douglascharlton

HI,
ive a ATI x800 xt pe and it was fairly pricey. Now my friend wants card similar to mine so i told him what mine was. He then found a x1600 pro 512 mb and it was under £100. Now ive looked at reviews and comparisons such as this one http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards....1=39&card2=369

and im really stumped how its so cheap compared to the other high-ish spec agp cards. Any help please ?

mgoldb2

Look at the difference in memory bandwidth. The x1600pro is really bottled neck by it memory bandwidth. The x1600pro cost so little because that is what it worth. For casual gamers the x1600pro is a decent card but it not a high end gaming card. The x800XT pe was a very high end gaming card but it a little out dated now. It is a whole generation behind.

If you can give us a bit more information like budget and what games you intend to use it for I should be able to give a good recommendation.

douglascharlton

it was late last night when i posted last one so sorry fo lack on info!

its AGP to start with, for windows XP with 3.4 GHZ intel processor.
Games to be played, battlefield 2, need for speed under ground, americas army, call of duty 2 bothers in arms etc . My friend wanted to spend £100 and already has a geforce fx 5600 but i was trying to purswade him to get a better card for slightly more like an ati x800 x850 or nvidia 6800 for about £180. He then showed me the 1600 and i thoguht the spec looked ok for the price. What does memory clock speed do ? as i was told that the core clock speed was the most important thing. Thanks in advance for any more help.

DOUG

T_Rex

The X800 Pro 512MB is only going to give you good frames at lower resolutions. It does have SM3 but it's agp interface is limiting. The X1600XT is faster but again only at lower resolutions (800x600-1152x864) and is only found in PCIe. The X800 series might not have SM3 but the x800gto and x800xl, and especially the x850xt series is going to get much better frame rates than either a X1600 pro or X1600XT especially as you go up in resolutions - and sm3 is not of any tangible benefit right now save a few games, but even if you were to run hdr in a game like oblivion you would need to gpu powerful enough to scale the resolution past 800x600 to have hdr look decent and still get good frame rates in a modern game. If an AGP card is necesarry but you need a fairly good deal money wise i would look to either an X800GTO or a 6800GS. Higher end would be an X850XT or 6800 Ultra (if you can find a good used one). X800GTO will play all of those games ok and have playable frame rates as will a 6800GS.