AGP 8X card under $100 USD Budget

[akif]

Hi all,

My system :

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Mobo: MSI - KM400 (Chipset)
Bus Clock: 166MHz
RAM: 512 MB (single stick)
HDD: 160GB Hitachi Deskstar (PATA)
Display Adapter: VIA/S3G UniChrome IGP (Onboard)
VGA Slot: AGP 8X; (No PCIe)
Monitor: 17" WideScreen
PSU: 300 Watts

I want to get an AGP 8X card; and my budget is 100 USD (max)
My primary concern is that it should be good for gaming. Not much interested in any extra features e.g., TV in/out etc.

P.S: i have been using Asus Radeon 9550 (128MB) on this system without any problem. Now as i have installed that card on my bro's system, so i need to get one for myself.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Ajmukon]

hmmm...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048+4027&Description=AGP&name=Video+Cards

[George Hallam]

Best AGP Card For Under $100

GeForce 7600 GS
Codename: G73
Process: 90nm
Pixel Shaders: 12
Vertex Shaders: 5
Texture Units: 12
ROPs: 8
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core Speed MHz: 400
Memory Speed MHz: 400 (800 effective)
DirectX / Shader Model DX 9.0c / SM 3.0

With identical features to its faster 7600 GT brethren, the 7600 GS lacks only the core and memory clock speeds - however, the GT's clock speeds are so high that the GS pales in comparison. Nevertheless, the 7600 GS is a good performer in this AGP segment. The worst thing we can say about it is that it's pretty close to $100, and the 2600 XT doesn't cost much more for a good deal more performance.

from toms hardware

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/06/best_graphics_card/page4.html

[akif]

Thanks...
GeForce 7600 GS seems to be a good choice.
However, i m also trying to find out about Radeon 9800 Pro. Couldn't get its price tag till now.
By the way, what is ROP ?

[George Hallam]

i dont have a clue but this explains its

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_Output_unit

Render Output Units

[akif]

Ok..... Now i need to ask that in the market here, there are two GeForce 7600 GS:
FXF GeForce 7600 GS,
Inno 3D GeForce 7600 GS

Which one should i go for ?

[akif]

Well..
The Geforce 7800 GS was out of stock here, so i have bought the "HIS Radeon 1650 pro (512 MB DDR2) for below $100.
I m using it right now.
Thanks for all the help.

[George Hallam]

Are you pleased with the performance increase?

[saphalline]

By the way, what is ROP ?It's the part that flattens the 3D scene into a 2D camera angle so that your monitor can display it.

Like the wikipedia article says, though, it's all been fully decoupled now in the DX10/OpenGL 3.0 era. They're called RBE's now, and they're not really at the end of the pipeline anymore...

[akif]

Thanks for the info Saphalline.

Yes of course, i m pleased with the performance increase as far as custom video options are concerned. However, i don't like when a game auto-detects and tells me to run the game with Low settings. Like, while playing Far Cry, it suggests me to run the game with "LOW" settings, which is the lowest available option to run the game :(
I understand that my CPU is merely 1.86 GHz; and my RAM is just 512 MB. But still, i would be pleased had these games said welcome to the new card with some respect.

[saphalline]

That's a problem with DirectX, not the games. DirectX is responsible for polling the hardware and giving a performance metric to the software, thus allowing games to tune the initial experience for good performance and visuals. The problem with this lies in "caps bits"...

When the first shader-equipped GPU's/VPU's hit the scene in 2001, DX8 was born. And since DirectX has historically been backwards compatible, DX8 needed a method of differentiating between "old" DX7-class and previous vid cards (that were incapable of shaders) and new DX8-compliant vid cards that could use all the features. Something called capability bits were added to DX8, wherein certain flags could be set for shader capabilities when polling the hardware. As DX8 evolved into DX8.1 and DX9a and through DX9c, these "caps bits" became more complex, taking into account Shader Model versions and loop counts and target scopes. The sheer number of "caps bits" that are polled in the latest DX9c is astronomical - and any game that can't handle them (or can't handle them properly) is going to think that your hardware is less capable than it actually is. Especially if it was written for the DX9a "caps bits" but is receiving info for DX9c "caps bits" - too much info!

By the time M$ got around to redesigning DirectX into DX10, they had learned their lesson. "Caps bits" are no longer a part of DirectX. The equivalent capabilities polling is now limited to entire versions. Ie, a vid card is either DX10-compliant or it isn't. There is no DX10a/b/c with variations in loop counts anymore. It's all over.

[akif]

So it means Auto-detect is something that shouldn't be used so as to save oneself from worrying about his hardware as long as we are running DX9c games, right!

Another related problem that i m having is that i am using a Widescreen monitor (17"). Most of the relatively older games don't have support for WS aspect ratio. Resultantly the graphics are widened as i play. Besides, even if a game supports WS aspect ratio, only the native resolution (which is the highest) i.e., 1440 x 900 in my case is available. On such high resolution, i have to reduce other video settings so as to get a decent frame rate.
Is there any work around for this, other than changing my monitor to the old 17" CRT ?

[saphalline]

Some monitors have a menu option (in their OSD) for displaying the "black stripes" on either side of a 4:3 picture so as to preserve its aspect ratio. But by and large, there's nothing you can do.

This is exactly why I still have a standard 4:3 monitor for my main gaming rig. I play far too many older games on a regular basis to mess with widescreen.