Which Graphics Card?

[Radioactive Frog 0]

in a week or so i will have about £130 to spend on a graphics card. But which do i choose?

Any recommendations?

im not a extreame gamer but i do want it to be able to cope with games such as project IGI, Mafia, Colin McraeII and any games of this sort of genre that appear on the market.

It needs to have dual screen capabilities. Not for gaming but just for work.

preferably 8xAGP with DDR memory

 

any suggestions for what i look into would be great !

 

thanks

[BladeRunner 0]

I still feel that ATI probably offer the best "bang for buck" right now and their drivers are every bit as good as NVidia's.

 

£130 could get you a Connect3D Radeon 9500 128MB

whereas £140 could get you a Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB

Both these cards are AGP 8X (Not really worth it, but still, its there) and DirectX 9 compatible.

[Radioactive Frog 0]

thanks for the reply.

so would you say 8x is not worth the hassel? worht getting a 4x instead?

[akiss 0]

almost nothink changes from 4x to 8x.after all your motherboard supports 8x?

[Radioactive Frog 0]

dont fink my KX7333 does support 8x !!

[Radioactive Frog 0]

i found this card ! what do ppl think?

 

Sapphire 9500 Atlantis 128MB DDR 8X AGP DVI TV-OUT

 

any experiences?

 

good or bad?

[BladeRunner 0]

Well what I mean is 8x AGP really isn't anything special.

To give you an example.

I have an ASUS P4G8X-Deluxe motherboard, I also have a Crucial ATI 9700Pro.

Both the card and my motherboard support 8x AGP however some early issues between the two meant that to have a reliable and stable setup I had to run in AGP4x.

During this time I ran the odd 3DMark2001/2003 benchmark and noted down what I was getting.

The issue was then more or less fixed so that I could go back to 8x AGP (although I now have to disable something else, long story).

Anyway, back at 8x AGP I ran a few more benchmarks and the difference in score was "within tollerance".

That being some of my 8x AGP scores were higher than my 4x ones, in other cases it was lower - it really doesn't seem to make any difference.

 

Any new cards released now will be 8x AGP (Until AGP is replaced next year).

They are of course backwards compatible, so if your motherboard is only capable of 4x AGP it will work fine.

The ATI 9500 is a great card.

Fully DirectX 9 compatible etc.

However if you can afford to go for the Pro I would highly recommend it.

In the past the only differences between the Pro and non-pro versions was memory speed.

However with the 9500 Vs 9500Pro they have actually halved the number of processing pipelines (8 on the 9500Pro, 4 on the 9500).

This doesn't totally cripple the card, but makes the 9500Pro at only £10 more certainly more attractive.

[Radioactive Frog 0]

thanks BladeRunner ! you really seem to know your stuff !

 

ne ideas where i can get the pro version !!

 

RF

[BladeRunner 0]

Oh certainly

I'll point you in the direction of one of my favourite retailers I order a lot of stuff from here in the UK:

www.komplett.co.uk

 

If you follow the links to "Graphics Cards" followed by "AGP" you'll find a nice range of cards they do.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this list you'll see the "Sapphire" line of cards.

ATI don't actually sell any "Made by ATI" cards over here in the UK.

Some company's do import them, however Sapphire are one of ATI's largest partners and their cards follow ATI's specifications to the letter.

The card I've been talking about is:

 

Sapphire 9500 Atlantis Pro 128MB Retail

 

Actually, since I spoke to you earlier things have actually changed Grrrr.

The price is now £145inc VAT and then you are looking at around £5 for delivery so that take us a good £20 over your original budget.

In addition their stock figure of "5" has changed to "0, Stock expected 9-4-03" - looks like some other people saw it was a good deal too LOL

 

I'll do a little more research, hit some more of the sites I sometimes use and see if I can find any other deals.

[BladeRunner 0]

OK,

 

www.overclockers.co.uk have one too.

They are selling the Connect3D ATI 9500Pro 128MB Retail

They have it for £140inc VAT, however with delivery you would be back to about the same price as Komplett.

Overclockers also don't have any stock at the moment, they are quoting 4-7 Days.

 

On the plus side Overclockers have also got this card:

 

Sapphire ATI 9500Pro 128MB Retail

They have it for £141inc Vat and delivery will take you to possible a couple of £ more than Komplett.

The advantage is they are holding stock of the Sapphire.

 

Hope this helps.

[Radioactive Frog 0]

thanks for all your help, i am pretty sure i will be getting this card in the next couple of weeks now ! unless someone jumps in and shows be a much better card for the same price or less !!!

 

thanks again

 

RF

[RedStar 0]

ok to muddy the waters....

 

for best price/performance...............*drum rolls*

 

 

 

nvidia ti 4200 (4x agp)

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

nvidia ti 4200 (4x agp).... lol - u done your recent reasearch my friend... the Ti's are dead in the muddy water and u can get far better ATI cards for the price - quality comparison.

 

 

possible, but i would go against that with an ATI 9x series card - condiering the over all performance when you include AA and AF - it whips the ground with ANY TI card - not to mention the Dx9 compatiblity.

 

the 9500 PRO - also may i mention that you can flash the bios of the 9500 pro to convert it into a full working 9700 PRO