Which AGP

[grizzla]

I am currently trying to upgrade my mates rig, he wants to spend £120 and his mobo is AGP so which card would be the best? My initial thoughts are either 6600GT, X800 or X1600. The X1600 is new tech but i noticed it uses GDDR2 ram whereas the others use GDDR3 anyone got any recommendations on which would be best. He plays CS:S, DOD:S and BF2.

Thanks

[awm]

GDDR2 vs 3 comes down to attainaible clock speed, like DDR vs DDR2 the newer tech allows for higher speeds. It is not inherently better. For the other part of the question I would make sure that his CPU can handle the newer graphics card. Also check the AGP vs. PCIe price and make sure that it doesn't make more sense to upgrade to a PCIe motherboard to save money on the card. The x800 certainly is a good choice as is the 6600GT. It also depends on the games he's playing , I believe OpenGL games do better on nVidia and D3D does better on ATI. Benchmarks should help sort that out. Finally what does he have now, it will help us give you a better idea what to get him.

[teachmech]

What about a second hand 6800GT from somewhere like Ebay.
Much more powerful than a 6600GT.
I have to agree with previous post lets have his specs to check it is not pouring money into a drain.

[grizzla]

kk here his specs off the top of my head:

Athlon XP2200+
2*512MB Corsair Ram
Nvidia MX440

My old system was similar to this but i had a ATI 9800 Pro 128MB and could run BF2 on med settings so his sytem with one of the afformentioned graphics cards should run it. Cheers for your help. It was far easier when i built my current rig cos i had a good budget and startin from scratch, oh well lets see what can be done

[awm]

Do you still have the 9800, because that would make a good upgrade for him. If not get something fairly cheep, you proably don't want to spend more on the system then it is worth. Check the power supply too to make sure it can handle a reasonable 12V load like those created by newer graphics cards.

[grizzla]

nah another friend has my old kit, this guy jus needs a graphics card so he can play BF2 etc and Source without lag, the x1600 512mb is cheaper than a 256mb 6600 but its clocks arent as high and it uses ddr2 but it seems to compare quite well with the 6600 in benchmarks ive seen. Found an X800 on ebay, think i'm gonna go for that over the X1600