Page 1 of Best AGP Graphics Card For Under 80 Quid?

As it says, I`m looking to upgrade my ageing card, but can`t afford to upgrade my motherboard at the moment which doesn`t have PCI-Express slots and only supports AGP4X( Though I understand I`ll be able to put an AGP 8X card in it, though won`t get as good performance with it)

I`ve been chosen to beta test a new game and it`ll need to support T&L: Transform & Lighting/Vertex & Pixel Shader (v2.0 or preferably v3.0)

Any advice greatly appreciated please!

AGP x4 ? out of interest what cpu & memory type/speed are you using ? i only ask because 80quid would get you a very respectable card (i`d guess around an nvidia 6800gt) but the card would almost certainly hit a bottleneck given what i suspect you are running mobo/cpu/memory wise.

PROCESSOR: PENTIUM 4 3.06 Ghz HYPERTHREAD
MOBO MODEL : INTEL D845GERG2 CHIPSET 845GE
MEMORY : 1024 Mb RAM (2 x 512Mb PC2700 DDR-SDRAM)

My current card is a 128Mb. I checked in the bios and it allows 256Mb. Sorry I cant be of more help but know bugger all about graphics.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 10th October 2006, 00:21

no problems with the cpu or memory :) but it`s odd to have such a decent cpu & memory arrangement tied to an "older" spec mobo :)

As usual, my replies to the questions "Best ..." is that I don`t know what is best because it is mostly subjective but the Radeon x1600 Pro impressed me a great deal as it was the only sub £80 AGP card I came acroos that plays Call of Duty 2 at an acceptable rate. It supports T&L too and supports Shader Model 3. Your 4x AGP slot shouldn`t reduce performance too much.

Thanks for the replies, they`re much appreciated.

I`m tempted to go for the Radeon X1600 Pro - I`m presuming you mean the 256Mb card (could I install a X1600 512Mb card on a 4X mobo?) and does it need any fiddling with ? (ie. connecting up to the Power Supply Unit).

Bearing in mind the limitations of my AGP 4X motherboard would increasing my AGP aperture size in the bios to max (256Mb) be a good idea?

This item was edited on Tuesday, 10th October 2006, 23:55

Computer Shopper have reviewed some cards and recommended a "Sapphire X1600 Pro" with the ATI Radeon X1600 Pro chip for £75.

I`m no expert on graphics as I dont play games but if you need any more info from the review just ask :)

This item was edited on Wednesday, 11th October 2006, 12:24

go for an x1600 pro with 512MB hypermemory, 256 on board and it borrows 256MB from system RAM.

I have just got one brand new off ebay for £75

Cheers all

I`ve ordered the X1600pro 256Mb from Pixmania

Hello,

i`m also looking to get a new graphics card and am in a similar situation. dont want to spend too much and dont have a PCI-E motherboard. I dont play a great deal of games but the ones I do play seem to be quite graphics hungry. I`m playing oblivion again now which seems to be quite choppy.

not sure I like the sound of the above card using system RAM, I guess that`s optional though?

I might stretch to £75 but would prefer to spend less as I want to get a second hard drive and more RAM as well.

what gfx card can anyone recommend for around the £50 mark?

heres my current specs:

ASUS A7V8X m/b
Athlon XP 2400 (2 GHz)
1 Gb PC2700 DDR RAM
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9550 (256mb ?)
250Gig SATA HDD
DVD ROM & DVD RW

also can anyone recommend somewhere to buy RAM and whats the going rate for 512Mb of PC2700?

cheers,

MK

This item was edited on Friday, 3rd November 2006, 09:10