Upgrading my 9600XT in my shuttle

[andrewuk]

Hi all!

I have a Shuttle SB51g which I have had for about 3 years now and has lasted me very well. Currently I have maxed out the processor and RAM so it's the best it will accept (3.06ghz CPU and 2 gigs RAM) but my 9600XT vudeo card is now getting a bit long in the tooth and can't/won't cope very well with the latest wave of games such as Black and White 2 and the new AOE 3 etc.

I have been looking to upgrade it to the best I can get in there but my options are a bit limited due to the small form factor of the PC.

Obviously the X800XL or GTO would have been my preferred choice but these are a no-no since the cards themselves are physically too long to fit in my shuttle due to the fact they are PCI-E parts using a bridge chip for their AGP versions!

As far as I can see the choice is either an original AGP X800Pro or X800XT. Now these are quite scarce to find now as I guess they are all but discontinued in favour of PCI-E so could get a good bargain off Ebay. Is the XT version worth it over the Pro? I know you get an extra 4 pipes on the XT version but as the system is only AGP 4x anyway and the chip is a 533bus northwood I guess there would be a bottleneck so any potential performance benefits would be minimal?

Would an X800pro give a good jump in performance over my 9600XT? I'm hoping to get another year out of this system atleast. I'm not allied to Nvidia/ATI so any other suggestions welcome although I'd prefer to stay ATI as I've only just reloaded XP and don't want to have to go through trying to remove Catalyst and getting Detonator to play ball as I've seen that cause problems before

I was looking at the 6600GT which seems good value but really wanna max out with the best I can get as it will be the last upgrade before replacing the whole rig.

Any comments? Thanks for reading if you've made it this far down the post

[tino]

Ive now upgraded to an 6800GT in my shuttle. Good card not quiet as fast as the X800 but still fast enough for me. The 6600 is about the same as an 9800 so its not really that big an upgrade tbh.

[Gordy]

You shuttle should be agp x8 from memory the 533bus should be that much of a bottleneck.

I went for a xt in my shuttle as it can be oc'd to pe levels and is the best card for them.

[Kef9]

The X800XT is a super dooper card. I have one of those in mine. The XT PE version is the fastest single slot agp card that money can buy but the difference between this and the normal XT is very very minimal.

Prices though seem to have held for the above resons.

[andrewuk]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. My machine is definitely AGP 4x max (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.ph...7&redirect=yes) which is why I'm leaning toward an X800 pro rather than XT. However if the price difference is 30-40 quid then I might just get the XT anyway

Tino - what's the fan noise on your GT like? My 9600XT is the sapphire ultimate edition which uses a heatpipe so it's silent which is how I like it! This is one of the reasons i've held off upgrading for so long as at the moment my PC is very quiet! I've heard the X800 fans aren't too noisy as they're fairly large so rotate slower.

[Kef9]

Virtually all modern GPU's sound like a dog including my x800.

[andrewuk]

Virtually all modern GPU's sound like a dog including my x800.

Yeah that's what I thought Ah well I'll just have to turn the sound up

[Gordy]

You can use atitool to turn the fan down, mines very quiet and then picks up when working hard.

The difference between agp4 and 8 is supposed to be minimal anyway

[andrewuk]

Good tip about atitools, thanks! I think I'm gonna get an X800pro, or if I can find one at a reasonable price on Ebay maybe an XT version

[sawyen]

if ur getting an x800pro.. u might as well settle for an x800xl or a 6800GT.. both of them will eat that x800pro for breakfast..

[andrewuk]

Yeah I would've liked to get an XL version with its 16 pipes but this card is natively PCI-E and the AGP versions use a bridge chip which makes the card physically too big to fit in my shuttle box! (http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/r430-3.html as you can see in this review it is enormous!) The same goes for the GTO2 versions. The 6800GT would fit, but they are a little bit out of my budget - they seem to hover around the £250 mark whereas the X800pro I was going to get from crucial comes it at around £180 using a coupon, plus a free copy of far cry

[tino]

I got my 6800GT for £170 from Komplete.