AGP cards scarce?

[raymod2]

After the latest round of games came out (F.E.A.R., Quake 4, Age of Empires III) I discovered my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is now a dog. I was looking to upgrade and I wanted to go with nVidia this time. I also need to stick with AGP 4X. I was hoping to find a 6800GT or 6800Ultra at a good price since they are no longer top of the line. But I can't seem to find them being sold anywhere. Is there a shortage of these in the market? NewEgg had a 6800 made by XFX listed yesterday for $179 but now it's no longer listed.

[Mike]

For the price you're looking at, for AGP, I would recommend an X850XTPE...you can find them for about $300 if you look around...

And I don't think the 6800GT AGP cards are all that scarce, I found plenty on pricegrabber...but they ARE on the way out...

It's getting to the point where it's not really worth buying a new AGP card...if you can swing it, it would be worth your time to upgrade to PCI-E...like if you get an AGP card now, and then upgrade your system in 6 months, the agp card will be useless...

[raymod2]

My current system is an Asus P4T533-C motherboard with a Pentium 2.4GHz and 1GB of PC1066 Rambus RAM. If I want PCI Express then I need a new motherboard which means I need to dump all that expensive RAM (which cost me $560).

3 years ago I paid $350 for my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro which was the absolute top of the line. Today the 6800 GT (which was not even top of the line when it came out a year and a half ago) is selling for $350 (not much less than the original price) and they are hard to find (NewEgg doesn't sell them and you can't find them in a brick and mortar store). That just doesn't seem right.

[Mike]

My current system is an Asus P4T533-C motherboard with a Pentium 2.4GHz and 1GB of PC1066 Rambus RAM. If I want PCI Express then I need a new motherboard which means I need to dump all that expensive RAM (which cost me $560).

3 years ago I paid $350 for my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro which was the absolute top of the line. Today the 6800 GT (which was not even top of the line when it came out a year and a half ago) is selling for $350 (not much less than the original price) and they are hard to find (NewEgg doesn't sell them and you can't find them in a brick and mortar store). That just doesn't seem right.

Yeah it's not right...on the pci-e end of the spectrum, the 6800GS (which is arguably superior to the GT) is selling for $200...that's why I recommend going ATi for AGP right now, because the nvidia cards are overpriced...

[Kurth]

I've got a (somewhat) similar system to the original poster:

P4 2.4 Ghz (533 fsb)
1 gig ddr ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

I just purchased a 20" lcd and would like to run some of the newer games at native resolution of 1680x1050, but I'm afraid my old 9800 Pro won't be up for the task.

If I'm only going to upgrade my video card, and I'm limited to AGP, what would you recommend? I looked at an nvidia 6600 GT, but the difference between that card and my 9800 Pro didn't seem enough to merit the jump.

Any help would be much appreciated! :)

[Mike]

I've got a (somewhat) similar system to the original poster:

P4 2.4 Ghz (533 fsb)
1 gig ddr ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

I just purchased a 20" lcd and would like to run some of the newer games at native resolution of 1680x1050, but I'm afraid my old 9800 Pro won't be up for the task.

If I'm only going to upgrade my video card, and I'm limited to AGP, what would you recommend? I looked at an nvidia 6600 GT, but the difference between that card and my 9800 Pro didn't seem enough to merit the jump.

Any help would be much appreciated! :)

Yeah the 6600 GT wouldn't do much for you at all. Especially not at higher resolutions, that's where the 9800pro can really flex its muscles since it has a 256bit memory interface vs 128bit on the GT.

Take a look at the superlatives page, I keep that pretty well updated for my picks at the different price points.

http://www.gpureview.com/superlatives.php

If I were you I'd drop about $300 and get an x850 xt or a an xt pe if you can find one at that price. Specifically, this one looks pretty good:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814131297

That will about double your current speed, and it's about the fastest card you can get for AGP, the only thing faster is the platinum edition of the same card which is only marginally faster.

If you're not looking to drop that much cash, you can get an x800gto which may unlock to x850xt speeds and pipes...and even if it doesn't it's still a pretty nice upgrade from a 9800pro.

[Kurth]

Thanks for the advice, and I will definitely check out the superlatives page.

What are your thoughts on the X800 Pro? I see that comes in an AGP version, and it looks like I can pick one up for really cheap on ebay - like ~$100 or so.

BTW - You've got a great site here - an excellent resource!

[Mike]

Thanks for the advice, and I will definitely check out the superlatives page.

What are your thoughts on the X800 Pro? I see that comes in an AGP version, and it looks like I can pick one up for really cheap on ebay - like ~$100 or so.

BTW - You've got a great site here - an excellent resource!

The X800Pro was never popular when it first came out, it kinda got eclipsed by the 6800GT. But for $100, that's quite a good deal. I would go for it.

[raymod2]

Mike, that card you linked from NewEgg was the PCI Express version. I've been looking around for the last couple of days and this looks like the best deal for AGP:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102492

It's the ATI Radeon X800XT All-in-Wonder for $299 (plus a $20 rebate). Is there any reason to avoid this card? Isn't it close in performance to the X850XT and the X850XT PE?

[Mike]

The X800XT is very similar in performance to the x850xt, the x850xt is just a smidge faster with faster memory. But this card has all the all-in-wonder features too...so yeah definitely a good buy.

[Darius1219]

AMD Athlon XP 3000
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
2 160 gb WD-SATA
Geforce4ti4200-64mb

I would like to upgrade to a Geforce 6600 GT OC 128mb...

What do you guys think? Is it worth it? I'd like to spend less than 200 dollars due to the fact that I'm going to be upgrading my Ram to 2gig's of ram.

Thanks,
Darius

[Mike]

The 6600GT would be a sweet upgrade from your ti4200...and you can pick one up for well under $200...if you wanna wait a bit, AGP 6800GS's will be coming out soon and they'll be considerably faster for around $200...

[Darius1219]

The 6600GT would be a sweet upgrade from your ti4200...and you can pick one up for well under $200...if you wanna wait a bit, AGP 6800GS's will be coming out soon and they'll be considerably faster for around $200...

Ok Sounds like a plan....I can wait a little $200 isn't to bad of a price! :)

[bucdan]

ay dude u still got that 9700??? is it 9700 or 9700 pro??? i think i want it lol