What is the best ATI and Nvidia card right now for the AGP 8x slot and which one is the best???

[steppinthrax]

That is pretty much it.

Also is Nvida or ATI cheaper?

 

[Rottie]

Radeon X1950 Pro is the last fastest card avaiable for AGP 8X

 

[Cookie Monster]

Actually its the ATi radeon X1950XT.
Next up is the X1950pro.

On nVIDIA, they have the 7800GS and 7600GT.

Both are relatively expensive except the 7600GT. nVIDIA is rumoured to bring the 8 series to AGP.

 

[happy medium]

With the x1950xt you probrobly have to replace your power supply so try a 7950gt 512 mb agp.

 

[evolucion8]

The fastest AGP cards are as the following:

GeCube Radeon X1950XT

XFX GeForce 7950GT

Radeon X1950PRO

Sapphire Radeon X1950GT

XFX GeForce 7900GS

After that, then the tie between the Radeon HD 2600XT or GeForce 8600GTS

Radeon X1650XT

GeForce 7600GT

GeForce 8600GS

GeForce 7600GS

 

[happy medium]

insert 7800gs above 1650xt.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: happy medium
insert 7800gs above 1650xt.

Actually the 7800GS is often as fast or slighly slower than a X850XT PE which is slighly slower than the X1650XT in modern games, probably in older games, the 7800GS should be slighly faster, average a tie.

 

[Laminator]

The 7800GS sometimes outperforms the X850 XT by a good amount, but only in certain situations. Both are 16-pipeline cards so both will have the advantage over the 8-pipeline X1650 XT in older games.

On the other hand, the X1650 XT has 24 pixel shaders and will thus have the advantage in newer games.

EDIT: Good list, by the way.

 

[Munky]

On agp the 7800gs is actually no faster than a 7600gt, sometimes even slower. AFAIK the agp 7800gs is clocked lower than the pci-e counterpart. Anyone still interested in agp should definitely check out this article.

 

[evolucion8]

A very nice article. Thanks Munky!! In that article simply underscore what I said, the 7800GS is often slower than the 7600GT and the X800XT PE which trade blows with the 8 pixel pipeline X1650XT in modern games and the average rendering speed slighly higher on the X800XT PE, both cards still going quite strong even today.

The 9800PRO is still able to play modern games even though the eye candy must be turned down, is such a great feat cause if you analyse which card was able to play games decently after 5 years of it's launch, and you will understand that none of them. GeForce Ti 4600 cannot play games of 2006, the Radeon 8500 cannot play games of 2005, the FX can't even play games today!! Since the X800XT PE has it's foundations on the 9800, probably will still be able to play games of 2009 (Unless if those games requires PS3.0 like Bioshock, Thanks nVidia!! ¬¬)

 

[honestjohn]

Well it depends on what your idea of best is.

Best in terms of speed ...... $259 USD

The absolute fastest is the Gecube X1950XT. from that stand point it's the best. However, they did not use ramsinks on the memory because of the huge TEC cooler and memory clocks are 1400 Mhz. effective rather than 1800 mhz. effective like most of the PCI-E XT cards. Including the seperate power connector for TEC cooler, it requires 3 molex connections or 1 molex connection and 1 PCI-E connection.

Best all around card .... $245 USD / $215 with $30 Newegg rebate

Personally I think the XFX 7950GT 512MB is the best although not as fast as the Gecube. Nice simple single-slot design. Only 20a on the +12v rail and one molex connection is required to power the card so most users will not need to run out and get a new power supply and it overclocks decently with the stock cooler. Had mine running using the following clocks. 635 Core and 1600 Mhz. memory. XFX also offers a lifetime warranty to customers in th US which includes damage caused by overclocking and in fact encouage it by including a how-to Overclock your video card doc on the install CD.

Best Bang for you buck: Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB - $173 USD

X1950 Pro keeps up with the 7950GT qiuite nicely. Needs a really healthy power supply with a strong +12v rail. PSU upgrade may be required. They are dirt cheap in price right now compared to last December when they were going for $250-$300.

The best value card: $139 USD (and the only one I here I haven't tried)

I think the X1950GT wins this one. They are basically underclocked Pros and there is a very good chance that you could overclock the card to Pro speeds. Power requirements are also like the Pro.

 

[Rottie]

I am curious Diamond Viper X1950 Pro is same as Sapphire with speed and design except for power connector?

 

[Rage3kMoiz]

Sapphire and HIS are going to\have released AGP variants of the HD 2600 and HD 2400 series.

 

[honestjohn]

Yes the Diamond card is basically the same as the rest using a stock cooling design. The only differences between the various AGP Pro's that I know of are below .........

The Gecube and Visiontek cards went with a non-standard PCB design and in doing so didn't include a readable temp diode, so no temp monitoring or fan control for those cards. However they may also be more dependable because they went with a different VRM solution as well which doesn't seem to be as prone to overheating. EIther that, or they're not as popuular so you just don't hear much about them.

The Powercolor, Asus, and HIS ICEQ3 Turbo Pro's use a better tha average cooling solution. Although from what I've read, the ICEQ3 cooler fan will develop an annoying rattle from time to time. Also stay away from the HIS ICEQ3 Rev.1 cards. Had two bad cards myself. They had major issues and HIS released a Rev.2 card (V2) with better quality memory, lowered core clocks and higher memory clocks. The Powercolor card's Accelero X2 cooler seems to be a good one but there is no passive cooling of the VRMs and it depends on the fan to provide adequate cooling. It also exhausts the hot air from the card inside the case toward the CPU area of the motherboard. However, it still provides better cooling of the GPU then any of the other solutions mentioned.

As far as the Sapphire goes, the only thing unique about the Sapphire is the power connectors on the card. It has 2 native molex connections. All the others are PCI-E as far as I know, and a adapter cable is required if you need to use molex.

 

[j0j081]

it kills it though once you factor in overclocking which most people do. the 7600gt clockspeeds are already high so you can't push it as much. for those of you considering a x1950 a lot of them don't have any fan control meaning it runs at full speed the whole time which can be very annoying.

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: j0j081
it kills it though once you factor in overclocking which most people do. the 7600gt clockspeeds are already high so you can't push it as much. for those of you considering a x1950 a lot of them don't have any fan control meaning it runs at full speed the whole time which can be very annoying.

Regarding the X1950 Pro AGP cards, only the Gecube and Visiontek have left the temp diode off the card. All other models the fan speed can be adjusted through ATI Tray Tool or other utility.

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: j0j081
it kills it though once you factor in overclocking which most people do. the 7600gt clockspeeds are already high so you can't push it as much. for those of you considering a x1950 a lot of them don't have any fan control meaning it runs at full speed the whole time which can be very annoying.

This is a very good point. When overclocking a 7800gs (like mine),which stock is 375 core, 1250 memory (now 490, 1440, which 90%of these cards do) will smoke a 7600gt,1650xt overclocked and gives a 7900gs a run for its money. Just make sure you have the cpu to push it.

There on sale at newegg for 129.00$.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: j0j081
it kills it though once you factor in overclocking which most people do. the 7600gt clockspeeds are already high so you can't push it as much. for those of you considering a x1950 a lot of them don't have any fan control meaning it runs at full speed the whole time which can be very annoying.

This is a very good point. When overclocking a 7800gs (like mine),which stock is 375 core, 1250 memory (now 490, 1440, which 90%of these cards do) will smoke a 7600gt,1650xt overclocked and gives a 7900gs a run for its money. Just make sure you have the cpu to push it.

There on sale at newegg for 129.00$.

That's doubful cause the 7800GS to have the same performance as the 7900GS at stock (450MHz) must have a core speed of 565MHz, and then theorically will have the same texture fillrate and pixel shader fillrate, but will still have only a half of the pixel fillrate because it has only half of the ROP's of the 7900GS and there's no overclock that can fix that. Also the 7900GS consume less power and its architecture is slighly more optimized than the 7800 series. But if you want to save money, then go to the 7800GS.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_...p?card1=382&card2=510#

The X1950PRO's that doesn't come with FAN Control are the very cheap ones like Visiontek and GeCube etc, more than half of them comes with Fan Control like Powercolor, Sapphire, HIS etc. But if you have a slow processor anything below the X1950PRO is suitable. Also bear in mind that depends of your CPU which we don't know which is. An example of this, same old story With my P4 EE at 3.4GHz the performance improvements of the X1950XT over my X800XT PE wasn't that great, same FPS, more eye candy, my 3DMark05 score went up from 6,184 to 7,784 which sucks cause I've seen people scoring over 9k with the X1950PRO. Even overclocked at 3.72GHz the score barely went up (I wonder how apoppin managed to get over 9.2k with his X1950PRO and same overclocked CPU? Fishy? ). Now with my current CPU I score over 10k which is now acceptable. CPU performance is important for cards like 7900GS, 7950GT, X1950GT/PRO/XT, otherwise performance increase will be minimal.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

i upgraded to an x2 4200+. would that be a bottleneck for the high end agp cards?

 

[Paratus]

Originally posted by: Rottie
I am curious Diamond Viper X1950 Pro is same as Sapphire with speed and design except for power connector?

My Diamond Viper X1950PRO 512mb has 2 molex connectors not one pcie connector

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
i upgraded to an x2 4200+. would that be a bottleneck for the high end agp cards?

Probably but not by much, you can do some research at 3DMark's Project overview, or reviews on certain games and how they ran with the card that you got. I for example, I saw lots of people scoring over 11k with 3DMark05 with my card (Albeit PCIe with better CPU's), so that means that I'm still CPU bottlenecked, but not by much like with my P4EE which I scored only 7,784, just overclock your CPU if you want more performance. Pretty much the fastest CPU's on the AGP Platform are the Athlon X2 4800, Athlon 4000+, Pentium M (Using the adapter of course) and the P4 EE at 3.4GHz, so you are almost on the top chain of the AGP, still being able to play any game with high eye candy.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

what do you guys think is a better buy, 7950gt at 215 AR, a 7900 GS at 150 AR, a x1950pro at 152 No Rebate, or a 7800gs at 115 AR?

Also, the Nvidia cards have lifetime warranties, so thats good.

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: Paratus

Originally posted by: Rottie
I am curious Diamond Viper X1950 Pro is same as Sapphire with speed and design except for power connector?

My Diamond Viper X1950PRO 512mb has 2 molex connectors not one pcie connector

Look like your card is old model...Mine has PCIe connector.

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
what do you guys think is a better buy, 7950gt at 215 AR, a 7900 GS at 150 AR, a x1950pro at 152 No Rebate, or a 7800gs at 115 AR?

Also, the Nvidia cards have lifetime warranties, so thats good.

I would say the Sapphire X1950 Pro. Used 3 different Pro's and the 7950GT and I would have a tough time choosing between the two if they were the same price. So I think the Pro wins based on price, unless of course you need to upgrade your power supply to use it.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

the pro has a higher power requirement than the 7950gt?