[Roanoke]

If my PC isn't dead, I may be after a "new" graphics card. Currently running a P4 2.0ghz, 1mg SDRam, and IIRC a GeForce4 MX (the cheapo one, albeit with 128 ram) & windows XP.
Getting on for 6 years old 

Anyway, I figured a cheap GPU upgrade and maybe some more memory will slow the rot. So what do you chaps reckon ? I haven't the cash of the inclination to buy a new rig just yet.

I can hardly remember what the last APU cards were. IIRC ATi would be an X800 and nVidia GeForce FX5xxxx ??

Ta.

[S-99]

Slow the rotting yes. The p4 is still a good processor. Get some like 1.5gb of ram for system memory, or 1gb if you're on a budget. And then get an nvidia geforce 7. Nvidia still makes cards for agp because nvidia unlike ati knows that not everybody has pci-e yet. So in other words nvidia offers some damn current solutions for agp still. My dad has a p4 2ghz system with 2gb of ram and a geforce 7800 agp on his, it does great, i have no doubt your machine wont be able to do the same

[Herra Tohtori]

i have no doubt your machine wont will be able to do the same

Fixed for ya, assuming that is the meaning I interpreted from the context.... Nobody expects the Grammar Inquisition.

Anyway, I would say pretty much the same as S-99. NVidia's 7 series are good cards and since they make them for AGP as well, they are pretty much the best you can get for your PC. I suppose you'd get best performance increase/price ratio by increasing system RAM and getting a GeForce 7600GT or possibly GS if you're interested in even more of a budget card. Perhaps with even 512MB memory...

I myself have a PCI-E version of GF 7600GT with 256MB of memory and I have to say it's pretty good card in overall. It's the rest of my system that drags behind... I'm suspecting that my CPU ( AMD64 3200+ @ 2.0 GHz) with Venice cache just doesn't seem to manage to keep up with the GPU's information need or something.

[IceFire]

Get a 7600GT and you'll be very very pleased with what the card can do.  It should be dirt cheap now that the new 8600 and 8500 series is out.

[Ashrak]

ATI still makes agp cards, they make the best AGP card on the market

X1950Pro

[CP5670]

Yes, I think the X1950 Pro is the best option right now (although there are actually faster things available). It really depends on what the prices are like where you live, but at least around here, the X1950 Pro is the only reasonably priced AGP card these days. The Nvidia ones and the X1950XT are all too expensive for their performance levels and are heavily marked up over their PCIE counterparts. You will run into a CPU bottleneck to some degree, but that card is about 20 times as fast as what you have now.

[S-99]

Anyway with this kind of plan his machine should be up to normal **** soon.

[Roanoke]

aren't there problems when switching from nVidia to ATi (and vice versa) ? 

I don't think there is a  great deal of difference between the two price wise.

[S-99]

Well there was the lack of smartshaders with nvdia, but since ati phased out smartshaders, there was essentially no problems when i switched from radeon 9800pro to geforce 7600gt.

[Nuke]

that rig is older than what will soon be my #3 machine here in a couple weeks. im not ready to can the beast so to speak, but il probibly downgrade it for legacy purposes. it needs new ram, and id like to score a couple voodoo2s if at all possible so i can play mech2 again. though im not sure about the consequences of using voodoo2s with an agp geforce 4 serving as a 2d card.

[CP5670]

I don't think there is a  great deal of difference between the two price wise.

Just get whatever is in your price range in that case. The major AGP cards can basically be ranked in order of performance like this: 7600GT, 7900GS, X1950Pro/7950GT (these are similar) and X1950XT. They would all be tremendous improvements over what you have now though.

that rig is older than what will soon be my #3 machine here in a couple weeks. im not ready to can the beast so to speak, but il probibly downgrade it for legacy purposes. it needs new ram, and id like to score a couple voodoo2s if at all possible so i can play mech2 again. though im not sure about the consequences of using voodoo2s with an agp geforce 4 serving as a 2d card.

Look on ebay. I got a second one there for $15 in 2003, to add to one I already had from the 90s. They work fine in conjunction with the GF3 on my retro gaming machine. Although I haven't used them much in recent years, ever since I found out about D2X-XL (the main reason I had them around was to play D2 3dfx).

[S-99]

You guys ever heard about a glide wrapper before? This might save you some time and money to try.

[CP5670]

I couldn't get any of them to work in either that or Nuclear Strike (the other Glide-only game I have). There was one that specifically claimed to work with D2 3dfx, but you had to pay for it. In any case, it doesn't matter now that we have D2X-XL.

[S-99]

hmm yeah. Idk, doesn't hurt to try all them wrappers out there while on your way to getting a voodoo2. Voodoo2's are cool, in fact someone even made doom3 playable on a voodoo2 sli, it didn't look too bad for doom3 at 30-40fps with a serious degrade in quality, it made doom3 look like one of those classic games from 98

Here's doom3 on a voodoo2, looks great for a modern game on a voodoo2

[Nuke]

You guys ever heard about a glide wrapper before? This might save you some time and money to try.

yea, but they dont seem to work with mech2

hmm yeah. Idk, doesn't hurt to try all them wrappers out there while on your way to getting a voodoo2. Voodoo2's are cool, in fact someone even made doom3 playable on a voodoo2 sli, it didn't look too bad for doom3 at 30-40fps with a serious degrade in quality, it made doom3 look like one of those classic games from 98

Here's doom3 on a voodoo2, looks great for a modern game on a voodoo2

hehehehe, you can tell how far games have really come with that.

[S-99]

Doom3 actually looks pretty good on sli'd voodoo2's. All it's missing is the dark lighting, shadows, and bump mapping. Looks pretty good in 16bit, i just like 16bit a lot better, it's pretty nostalgic of quake2 and halflife1, and to be able to play my new games in it is just cool as hell, i hate games that don't let me play in 16bit. Usually these days i stick with 32bit, because 32bit has become faster to play games in than 16bit (reminds me of ati's first line of radeon's, they all did better in 32bit than 16bit). Not to mention i think fs2 looks better in 16bit

[IceFire]

aren't there problems when switching from nVidia to ATi (and vice versa) ? 

I don't think there is a  great deal of difference between the two price wise.

Problems created by people who don't properly remove drivers

Do a search for DriverCleaner Pro (Platinum is payware) which should do the trick for the average driver cleaning requirements.

[brozozo]

Here's doom3 on a voodoo2, looks great for a modern game on a voodoo2

Well, you can't blame it for being overly dark anymore.

[S-99]

Hey i liked how dark that game was. Reminded me of need for speed 3 riding in the night with rain and storm with no headlights...actually no head lights riding my atv at night is how i go (i have good night vision).

[Roanoke]

*bumpage*

getting tired of my no-pc life so time to get some dosh spent:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NVIDIA-GeForce-7600GT-512MB-AGP-Graphics-Card-7600-8X_W0QQitemZ230177306690QQihZ013QQcategoryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I can't remember how fast my AGP slot is though.....

incidentally, something like a 7900 looks to be almost double the price.