AGP Graphics card for pro Cad applications and light gaming.

[Uriel]

My brother in law wants to use some 3d CAD programs and has found his PC a bit slow for them. It's a Sempron 2800 (barton based) with 1GB RAM and AGP FX5700

He'd still like to do a bit of light gaming (mainly BF1942 and occasionally Far Cry) but have the CAD speeded up. Would a FireGL x1 128mb card do? I think it's about equivalent of a Radeon 9700. Might be able to get one at a price that's not too horrendous.

I don't think he'll want a full rig upgrade but I'm concerned that the CPU isn't going to help things much.

 

[PwnDirect]

The firegl would just be a sidestep.

The best thing is a new rig.

Basicly theres nothing you can do with his old build.

Go second hand and pick up some 775 bits & a 8800gt & flash it to a fx 3700.

 

[Uriel]

Don't think he'll be going for a new rig any time soon.

Maybe for a freebie - is there a Quadro model that the FX5700 can be flashed or softmodded to?

 

[EffBee]

Don't know if this will help - but look at my sig for my machine specs.

I can play oblivion pretty well maxed out with around 37 fps in the towns and dungeons dropping to a worse case 17 ish in heavily grassy areas. Grass can be turned off easily if necessary though.

I strongly suggest getting 2GB of memory - 1GB just isn't enough and you will be swapping out to hard disk in many games and really destroying any gaming performance.

PS look at the AGP cards on Overclockers online shop. They are better than my card.

 

[Uriel]

Well he's not bothered about improving things in game really. He just doesn't want it to get any worse.

The main thing is CAD so Pro openGL performance is really the only thing that'll make a significant difference. Most gaming cards are crippled for it, despite being based on pretty much the same hardware as the pro cards.