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what graphics card for an old dog of a pc

potatosalad

potatosalad

potatosalad

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Joined
8 Feb 2009
Posts
6
My pc is cobbled together from bits over ten years.

At the moment it has an AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+ | Socket-A | 1921/166mhz

about a gig of ram and is running a geforce 2 mmx graphics card :D as my 9800xt melted and is now useless.

Im looking at getting something new, bearing in mind the old dog is agp and I dont want to spend a fortune 50-80 quid

Im a bit behind the times as i haven't upgraded anything in about 5 years

Any ideas?

ideally i want to be able to run half life 2 and get a half decent frame rate at cs.1.6 (currently 30fps no matter what i do)

Cheers
 
Any idea on your PSU wattage? I have an old PC in my house used for web-browsing I used to play HL2 on using a 9600XT!

I presume you're not looking for a like-for-like replacement, shopping around (including ebay) you could probably find another 9800pro / 9800XT 256mb?
 
the x1950s or 3850s are amongst the best AGP cards out at the moment, so maybe one of them?

the problem is I'm not sure if their selling price for AGP. PCI-E versions of those cards will easily fit into your budget.
 
The 3850 AGP whilst the most powerful AGP card is complete overkill and for its current price, not really worth it. Especially when something like the 4830 or even 4850 PCIE costs around the same price or cheaper.

A second hand ATi X800, X1900 or GeForce 6 or 7 series cards should do fine.
 
2nd hand 6600GT, 7600GS or 7600GT would all get 9800XT or better level performance.

If you wanted to stay ATI. X1300XT, X1600Pro, X1600XT, X1650Pro, X1650GT should be around the right performance bracket. Anything more recent and I think you'll struggle to get one at a decent price. 2400 Pro or XT would do the job.

All the cards I've mentioned are DirectX 9.0c compatible. If you drop to the Radeon 9xxx or Xxxx series (DirectX 9.0b only), compatibility may be a problem in a couple of newer games that you'd otherwise be able to run, although they aren't bad cards. X1xxx, X2xxx series and above will be OK for compatibility.
 
I would just try and last on what you have, then buy a second hand 2GB ram, a cheap C2D CPU and motherboard and a GPU.

Much better than being CPU limited, and then sell the old bits off - those CPU's can be worth a bit.
 
2nd hand 6800gt can go for less thatn 6600gt so keep an eye open especially as you have a psu up to powering it.

last time I looked 6600-6800 were £15-25 used

quite a few x1950 pros (get the pros for lower power use) go for less than £30 as well.
 
errata said:
2nd hand 6800gt can go for less thatn 6600gt so keep an eye open especially as you have a psu up to powering it.

last time I looked 6600-6800 were £15-25 used

quite a few x1950 pros (get the pros for lower power use) go for less than £30 as well.
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You're sure they were AGP?
 
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