Vid Card Recommendation (AGP?)

[Despy]

I need advice from the brain trust here. My current video card is a X800GTO with all 16 pipes unlocked (standard is 12). This card has turned out to be a pretty good workhorse and was quite capable of playing virtually anything I threw at it. Yeah, I needed to turn down the candy on a few games but it still worked (Crysis kicked its butt). Even today it does fairly well, since I am not such a graphics snob that I need every last detail turned on.

The biggest problem I am running into is that virtually every new game coming out these days requires PS 3.0 which is not supported on this card. I have missed out on Bioshock as well as many others that have this requirement. Unfortunately this is an AGP system, and I can not really afford to upgrade CPU, motherboard, memory, etc. in addition to the vid card just to get to PCIe.

What would be the suggestion for vid card options here on the forum? Would an ATI 3850 be bottlenecked too much by the rest of my system? Should I try and find an 1950pro used somewhere or would one of the ATI 2xxx cards work well? Should I just save my pennies and stick it out until I can afford a new system? Should throw up my hands and buy a console?

For your info, the rest of my system (stats from memory):

AMD64 running at 2.3GHz
1Gb Dual Channel
X800GTO (16 pipes and oc'd)
Epox motherboard
80Gb IDE hard drive

 

[rcraig]

I have a dual core Opteron running at 1.8 and just upgraded my X800XT PE to the 3850 because I don't have the money to upgrade the entire system. Crysis can run with everything on medium at 1280x1024. I tried on high, but there were a few stutters so I dropped it back again. Tom's has a good article worth reading:

Radeon 3850 AGP Plus Single-Core CPU

I am still wating for the second part which features a dual core cpu. I'm not sure if another card is a better match, but there are still a few places with lower speed dual cores for sale at a reasonable price. Buy.com had one for $80 if you have a socket 939. If you have an AM2, you have more choices.

Also, read this thread.
Hope this helps,
RCraig

 

[ther00kie16]

buy.com has long be sold out of the 939 dual core. i assume you mean shader model 3.0 as i ran into that trouble with assassin's creed but very few games require SM 3.0. My suggestion is to save up a little more and upgrade everything.
You could also try this board. as it has AGP and PCIe. For a $137 after rebate AGP 3850, you could get that board for $44 and a 8800gs for $80 after rebate that will give you better performance at a lower cost. That is only if you want to stick with your current CPU. Otherwise, it's advisable that you save a little more and upgrade to AM2+/LGA775, which will cost $60-70 for CPU, $60 for MB, $25 for ram and $80 for video card. So for $100 more, you can upgrade to current socket and dual core, which will go much further than your current single core.

 

[Skunkwourk]

also how good is your power supply?

 

[crisium]

3850 will still be a strong performer with AMD64 single core. Go for it.