Trying to build last Great AGP system....

[josef109]

Thanks for the great website and technical know how and experience....I thought I was alone in holding on to some the "older" technology that's quickly fading and becoming more difficult to find. I've been able to put together the following system so far....ASRock 775i65G AGP Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor, BFG 650 watt PSU, Zalman 9500 CPU cooler, 2 Gig's of PNY DDR 400 Memory, 1 WD RaptorX 150 GB HD, 1 WD 320 GB HD, SoundBlaster Audigy SE sound card and a XFX 7600 GT graphics card. Operating System is Vista Home Premium and this is where I've struggled with either upgrading to a Radeon X1950 Pro with DirectX9 or go with a newer AGP graphics card like the HIS Radeon HD 2600XT with DirectX10.... or just wait alittle.....I've read somewhere that ATI maybe coming out with a new Radeon AGP 3850 series graphics card that might just really kick some butt...It seems like Nvidia has dropped the AGP Interface from their line-up...Thanks for any feedback.....

[wyz135]

since you are using AGP, I think you won't use it for a very long time, so get a Radeon X1950PRO, perform well in games and handles FSAA very well

[Radiator]

Well... get the X1950 Pro over the HD 2600 XT . As for the 3850 AGP , I hope it'll not be 256MB . 256MB is just too low for that card .
And the X1950 Pro is powerful enough to run most games at your LCD monitor's native resolution , so you won't really notice the jaggies , hence no need to apply AA .

[josef109]

Thanks for the info....I had been seriously considering the HIS Radeon X1950 Pro IceQ3 turbo.512 MB GDDR3 AGP 8x, but it seems like that card has been yanked from sale at Newegg and Tigerdirect. I remember reading that there were alot of driver issues affecting that particular card...and people were dissatisfied with it...

[Radiator]

The X1950 Pro cards don't OC well , and I'll bet the HIS IceQ turbo one had stability issues due to too high clock speeds.. but then again , that's just my speculation .

[josef109]

Thanks again....I think I'm gonna sit tight and wait to see what new AGP graphics cards are released and compare...I'm leaning towards the ATI 3800 series card. We'll wait to see what they'll be able to do....

[-RK]

Sapphire and Powercolor have that 3850 AGP now...

uhhh... Good luck finding it for a reasonable price though, AGP cards always seem to be around $40-$50 more expensive than PCI-e nowadays.

[Radiator]

That's because of the added AGP to PCI-e bridge .

Anyway , the HD 3850 came out , get that one ... it should be quite good .

[-RK]

I thought that they were trying to get rid of the bridge and design one just for AGP...

Sucks if they're not though...

[anonymousD]

for some reason i got poor performance in memory intensive apps with that one mobo, games suffered a bit too. it can clock tough :)

[wyz135]

did you see the GPUreview homepage? Get the Saphire Radeon HD3850 AGP OC edition

[yldouright]

...is a second generation HTPC solution for AGP. Something that's quiet and low power. Whatever happened to the nvidia 8400 for AGP? I know lots of people running mobile CPU chips with passive heatsinks @1.35V just aching for an accompanying AGP solution for HTPC.
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