to all hell. 7600GT would likely work just as well. Any jump less than that, however, is probably not worth the effort of installing.

As for a new computer, yeah, you can prob build a fairly nasty rig at $800. Main concern there is going to be graphics card and a PSU to back it up. Remember that PCIE 2.0 cards work fine under PCIE 1.0 interfaces, and the speed difference is negligible, as to date, the PCIE 2.0 cards still aren't filling ye old PCIEx16 1.0's bandwidth. So...

PSU: Something well rated, with ~800+W (or VERY well rated 12v Rail and ~500W)
CPU: Just about anything dual core, or any i5.
Mobo: Preferably something that handle DDR3+ (PC3200+)
Memory: At least 2GB dual channel (memory is cheap so feel free to splurge), 4+GB on Win/7
GPU: at least 8800GTX, 9800, or 560i/GTX
(Even the lowest end there will handle Skyrim at min detail, while the 560 will glide through it on max)
(Remember most motherboards and Intel CPU's will handle memory slightly above spec)
If you wanna get fancy, you can get an SSD and use it as your primary OS's hard drive - provided you don't put much of anything else on it. It'll make the boot time zoom along at least. Generally, you'll find space gets eaten up too quickly, so you'll need a big fat slow HD for everything else (you can get 2TB SATA3 for <$100 these days though, and it'll still be faster than whatever HD you're using now.)

Should be able to build something along those lines for well under $800. Although, HDMI will probably not do much good without Win7, as some functions require a protected media interface. Graphics performance will likewise go way down in Win7, but, in the newer games, that'll also be in part due to the fancier DX10+ graphics.
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