What video card?

[Nizmo]

buying a new video card

Ok right now i have for this video card Gecube Radeon 9600 PRO 256Mb its still performing really good with any game i play but i think its about time i upgrade something in my comptuer because its been a while and i like to have my pc up to date.

Currently my pc has got

amd athlon 2800xp
512mb ram
Gecube Radeon 9600 PRO 256Mb
asus A7n8x-X motherboard

i think thats all the important performance things.

What needs upgrading? My budget is spending around $300 on anything which could be a video card and some ram or a good processor or soemthing. I am not sure if my motherboard can handle a fast video card or not. upgrading my ram to 1024 i am already going to do so maybe if you could recomend a good video card?

 

[LTR12101B]

As we stand on the cusp of the switch from AGP to PCI Express, now is NOT a good time to be buying a high-end AGP video card.

As "its still performing really good with any game i play", I'd suggest keeping the money firmly in the bank, and holding fire until you want/need/can afford to make the jump to PCI Express (new motherboard, new CPU, new graphics).

DDR3200 RAM will carry forward, unless the new motherboard uses only DDR2 memory.

If you do want to upgrade, there are AGP variants of some of the current ranges, ATI's X700/X800 and Nvidia's 6600/6800-series - or if you could find a "clearance price", a 9800 Pro would be worth a look - but some of them are at stupid prices for what is now a previous generation card

 

[Nizmo]

I was thinking of buying this motherboard Asus A8N-SLI, nFORCE4, 2 x PCIE, 2 x GLan, Sata it seemed pretty good and had pci-e would it be good enough for the future? It holds 2 graphics and had some good features. What do you think about it? what are the ups and downsides?

 

[Nizmo]

I am also going to fix up my old computer. It has got an intel 2.0p4 processor,nvidia tnt64mb, no hard drive, and a gigabyte GA-8SDX SiS 645 AGPset socket 478 sdram motherboard, 768mb of SDram. What i want to do is make this computer able to perform almost as good as my current comptuer.

amd athlon 2800xp
512mb ram
Gecube Radeon 9600 PRO 256Mb
asus A7n8x-X motherboard

 

[LTR12101B]

You can never be totally future-proof - AMD are changing the socket again, and while Intel have not changed the socket, the dual-core Intel requires a certain chipset, while the dual-core Athlons are supposed to only require a BIOS update.

Nvidia SLI also has a challenger - ATI crossfire ... both are ways to use two graphics cards in a way reminiscent of the old VooDoo2 SLI - no idea if they are compiatible now, or ever will be.


The old board has an AGP 2.0 / 4x, so that should be compatible with most current AGP cards, since it's normal for AGP 3.0 / 8x cards to be backward compatible to AGP 2.0 / 4x (though not to the old AGP 1.0 / 2x / 3.3v spec).

So if you upgrade the AGP card in the other machine, it looks like an obvious home for the 9600.

 

[Nizmo]

ok so my old SDram using machine can use a radeon 9600? I thought i would need ddr ram to use that video card.

 

[LTR12101B]

The type of RAM on the motherboard has no bearing on the type of RAM the videocard uses, only the type of slot/card matters...

There are 3 specifications of AGP...
1.0 - 1x/2x modes only, 3.3v supply - well obsolete!
2.0 - 4x mode, 1.5v
3.0 - 8x mode, 1.5v with 0.8v signalling

There are keyways in the card and slot for 3.3v and 1.5v operation, but no additional distinction between AGP 2.0 and 3.0.

In general, AGP 1.0/2.0 compatibility is limited, though a number of cards do support 3.3v operation, and are dual keyed, while all current motherboards are 1.5v only and will not support an old AGP 1.0 card.

Between 2.0 and 3.0 (4x and 8x), there is normally complete compatibility, with the 4x mode also available as a fallback in the event of problems where 8x should be supported, but was problematic in some early chipsets that supported it.


The only other issue, some motherboard do not implement sufficient slot power to handle cards that fall just short of needing a molex power feed, at the upper limit of AGP slot power - if there is a molex power feed to a card, slot power issues should not arise.