Need some AGP help.

[Pugnate]

So I am buying a gift for my little bro. who likes to play PC games. Now he has a AGP mobo so I am stuck betwen an X800 XT/XL or a 6800 nVidia card.

What should I go for? What is likely to last a bit longer? I'd go for the 6800 but despite the fact that it is running games like F.E.A.R. and Prey better, it is far far behind in running Oblivion.

So I am pretty confused. Any advice would be lovely.

Thanks in advance.

Pug.

 

[Steelski]

what 6800 card are you thinking of. check the specks for it. if it has 16pipes or 12 or 8. I would personaly go with the X800XT because i value the image quality ATI dishes out when you do a side by side comparison. But as its a gift for your little bro, ask him which compaty ne likes better. ATI or Nvidia. It really wouldent matter which card you give as they are both good.

 

[apoppin]

make sure it is the 6800GS [at least] or the older 6800GT [or even ultra]
[not the 6800 standard]

the x800xt/x850xt would be a little faster than the 6800ultra and you'd need to get a[n expensive] 7800GS to match or beat it's performance

what is the rest of his computer like?

 

[Pugnate]

He actually lives in Saudi Arabia so it is difficult for me to send him stuff. I'd rather send him a low level 939 processor with a mobo supporing PCIe and a decent PCIe card.

He's got a 2500 processor with 512 MB RAM.

Most games today are more affected by video card power rather than processor, so as a temp. fix till next year I want to just get him a video card so he can play games at an ok rez.

I would personaly go with the X800XT because i value the image quality ATI dishes out when you do a side by side comparison.

Well these days the quality is pretty close, but yes we are talking about an older gen. of cards. I've personally been a long time user of ATi, since the days of Rage Pro in combo with the Voodoo2.

I upgraded my ATi every gen. till the 9800pro. That was when I had numerous driver and heating issues.

Now I am a 7800GTX user and it is awesome.

These are the benchmarks that cause concern. In Oblivion, the 6800 is awful as compared to the X800XL / XT cards.

So I am wondering if there is a fix for that?

 

[Nextman916]

well your right about the cpu not really bottlenecking however that 512mb of ram efects performance greatly. He should at least by now have ideally 1gb of ram for any game, and 2gb is sometimes recommended.

 

[Pugnate]

Yea I intend to get him some more RAM too.