Rated: 80% (2 votes)
Loading ...AGP - PCI-E
mitzy1002000
Atm, I only have an AGP 8x socket in my motherboard. However, graphics card is now becoming exceedingly slow, and with games getting more and more demanding, I think it’s nearly time for an update. But what? My motherboard isn’t particularly old, and I can’t see the point in renewing the whole thing just for a graphics card. Most of the gear inside is brand new. I’ve also just made the jump to Vista, therefore would like to make use of DX10. I am aware ATI have recently produced an AGP graphics card with DX10 support, but I was wondering if Nvidia have made such attempt yet?
Thanks.
Depends what you have at the moment - you can get AGP Radeon HD 3850 and 3870s, and they’re not bad…
The problem is that CPU’s that are old enough to be in AGP motherboards are likely to be a bottleneck with the latest high end GPU’s. Unless you’ve upgraded the CPU recently of course.
Don’t spend much more than £100 on an AGP GPU.
You can get good pci-e geforce 7’s for £50 - £60 on ebay.
I suggest you get one of them and spend the rest on a Motherboard & cpu.
You will see a large increase in performance and pci-e graphics cards are cheaper than agp, so you gain there.
Also, your going to have to change from agp at some point so why not now?
I was in a similar position not long ago, but eventually bit the bullet 2 weeks ago, as my Pentium 4 was really starting to hold back the system.
I could have saved £300 and just got a new dX10 GPU, but at the end of the day, I would have had to spend more again later on when the CPU finally became simply too slow to cope with modern games.
All I need now is for Intel to change their CPU sockets and render my new Asus P5kC obsolete!!!!
You’ll be wanting to read this -
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/02/14/agp-nth-coming
They try out a HB3850 AGP with an ancient Pentium 4 and get pretty decent results (manage to get World in Conflict playable at 1024×768). They conclude its worth buying if you can’t get a new system for at least another year. However, unfortunately for you there are no Vista drivers yet. I’m stuck with an AGP slot too and having just replaced the CPU with a bargin £30 Athlon X2 3600+, I’m giving this serious thought.
Yeah, thanks guys. I’m running an XFX 6600GT Overclocked, 2gb RAM + 2gb Vista Readyboost and Pentium 4 3.12GHz. If I were to upgrade the CPU to say a Core 2 Duo… would that comply with system… or would it mean upgrading a load of other things too?
Cheers
All depends on your motherboard CPU socket. Pentium’s used several different ones - yours will need to be an LGA 775 to accept a Core 2 Duo. If you don’t know what yours is download CPUz (http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php). It will tell you everything you need to know (your socket is shown in the ‘Package’ box).
If you have got an LGA775, then you’d be best buying a Pentium E2160, which are just budget Core 2 Duos. They’re only about 40 quid but can be overclocked to 3Ghz or more
LGA775 i got. Thanks all for your help.