Don't bother with x1950 xt AGP....Here's why

[donmezz]

I have been a bit of geek and been studying the prices that the x 1950xt agp has been going for on ebay....

Firstly, we're all agreed that you can't get them new... fair enough you say, so let's get one on ebay...

I don't know how much they were when they were new, but in Nov 07 and Dec 07 they were being exchanged for over £150!!! Second hand card on an old technology?! This is crazy...

What was even crazier, that within 1 day of them being listed they had (i promise you) about 10 bids. I have never seen an item be sold with as many bids as these....

Another thing was that they were very very rare on ebay so folks from UK have been bidding for ones from the US.


Well, I have been looking at ones this month and they are not being sold for more than £80 with p&p. This was very surprising as even I was going to pay £150 no probs.

Basically since the arrival and more importantly the word has spread that Directx 10 AGP cards are on the market especially the 3850AGP the x 1950xt seems to have slumped....

One off on ebay you may say... ? Well I am observing about 4 of them and people are definately not bidding as much as before the new year.


I say all this, because earlier this week I wanted to stick with AGP, but the costs are just not worth it and its time to move on to PCI-E.

But if you're a die hard AGP then seriously wait for the HD3850 for when its available as it kicks ass.


Thanks for watching, appreciate any comments (I have put this on some other forums too)

[SHare]

Ummmmmm. Ok?

[Jay]

whats that got to do with Scan?

[donmezz]

scan may be selling the HD3850... plus I like scan

[Lee H]

Supply and Demand controlled the prices - not us I'm afraid.

There are a lot of people out there that should have moved over to PCI-E a long time ago, but instead kept getting boards to keep using their old AGP cards. It is these people that kept the price of the cards artificially high over the last few months.

However, as more and more of them probably moved over to Q6600 based systems with boards based on the new chipsets such as P35 for example they have had to move across to PCI-E because there are no AGP versions around.

This is why the prices are probably starting to fall now as it does line up with the christmas time period where a fair few people upgraded.

[slypie]

It's pretty pointless updating an AGP graphics card with something over £100. You may as well save for longer and as Lee says move over to PCI-E based technology.

[donmezz]

I agree,

I just can't understand why people are still paying so much for gcards when the mobo, CPU and RAM will struggle as well unless you fork out money for those as well.

A good graphics card website (incase you haven't seen it, i am sure people on here have!is:

Video Card Reviews and Specifications - Welcome To GPUReview.com! - GPUReview.com

[Nickg]

yea especially because ram has dropped in price so much, now you can feasibly buy a mobo and 2GB of ram for £100, previously you were paying that for the ram alone which put a lot of people off upgrading a DDR1 system to a DDR2 (all you athlon owners out there!!) and so on and so forth

[Lee H]

Yeap , but explain why I still get calls asking for "LGA 775" boards which have DDR and AGP support (for core2duo CPU's)

urgh indeed

[Bluey]

I think you'll find the reason for people holding on to their AGP boards and upgrading thier graphics cards is because to move over to pci-e boards also usually requires updating the memory and possibly processor and PSU at the same time, therefore depends on the funds available.

I myself made the switch last year and as I had a spare full tower made a complete new build, whereas my friend who recently upgraded his graphics card alone said it was far to expensive to make the switch at this time and required (without buying a new case) being without internet access if the build didn't go smoothly.

[rabbid]

Yes its a lot easier for novices to slip in a VGA card and a lot less disruptive in build time if you dont have the luxury of a whole new rig in case things go awry.

[306maxi]

I fail to see what this has to do with Scan.

The problem here is really people who are stupid. For some people eBaying is an addiction and to buy something online is an achievement. That's why you get the situation whereby a lot of people are paying full whack or more for something which like the X1950 xt agp is a bit outdated. You should also understand that just because a card doesn't perform as well as it's pci-e counterpart doesn't make it cheaper to manufacture. In fact the AGP cards are more expensive to make due to the fact that they're made in smaller numbers and as the chips are made as a PCI-E part and then they have to make a special PCB just for the AGP cards and on and on it goes.

[kalniel]

*shrugs*

Makes perfect sense to me to stick with AGP if you don't need to upgrade your whole computer. It's not like we're really at the limit of the bus for these kind of cards anyway.

[raverbaby]

Can I just say to the few individuals making lame statements like 'whats this got to do with scan', what has your existence got to do with Scan?

Anyhow, a very interesting topic. It does intrigue me as to why so many people have decided to be faithful to AGP for so long, a motherboard upgrade is not expensive and often the hardware acceleration benefits benefit the price paid for upgrade.

[306maxi]

Can I just say to the few geeks making lame statements like 'whats this got to do with scan', what has your existence got to do with Scan?

In case you hadn't noticed.... this thread was posted in the "SCAN" forums which is what you do when you need the help of Scan or would like to make a complaint about Scan. Neither of which was the intention of the OP.

So it's perfectly fine to ask why he's posted in this forum. Why you feel the need to call people geeks or say that we're making lame statements?

[raverbaby]

Do you really need to ask what it's got to do with Scan? Anybody logging on to the Scan forum looking for advice on which graphics card to buy from Scan or whether to go with AGP will find this relevant.

Surely it's not that difficult to work out?