Best PCI Video Card?

[NYHoustonman]

Hey all,

Trying to walk a friend through upgrading his video card to something that will play WoW, without actually being there. Apparently he only has PCI slots available (he sent pictures)... So, what's the best he can do? He naturally won't be replacing the motherboard, and a new system is probably out of the question.

Thanks

 

[secretanchitman]

geforce 6200 pci...without turbocache, of corse.

 

[VinDSL]

Jeepers, Wally!

That takes me back...

Well, to tell you the truth, I think it's hard to beat good ol' Voodoo voodeo cards, pun intended.

These were all the sh!t, way back when! Remember?

I just installed a new HD & Windows XP Home OEM on my bosses doorstop computer, circa 1999...

It has a 500Mhz AMD processor, 128MB RAM, and a Voodoo 3 card... I believe.

Works like a charm!

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Fastest Pci card you can get X1300/X1550 ( they are both the exact same thing ).

Speedwise as far as what the poor bandwidth the Pci slot can dish out you won't see much of a difference at all between the X1300 and 6200 though the 1300 is faster. Pci is roughly the same as AGP 1x in bandwidth. The only bonus you'll get from running a 1300 over a 6200 is the ability to run more AA with less of a penalty. Without AA or AF you'll get ultra similar results with both cards because both are way to fast for the Pci bus.

In all reality you'd probably be best getting an FX5500 for the money as there will be a negligable difference between that card and the others as far as raw useable speed, but you will get more and newer features with the X1300/6200.

 

[NYHoustonman]

Originally posted by: Dazed and Confused
Fastest Pci card you can get X1300/X1550 ( they are both the exact same thing ).

Speedwise as far as what the poor bandwidth the Pci slot can dish out you won't see much of a difference at all between the X1300 and 6200 though the 1300 is faster. Pci is roughly the same as AGP 1x in bandwidth. The only bonus you'll get from running a 1300 over a 6200 is the ability to run more AA with less of a penalty. Without AA or AF you'll get ultra similar results with both cards because both are way to fast for the Pci bus.

In all reality you'd probably be best getting an FX5500 for the money as there will be a negligable difference between that card and the others as far as raw useable speed, but you will get more and newer features with the X1300/6200.

Yea, the X1550 was what I was looking at; in any case, it's only ~$90 at Newegg. Ideally he'd buy a new box but that's apparently out of the question :|.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Originally posted by: NYHoustonman

Originally posted by: Dazed and Confused
Fastest Pci card you can get X1300/X1550 ( they are both the exact same thing ).

Speedwise as far as what the poor bandwidth the Pci slot can dish out you won't see much of a difference at all between the X1300 and 6200 though the 1300 is faster. Pci is roughly the same as AGP 1x in bandwidth. The only bonus you'll get from running a 1300 over a 6200 is the ability to run more AA with less of a penalty. Without AA or AF you'll get ultra similar results with both cards because both are way to fast for the Pci bus.

In all reality you'd probably be best getting an FX5500 for the money as there will be a negligable difference between that card and the others as far as raw useable speed, but you will get more and newer features with the X1300/6200.

Yea, the X1550 was what I was looking at; in any case, it's only ~$90 at Newegg. Ideally he'd buy a new box but that's apparently out of the question :|.

It could be worse. I read a message on the yahoo finance message boards that someone gave a stock tip to a friend. The stock shot up and when it started going down, the friend refused to get out to cut his losses. He said he begged his friend to get out and he just wouldn't budge.

Guess it's hard to learn how to trade I guess. I never really made money but I learned to cut my losses.

 

[Rabidwerewolf]

His is probably the 32-bit PCI operating at 33MHz too which peak transfer rate on that puppy is going to be only 133mb/sec. To give you idea AGP x1 can support up to 256mb/sec, AGP x4 up to 1056mb/sec and AGP x8 up to 2112mb/sec.

Do you know what type of board and cpu he has? I'd just hate for you guys to spend $90 bucks on that type of video card just to have being bottle necked by the cpu.

edit: fixed

 

[NYHoustonman]

Originally posted by: Rabidwerewolf
His is probably the 32-bit PCI operating at 33MHz too which peak transfer rate on that puppy is going to be only 133mb/sec. To give you idea AGP x1 can support up to 256mb/sec, AGP x4 up to 1056mb/sec and AGP x8 up to 2112mb/sec.

Do you know what type of board and cpu he has? I'd just hate for you guys to spend $90 bucks on that type of video card just to have being bottle necked by the cpu.

edit: fixed

It's some old Dell, I had him physically check for slots rather than looking up the info on the thing. It has a Celeron processor, so it was never much of a beast.

Basically, anything that would be an improvement over integrated intel (from ~2 years ago) in games like WC3 and WoW would be great.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

To give you an idea of how bad the Pci bus will choke an X1300 I bought the VisionTek one for a friend in Canada. He has 768mb of PC2700, a 2.4 P4 in a DELL something or another. He pretty much only plays CnC Renegade. @ 1280x1024 with 8x AF and no AA he gets about 30 FPS, at 1024x768 with 2x AA and 8x AF he gets about 30 fps, at 800x600 and 4x AA and 8x AF he gets 30 fps. For kicks I told him to run 800x600 without AA or AF . . . . guess what his FPS was ?