[CP5670]

In all honesty, I'd rather have a slightly slower but garunteed stable/not likely to catch fire card. I've had some bad experiences in the past with heat problems (lost a computer to it, basically) and don't much care to push the limits. It'd be an expensive loss if everything went belly up.

Is the card stable enough in its initially overclocked (440/1300) state, or are you saying that it can have issues even here, and that if I want the stability I should go for the slightly slower version?

Thats the trick with factory overclocked cards...you do have to watch out. I'm a fan of the work done by BFG in this regards. When I did some research for my brothers recently built machine I stumbled onto the voltage and heat graphs for a variety of GeForce 6600GT's. All similar configurations with some stock and some overclocked. The BFG card, despite having about a 10% increase in clock speed over the basic level was actually offering only slightly more voltage requirement at load and far less voltage required at idle. Temperatures was a similar story except with the BFG OC card being cooler than the stock.

That said...there was another overclocked card on the list from another company with very poor results....so I think mileage will varry. Do the research before you buy.

BFG is somewhat overrated in my opinion. They generally use high quality components and have great tech support, but their cards are priced above the competition (just because of the BFG name), the factory overclocks are too modest to pay anything extra for and there are no game bundles either. I used to have one of their AGP 6800 GTs. It had a custom heatsink that looked nice, but didn't cool as well as the reference Nvidia cooler while still being considerably louder. The first card I got was actually defective and I sent it back after a few days, but the replacement took over two weeks to arrive, which is a rather long time. At least the tech support people were generally friendly and knowledgable, although the 24/7 thing is just marketing (if you call at night, you have to wait hours to get anyone on the line).

[Shade]

Perhaps also worth considering is that Nvidia cards currently cannot do both HDR and AA at the same time. It's either or. Whereas I don't believe ATI cards have the same limitation.

[CP5670]

That's only on the current generation X1x00 cards. I think it's largely a useless feature though except for Crossfire setups. There are only two current games that support it and only one of those (Far Cry, where the HDR is somewhat buggy anyway) provides acceptable performance with it on a single X1900 card.

[Prophet]

Im in a pretty identical situation. Lookin for an AGP card. Thought my rig should really be overhauled completely, but I lack the money to do it. So I have to spend what money I have on a new craphics card before it goes to paying bills

Anyway I was looking at the Geforce 7800, but noticed that it needs a 350W power source. And I only have 300W. So what, should I go with the 6800? Or look for ATI cards? I currently have a Radeon 9250, so anything would be an improvement.

[Scuddie]

That limitation is not what it seems.  No matter which card you have, it cannot render SSAA or MSAA while HDR is enabled.  However, the old style FSAA works just fine with HDR on all cards using OpenGL (but then again, who wants to use that...).  It is not a limitation of the current gen power, architecture, or programming.  It is a limitation of the Direct3D 9.0c API.  nV and ATi cards share the same issue, and it will not be resolved until a newer revision of DX is released.

OpenGL users unite .

[ARSPR]

Just a few hints por every people:

1. I DO preffer ATI cards rather than nVidia. But I think that nowadays the best AGP option in 7800GS.

2. It's stupid thinking in [8x AA + 16 x AF + HDR + Anisotropic in textures + extra features on] because NO SINGLE card is going to handle it properly (with enough FPS). And please think that if you've got an AGP system probably your CPU isn't good enough too. So I don't give a damn if this card or that card can have all these supercool features on at the same time.

3. I think SM 3.0 is a must. I can only speak in my experience, but in FEAR, it's great the 3D look brick walls have now (I've changed from 9800pro to 7800GS).

4. X800 or X850 is just a faster 9800 WITHOUT SM 3.0, and I think X1x00 doesn't have AGP cards so your only real option is 7800 GS

5. 7800GS is faster and less energy demmanding than 6800s (and I think even X1800). And it is just a bit more expensive than 6800. So to anyone who has enough money, pick 7800GS and try it. Your only problem could be your PSU could need an update too (+30-60 €).

6. We all know nVidia cards are better for OpenGL than ATI ones. AND FS2 IS AND WILL BE MAINLY AN OGL GAME.

[CP5670]

6. We all know nVidia cards are better for OpenGL than ATI ones. AND FS2 IS AND WILL BE MAINLY AN OGL GAME.

I think a bigger problem as far as FSO is concerned is that movie crash issue on ATI drivers that came up last week. I was about to place an order for a particularly nice X1900 XTX deal I found until I saw that. The whole reason I want to "upgrade" is to get away from crap like that in older games.

That limitation is not what it seems.  No matter which card you have, it cannot render SSAA or MSAA while HDR is enabled.  However, the old style FSAA works just fine with HDR on all cards using OpenGL (but then again, who wants to use that...).  It is not a limitation of the current gen power, architecture, or programming.  It is a limitation of the Direct3D 9.0c API.  nV and ATi cards share the same issue, and it will not be resolved until a newer revision of DX is released.

OpenGL users unite .

I don't think you know what you're talking about. HDR as it's done in most games (everything except HL2 based stuff) is not part of the DX9.0c specification at all, but is something separate based on the OpenEXR FP16 format.

The Nvidia 6 and 7 series cards can do SSAA and HDR, although SSAA causes an incredible performance hit by itself, so this is pretty much useless. AOE3 does it this way though. The ATI X1x00 cards can do both MSAA and SSAA with HDR; when they advertise HDR+AA, they're talking about MSAA. Currently, only Far Cry and Serious Sam 2 support MSAA+HDR.

[Fineus]

Fair enough then, it still seems like the 7800 is out on top at the moment. It's a shame you can't run HDR and FSAA at the same time (although generally I make do with only 2xAA as I can't tell the difference much past that anyway).

[Turnsky]

Fair enough then, it still seems like the 7800 is out on top at the moment. It's a shame you can't run HDR and FSAA at the same time (although generally I make do with only 2xAA as I can't tell the difference much past that anyway).

yeah, it's generally a shame, but, at higher resolutions, aliasing becomes less of an issue.

[Fineus]

Heh, looks like ATI pays attention to its problems after all... Ladies and Gents...

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=21960

The Chuck Patch.

This special driver is provided to enable additional functionality for Oblivion.  Specifically this driver will:

1.       Permit High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR) concurrently with Anti-Aliasing (AA) on RADEON X1000 series graphic boards

2.       AFR mode for CrossFire (2 GPU’s)

Well that's that sorted then.

[Turnsky]

Heh, looks like ATI pays attention to its problems after all... Ladies and Gents...

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=21960

The Chuck Patch.

This special driver is provided to enable additional functionality for Oblivion.  Specifically this driver will:

1.       Permit High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR) concurrently with Anti-Aliasing (AA) on RADEON X1000 series graphic boards

2.       AFR mode for CrossFire (2 GPU’s)

Well that's that sorted then.

a pity that HDR is a dodgy thing with the x850 series (as in, no shader 3 model), otherwise i'd be jumping with glee.

[CP5670]

Somehow I seem to remember this thread being a lot older than just a week...

Well, I am probably going to buy that XTX. I'll just take out the FS2 movie files for now, as I can always watch them outside the game. I want to get some proper vsync in old games. Anyone here want to buy a (PCIE) 7800 GT CO or two?

By the way, Kalfireth, if you haven't already bought a card, you may want to take a look at this Gainward one that just came out:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7800AGP_Series.html#agx_2d030_2dgw

It's the only 7800 GT on AGP, with even 512MB of memory and a custom AC-style cooler. It's expensive for what it is but isn't too much more than the others you were looking at (it's a very limited release product that is only available in Europe). This should be the fastest AGP card by some distance.

[Dark RevenantX]

Is it just me, or is it weird that I can play Half Life 2 at decent framerates and a relatively high detail setting?  I only have an Athlon XP 2400 and a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis w/ 128mb.  Most games I have run slower than HL2.

[Fineus]

Half Life 2 is very nicely optimised though. Whatever else anyone thinks of the game, it's well coded to run with a lot of machine specs.

CP5670, thanks for the heads up I'll be leaving my choice a little while longer as I don't have my student loan through yet and rent is more important than graphics (!) But it's certainly worth remembering.

I have to admit though, as time goes by I'm more and more thinking about saving up a bit more cash and moving up to a PCI-Express based platform. At least it'd be future proof for several years to come.

[Prophet]

Half Life 2 is very nicely optimised though. Whatever else anyone thinks of the game, it's well coded to run with a lot of machine specs.

When I tried out HL2 I had a 1 gig Sempron with Radeon 9250. I was pretty surprised when the game suggested that I set everything on medium in the graphics settings. I thought that what the hell. And I was once again surprised when I go pretty decent framerates out of it