Card Upgrade Query AGP/PCI-E?

[Fire_Fox]

Hi all,

Not long back I upgraded my graphics card to a nvidia 6600 and due to a card fault had to return it for a refund as no alternative AGP card was available in store (local PCWorld). I've had a look around and noticed that the PCI-E cards are considerably cheaper and was wondering what (if any) the other benefits of PCI-E were. Obviously I'd have to upgrade my MB to fit one but I figure if the benefits outway the extra cost then it would be worth it.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Dave

 

[deadeyedic30]

What's your system spec, and budget ?

 

[melymel2789]

The only real benefits from pci-e that i know of is upgradability, also they are now often cheaper than their agp counterparts as agp are no longer being produced.

Although sooner or later you are going too have too upgrade too pci-e if you want too upgrade your system so you might aswell take the plunge now as you need a new gfx card anyway.

(you also get the 16x bus with pci-e which offers no real improvement over agp's 8x and you can go sli if you really want to )

 

[Fire_Fox]

Apologies for the delay in replying. Had net access issues. I'm not totally sure on my system specs as am currently at work. It's a P4 3.6 ghz proccessor I think, 120gb hardrive, 512 ram (soon to be 1 gig) current card is the nvidia FX5500.
I'll edit this info when I get home.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Welcome to the forums

You're in luck - all of the 3.6Ghz P4 processors are socket LGA775. This means that there are plenty of PCI-E motherboards available

As above, an equivalent PCI-E card isn't faster than an AGP card at the moment but PCI-E is upgradable and the cards are cheaper. What PSU do you have? This might be a stumbling block as ATX2.0 PSUs are recommended for PCI-E systems

If you want to stay with AGP, get a 6600GT. This is quite a bit better than the standard 6600. I'd go for the OcUK GeForce 6600 GT 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-036-OK) for £117. If you hunt around you can find a 6800 for about £100 too - these are also good cards and I'd go for one over the 6600GT

I assume you're currently using DDR1 memory so this limits your upgrade path (most LGA775 boards use DDR2 memory and the two aren't compatible).

Assuming DDR1, I'd go for:

MB-128-AS Asus P5GPL-X Intel 915PL (Socket 775) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-128-AS)
£59.95 £59.95
GX-044-HT HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X800 GTO ICEQII TURBO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX800GTO-256ICEQT) (GX-044-HT)
£89.95 £89.95
Subtotal £149.90
VAT £26.24
Total £176.14

Just make sure that you get an Intel chipset based motherboard as these are the best. The X800GTO is faster than the 6600GT and 6800

 

[Fire_Fox]

Ok, thanks for help so far

Just found out the spec info.

It's a P4 3.0ghz (not 3.6 as I thought earlier),
Not sure of the make on the current MB but it has '648 FX-A' written on it,
yes it's DDR1 not 2,
PSU is a Q-tec 500w.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

If it's a 3GHz P4 then it could be Socket 478 or Socket LGA775

Googling that part number shows that it's an Elitegroup Socket 478 AGP motherboard - http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/Productsdetail.aspx?detailid=323&MenuID=16&LanID=0

There are a few PCI-E Socket 478 boards if you look around. A lot are based on a Via chipset which only gives a 4x PCI-E slot, against the standard 16x slot. There is one, by ASRock I think, that uses an Intel chipset. Just looked it up - This is the one I'm talking about

You could get that one or look at getting an AGP 6600GT/6800

 

[Fire_Fox]

Sticking AGP looks like my best option for the moment as I can't really afford to upgrade my processor as well. Back to the 6600 or 6800 it is then.
Cheers for the help, very much obligued.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Glad I could help!