Recommend a good NVidia AGPx8 card please

[Prodromoi]

Hi.

I need to replace a Radeon AGPx8 (an X1950) graphics card in one of my computers (the WinXP machine) and I want the replacement to be an NVidia one. (Long story which I won't bore you with unless it becomes relevant!)

1. The motherboard is an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe, so the graphics card slot is an AGPx8.
2. I'd like as much memory on the card as possible. At least 256MB but more would be good.
3. I'll be running a monitor at 1680x1050, 32-bit colour.
4. Minimum of 1x DVI output. A second output, DVI (preferably) or VGA would be useful.
5. The main use for the card will be fairly demanding Photoshop/image handling work, but a few games (not cutting edge) too.
6. The PSU of the box is a 520W or 620W (can't recall at the moment) so there's probably plenty spare.
7. I have no preference whether the card has a fan or silent cooler. While silence would be nice, my primary concern is finding a card that fulfills the previous criteria.

Finding some helpful information about suitable cards is proving tricky, since they're rather becoming "old tech". I've found a local source for a GeForce 5500, but little else. I've seen a GeForce 6200 or 6600 on eBay (secondhand).

Can anyone comment on those suggestions or give a better alternative that fits these criteria?

Thanks in advance.
Alex

 

[Monkeynut]

You can get 7600's second hand if you look around.

 

[dante6491]

I remember hearing that Sapphire were bringing out a AGP 4670 which is/will be the best AGP there is with performance similar to a ATI 3850. Nvidia wise you are pretty much bent over backwards since they stopped making AGP around the 7 series era and any you do purchase will be worse performance than the x1950.

 

[kylew]

I remember hearing that Sapphire were bringing out a AGP 4670 which is/will be the best AGP there is with performance similar to a ATI 3850. Nvidia wise you are pretty much bent over backwards since they stopped making AGP around the 7 series era and any you do purchase will be worse performance than the x1950.

I'm suspecting Prodromoi may have an irrational fear of ATi graphics cards.

The 'it's a long story won't go into it' phrase is usually used when people have irrational fears of certain brand hardware.

 

[Prodromoi]

I'm suspecting Prodromoi may have an irrational fear of ATi graphics cards.

The 'it's a long story won't go into it' phrase is usually used when people have irrational fears of certain brand hardware.

You might be right, but I hope the concern I have isn't *too* irrational. I've got two machines currently running Radeon cards and one with an NVidia, and up 'til now have been very happy with the lot of 'em! Here's the background...


I think my current card (the Radeon X1950 Pro) is failing. I bought a new monitor back in April (an NEC P221W) which worked great for a couple of months. Then I suddenly got a load of horrible flickering interference lines (mostly blue) across the whole screen, both prior to loading the OS and while running Windows. Contacted NEC, sent them a video of it and they replaced the monitor right away.

Two months later something extremely similar happened again on the replacement. Horizontal interference, now all colours, plus scattered 'hot' green pixels and even some vertical lines. I plugged the monitor into another computer (a Linux machine with a Radeon 9200 Pro card) and the problem was the same (actually, somewhat worse).

Contacted NEC again. Turns out their chaps hadn't managed to replicate the fault on the first monitor; it tested out fine. I've done a bunch of elimination tests and the (new) monitor works fine with the VGA input from the Radeon 9200, and just fine with the DVI input from the GeForce 7300 in my main machine. But the Radeon 9200 and the X1950 give really awful interference. (And yes, to forestall the obvious, I've checked with several different DVI cables as part of the tests.)

Still chatting to the guys at NEC about it to hopefully work out what's caused this. Especially seeing that it took two months each time for the problem to show itself. But I suspect my best/easiest option is to swap out the X1950 for an NVidia card.

I'm surprised that the available NVidia AGP cards are a step down from the X1950 - obviously I'd rather upgrade than downgrade. Ultimately what I need of course is a card that will work in combination with the monitor. I'm not going to make a final purchase decision until I hear back from NEC (Monday, probably). I've been looking at the 7900GS which I can get for around £80 as a likely possibility, but if there's a better non-NVidia option than that which will work, of course it's something that I would consider.

 

[Prodromoi]

The elements of this that puzzle me the most are:

1. Why would the monitor would fail to work properly on two separate video cards (the Radeon X1950 and the 9200 Pro) but fine on the NVidia 7300? From what I've found looking on the net the Radeon cards use the RV280 and RV570 chipsets respectively. I had assumed that because of the difference in age and capabilities of these cards the chipsets would be very different. Am I wrong and are they actually very closely related?

2. Why would it take a couple of months *each time* for this fault to become evident? Net-searching has failed to reveal loads of NEC-users unhappy about the monitor, and the NEC tech team haven't come across this before so I'm inclined to think there's some weird compatibility issue here rather than two monitors coincidentally failing in identical ways after two months for me and no one else...

 

[pastymuncher]

Can't you nuy a cheap new motherboard with a pci-e graphics slot? You will not be restricted to poor cards at expensive prices then. Ok, you will need new ram as well but DDR2 is cheap these days.

 

[marc2003]

I've been looking at the 7900GS which I can get for around £80 as a likely possibility

LOL.

for that level of card you'd be paying £10-15 quid for a pci-e version.

seriously, if you're prepared to spend 80 quid, you could easily build a really budget 2nd hand pci-e c2d system for not much more. and you could probably sell your existing kit to cover the extra cost.

 

[CSA]

I dont mean to hijack but............ lol i too am looking for a AGP card, its for HD play back in a very old machine i have, it currently has a GF2 mx400 (told you it was old lol)

i want something that will play mkv files in win xp hopefully without any stutter, does such a agp card exist ? i read some where that a card needs to have a "H264 / VC-1 hardware decoder" or something for HD playback, is that true ?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

i use an abit kt7a-raid mobo with athlon thunderbird 1.4ghz cpu and 768mb sdram pc133 and can play 1080p h246 video streams without issues thanks to the power of CUDA provided by a PNY PCI 8500gt.

no agp card out there offers cuda so i went with the pci card option and im glad i did.

 

[CSA]

ah ok, i'll google that card and see if i can aquire one