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AGP card for £100-150ish?

Associate
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Y'know, I was quite happy with my 9800pro until Oblivion came along...

Anyways, I have a 3.0GHz P4 (socket 775 Prescott) on an 865PE motherboard with 1.5 gig RAM and a Hercules 9800 pro. I'm looking for the best value AGP card up to a maximum of £150, that will give a worthwhile improvement over the 9800pro. I've been looking at an X800 GTO which seems like a good price, but the XFX 6800 GS is down to £153 in This Week Only - would this be a better bet?

Oh, and please don't just tell me it's time to go PCI-E... that is unless you're also prepared to tell me what card to go for, which socket 775 mainboard to upgrade to, and exactly how this will work out cheaper... ;)

Thanks
 
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DBSE_Snake_XE said:
I was just about to recommend the 6800GS there. ;) I believe it's faster than the X800 GTO in some applications, but it depends on the model. If you're willing to go second hand, I'm sure you could get even better.

Thanks, the general opinion seems to be that the 6800 will be slightly faster... but is it worth it? There's still a £35 price difference, and I would gladly pocket the extra cash... :)

Also, I have tended to favour ATI for my last couple of cards, and going for another should help avoid driver issues/conflicts etc.

That said, I never had any bother with any of the nVidia cards I had before either, going way back to the TNT2 Ultra! :cool:
 
Soldato
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i have a 6800GT 256mb agp and in other rig i have an X800 GTO AGP 256mb

right , in scores (aquamark and pcmark and other E-Penis tests) the 6800GT is better than the X800 GTO by a fair bit

however, after playing with one, the X800 GTO has great performance in games including half life 2 etc, i could *barely* tell the difference between it and the 6800GT

i would however recommend the 6800Gs/Gt for oblivion ;)

X800 if you wanna save a few bucks
 
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Well, seen as Oblivion is where I really want to see some improvement it looks like the 6800gs is the way to go. However, how would this compare with a 2nd hand x800 xt or something similar?
 
Soldato
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i doubt the fact that its 2nd hand will make it much faster if thats what you mean.... lol

anywho, i think the XT is on par with the 6800GS, but the 6800Gt having Shader model 3? and larger bandwidth (pipelines) , it is also a lot better for shadows...which is what oblivion is all about at night! ;) in my opinion the 6800GS is a sturdy card, i have had my GT for a while and it copes with everything nicely
 
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Booner! said:
i doubt the fact that its 2nd hand will make it much faster if thats what you mean.... lol

Cheeky monkey ;)

Seriously, though thanks for your help... looks like a 6800 gs is the card for me. That is, unless anybody knows anything desperately terrible about this particular XFX card... :)
 
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I was having terrible performance with my 9800Pro and Oblivion, very choppy with constant crashing and around 3FPS! However, downloading the latest ATI drivers and Oblivion patch helped things enormously. It now runs fairly smoothly. albeit at 800 x 600 resolution, with enough detail to make it look respectable, particularly when inside dungeons etc.

Having said that I'm looking to upgrade my card sometime in the near future to a 6800GS.
 
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