Best AGP Card

[Speedpc]

Hi Everybody !!!
I had a questions from a freind he wants to know what the latest and greatest 8x AGP card is ??? ATI or Nvidia does not matter he just wants the best that is out there. I was not able to answer his question so maybe you can help him decide :) I see there is a X1950Pro AGP, and a 2600XT 512mb AGP and Nvidia has the AGP 7 series. He as a NF7-S v2.0 mobo. and he does not want to upgrade his whole PC, he just needs a video card. Hope you can help him and THANKS :)

[benbaked]

Of those three listed I think the X1950Pro is the best, it has higher memory bandwidth then the 2600XT. 7900GS would be good, but I'd still go for the X1950Pro.

[White_Pawn]

x1950pro

[Albuquerque]

Disagreed with both.

The AGP 7950GT will wallop the 1950Pro in basically every benchmark I've seen online, often by a substantial amount. Far more fillrate and texturing power give you the ability to play at fluid framerates in higher resolutions with higher levels of AA / AF on the 7950GT's. And on the average, the 7950GT's has more memory bandwidth than the 1950Pro for those who are purely about the numbers.

The 7950GT comes at a ~$75 price disadvantage, but for $250 you aren't going to find anything faster on the AGP platform.

Now, if your question had been bang-for-the-buck, it might be debatable :)

[petteyg359]

Second Albuquerque. The X1950Pro AGP has some serious problems with new drivers and you'll be stuck with Catalyst 7.7 (or Omega if you're okay using unofficial drivers). The only reason I'd get the X1950Pro (which I myself did) is in order to run Folding@Home on it.

[Albuquerque]

Here are some benchies I scrounged up quickly in Google:

HardwareSecrets (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/430) pits an "economy model" 7950GT against a PowerColor 1950Pro. The only time that the 7950 isn't notably ahead is when playing FEAR at the lowest possible video settings; all other benchies show the 7950 beating the 1950 by as little as 5%, and as much as 75% depending on the game.

TweakPC.DE (Danish site) set up this PHP script (http://www.tweakpc.de/hardware/tests/graka/sapphire_radeon_x1950_pro/s05.php) so you can drop-down whatever video game you want at whatever resolution and quality settings to see how it all compares. The 7950GT again has no problem thwarting the 1950Pro in essentially any test.

Think everyone else above is biased to NV? Howabout AMDZone doing the benchies instead? (http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=printpage&artid=276). Seems they had no problems finding that ASUS's EN7950GT was gonna spank ASUS EAX1950Pro either :)

Neoseeker found the same (http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/Asus_eax1950pro/) basic thing: 7950GT > 1950Pro, even in terms of power consumption -- go figure ;)

[Speedpc]

Thank You Guys !!!! very nice work Albuquerque :) I do beleive he ordered the 7 Series

[PhysX]

hd 2600 AGP Dx10 :) guess he is missing out on dx10.

[Speedpc]

Not really my freind has XP Pro so there is no DX10 support But Thanks PhysX :)

[Maglin]

Just looked on newegg. The HD 2600Pro is only $112. But from what the comments say is their is a lot of driver issues and the latest drivers don't see the video card. I think it will get better as they are pretty new AGP cards. A lot of people need to realize they probably need a better PSU as you will probably just get by with a good 500W PSU. I think I'll be tring out the HD 2600Pro in my old rig.

[Albuquerque]

A 2600Pro will be utterly humiliated by a 1950Pro or a 7900-series card. They aren't even in the same competitive league...

Unless you want DX10 "checkbox" features at slideshow performance, I'd skip the midrange DX10 parts from both NV and ATI this time around.

[Alacritan]

The problem with the 2600 Pro AGP is that it doesn't have the horsepower to play DX10 games, so while it does support it, the framerates are so low that you're limited to playing in DX9 anyway.