AGP advice

[Pob255]

A friend is going to replace his ageing ATi 9500 128mb agp

Looking for a good AGP geforce. (main game he plays is City of Heroes and the ATi drivers are really bad for it)

His system is
Athlon 2000xp (1.8ghz 32bit)
2gb ddr memory
Gigabyte 7VKM motherboard
Generic 400w psu

I'm not 100% sure on his budget

Had a look at scan.co.uk best two options I could see were
256MB Palit 7600GT AGP 8x Mem 1400MHz GPU 560MHz 12 Pipes D-Sub/Dual Link DVI/S-Video Fan Cooling £79.77 Inc VAT
or
256MB Palit 7600GS, AGP, Mem 800MHz, GPU 400MHz, 12 Pipes, D-Sub/Dual Link DVI-I/S-Video £70.10 Inc VAT

(and a decent PSU)

What I'm wondering about is what's the cooling like on thoes Palit cards? it looks like a stock heatsink&fan

Any other sugestions?
PS I've pointed him at the XFX 7600GS 512mb @£95 and the XFX 7900GS 256mb @£142

[aidanjt]

The Palit looks like a pretty much reference nVidia design. You might try googling for reviews to see what the cooling is like.

[dave87]

I'd go for the 7600GT, higher clock speeds for very little increase in price. I wouldn't worry about going for the 7900GS, the CPU will be the bottleneck before the graphics.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What about the 7300GT DDR3??

Scan do it for 61 quid:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=557236

[Pob255]

A 7300 for gameing O_o
Ok it's a GT but still the x3xx ?

Ok I've not actually used a 7xxx card but going by performance of 5xxx and 6xxx series then I really wouldn't use anything under a x6xx for gameing.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A 6200 is as fast as a 9500PRO for most things.The 7300GT DDR3 PCI-E is faster than a standard 7600GS PCI-E. The AGP 7300GT DDR3 is clocked 100mhz slower than the PCI-E version but even then it should as fast as a 6600gt and have greater functionality!!

In the following review the PCI-E DDR2 version having the GPU clock running at 400mhz and the RAM running at 800mhz is as fast as a 6600GT running at 500mhz GPU clock and 1000mhz DDR3:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/372/10

The AGP 6600GT has 900mhz memory also. This means the 7300GT DDR3 AGP which runs at 400mhz GPU clock and 1000mhz DDR3 will be faster than a 6600GT.

[Pob255]

Actually that is an intresting card
The older 7300GT's only used DDR2 which ment they packed about half the punch of a 7600GT ( see here)
This card has the DDR3 that the eairly ones lacked giveing it quiet inpressive speeds, however it's only 8 pipes vs a 7600GT's 12 pipes (also 560MHz 1400Mhz)
And at a price differnce of £20 between them I'd still lean toward to 7600GT, unless this was just a hold over card untill a full pc upgrade and a switch to PCI-e in which case the cheaper yet still ok option is better for keeping a pc going for 6months or so.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would probably upgrade to at least a XP2500 and a 7300GT DDR3 or 7600GS as this will be a more balanced upgrade.The XP2000 is a bit slow for the majority of modern games!!

[Pob255]

Aslo just had a full look at that review you posted, the Zogis is running at a higher speed (like that Plait one) and while it's getting resaults just under or over the 6600GT in that review.
However the 6600GT they are useing is only a 128mb memory card.

Although I agree with you about his CPU, esp as I've just upgraded from a 2400XP and did so after quite a bit of testing to figure out what was my biggest hold back on City of Heroes.
But he's a bit of a pc-phobe and it took a lot of cojoleing just to get him to open the case and have a look to find out the wattage and make of his PSU.

That said I'll add the card into the mix as another possible option.