Can you "over buy" a graphics card

[ussff]

55 pound for 7600

Arghhhh - nice price... ddr3 GT? decision not set in stone

I'm waiting to confirm postage and spec on a x1650pro - price quoted as new low price = £50.49 but I'm seeing a vast range of x1650pro specs / even different Sapphire style cards (ATI badged) - this one says "lite retail" but is lite on actual spec on the site... (hence I've mailed the seller) other than the title:

Sapphire RADEON X1650 PRO - Graphics adapter - Radeon X1650 Pro - AGP 8x - 256 MB GDDR3 - Digital Visual Interface (DVI) ( HDCP ) - HDTV out - lite retail
by SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY

Sapphire and SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY don't actually appear to be the same thing? Are they?

 

[Archibald0]

i remember my mate spent £100 quid on a 5200fx or something like that from *******

how i laughed

 

[helmutcheese]

My 1st PC was a Evesham and had a Nvidia G-Force 2 GTS Ultra, I seen the same card in above store by another manu famous at time for quality and higher priced cards :

Hercules 3D Prophet Nvidia G-Force GTS Ultra = £680 back in early 2001

 

[Duke]

Don't want to think how much the Voodoo 1 cost me, think it was about £150-200 ish? Can't remember exactly.

 

[ih8modem]

Can I chuck in an alternative

How about :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-151-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793 £46-99
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-011-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat= £43-46
and get a 2nd hand PCI-E GFX Card.

1 warning, the PCI-E slot is only 4x, and the AGP is 8x. How the two compare I don't know, but it may be worth looking into. I put one of these boards with a e2160, overclocked to 2.5GHz and coupled it to a 8600GT 512MB. It comes pretty damn close to my AMD 64 X24400+ with 7800GTX 256MB (damn early adoption habits!) on benchies.

Then when you got more do$h you can buy DDR2 RAM (you can't use the DDR+DDR2 slots at the same time), but DDR2 is currently slightly cheaper than DDR (not always the case - just shop around).

It just gives a better upgrade path, especially if you can afford to throw a few more quid a month at it. when you finally reah new-gen stuff throughout, you get a new P35 based motherboard and watch it scream.