I need recs for a good AGP x 4 card for my secondary computer

[Phosphate]

I have a IBM NetVista 1.8 Ghz pentium 384 mb memory that needs a agp x4 card.

What would be a card with maximum bang for the buck for this computer? Also it is a flat desktop configuration rather than a tower so I'm not sure if I need low profile card or not?

NOTE: I am building a E6400 Core 2 for the future but I also would want this back-up computer to be as good as possible.

[Mike]

Flat desktops are like a tower laid on its side, they use the same video cards, so you shouldn't need low-profile (though you might if it's really really thin).

Are you planning on gaming with this card?

You're going to be severely bottlenecked by the processor and memory, so I would recommend just grabbing whatever is cheap. Maybe a GeForce 6600...or an old 9800 pro...

[Phosphate]

Flat desktops are like a tower laid on its side, they use the same video cards, so you shouldn't need low-profile (though you might if it's really really thin).

Are you planning on gaming with this card?

You're going to be severely bottlenecked by the processor and memory, so I would recommend just grabbing whatever is cheap. Maybe a GeForce 6600...or an old 9800 pro...

I'd like to use it for gaming. Honestly I'm sick of waiting for Conroe and I picked this up in the meantime because my other computer was dying.

I agree with the 6600 or 9800 because of the bottlenecks. I guess you can use AGP x8 in computers with 4x slots huh?

If I can find a 512K pc133 stick or two cheap I'll put that in too but I'm not sure how of a difference it will make. In any event that would boost me to 768 MB or 1 GB depending if I get 1 or 2 sticks. (I already have 256 and 128 in there)

P.S. Thanks for the help.

[Mike]

Yeah agp 8x is backwards compatible with 4x...and yeah, more memory would definitely help you out...

[Phosphate]

Yeah agp 8x is backwards compatible with 4x...and yeah, more memory would definitely help you out...

If I got a 9800 Pro how do you think it would run in the AGP 4x slot compared to full 8x agp? Am I losing a lot of performance assuming mem and CPU were not bottlenecks.

[Mike]

If I got a 9800 Pro how do you think it would run in the AGP 4x slot compared to full 8x agp? Am I losing a lot of performance assuming mem and CPU were not bottlenecks.

the performance loss (if any) would be unnoticeable...

[phranq]

Be wary of the 9800 pros...they ran pretty hot. I think you might be better off with a 6x00 series card.

[bLaK]

phranq's right..Stick with a low-end nvidia 6 series card