Wolfus

I'm running an ASUS A7V600 motherboard, with an Athlon 1.0 Ghz CPU, and hoping to find something to replace my now-dead GeForce 4 Ti 4600.

I read through a large chunk of the stickies, and learned a lot. Going through a wave of charts and tables to compare cards is very overwhelming, though. Yes, I know my PC is aging, ha ha ha.

So from what I can see, my motherboard doesn't support PCI-Express, but can support 8x AGP. I'm looking for a bit more than just simply a replacement for my GeForce 4 (A nice boost in performance would be nice). However, the most graphic-intensive game I play is WoW (World Of Warcraft), with a consistent 20 FPS on the GeForce 4. I'm happy with that.

I'm aiming between $70 and $100 at most. So here are one of the cards I was thinking about (I'm Canadian, so it's a Canadian link :P )

XFX GeForce 6200 Video Card
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...995&CatId=2234

I'm still learning as I go, and I appreciate your patience. Thank you for your time, most of all.

UncleMacro

That GeForce 6200 is actually a bit of a step down from a Ti 4600. And there's no benefit to getting that kind of card with 512 MB. 256 MB is plenty in your speed range. Your card is very old but it was the high-end card of its day and is still faster than a lot of current low end cards. You can find approximate speed comparisons of old AGP cards on this page.

There's no point in getting a super-speedy card because your CPU will limit your speed at lots of things but less taxing games like WOW could at least get a major resolution upgrade with a new card. Your CPU may already be limiting the frame rate. I'd avoid any DirectX 10 cards because their drivers may assume you have a modern CPU and might bog down on your machine.

This X1600 XT is a lot quicker than what you have but it may suck up more power than your current card (noisier and may need a PSU upgrade).

This GeForce 7600 GS is a lot quicker than your Ti 4600 and it's also lower power than what you've got currently so no PSU problems. It's at the high end of your price range and it's got a rebate which expires in a couple of days so you'd have to move fast.

Personally, I'd spend the extra $30 and get the 7600 GS.

Edit:

Oh, and by the way. Your motherboard can actually handle much faster CPUs than old 1 GHz Athlons. You can get 2 GHz Athlon XPs for about $50 and somewhat slower XPs for quite a bit less. If you're avoiding getting a new machine (no shame in that) and your CPU becomes a problem then all you need to do is flash the motherboard BIOS and pop in a new CPU. My mom's machine is a 2 GHz Athlon XP and it's still a serviceable machine. Most games tax the video cards more than CPUs so you can actually get by on the cheap with somewhat older CPUs (thinking more 2 GHz Athlons rather than 1 GHz) as long as your video card is decent.

Wolfus

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. I would have probably made a bad choice if I went with my first video card option.

I might go with the X1600 simply because of wallet constraints, but we'll see what happens.

Wolfus

I called and they said they didn't have any in stock... ugh.

But I found a store with something similar:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...72&cid=999.821

It's a EVGA e-GeForce 7300GT 512MB. I was comparing numbers, and it seems alright. I'm hoping it isn't a repeat of the first card I had posted.

My cousin seems to love the BFG line, and I saw something similar to one of his cards:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...11&cid=999.821

Makes me think I should swap to PCI-E for more options.

Thanks for your time, and sorry for the trouble.

EDIT: I'm using a VGA cable (the blue colored cable in case I used the wrong name), and I think the e-GeForce 7300 might not work with it, from what I'm reading. Not sure on that one.

zaknafein72

Most video cards come with a little converter from vga to dvi, so that should not be a problem. If it is, you can buy one for 2-3 dollars at any computer store.

UncleMacro

That will definitely give you a lot more options but lots of your hardware won't survive the transition. It will be mostly a new computer.

Assuming you still want to do the on-the-cheap upgrade, a 7300 GT is an improvement over a Ti 4600 but the 7300 GT's that you've linked have 533 MHz video RAM. The RAM speed is pretty important and it ranges from 533 MHz to 800 MHz. It makes quite a speed difference and the 800 MHz models usually don't cost much more than the 533s. These cards don't have lots of RAM speed to waste so it's worth shopping around to get the ones which are closer to 800 MHz. BFG doesn't specify the RAM speed of their card which usually means it's the low end model too. Lots of BFG's cards have higher speed GPUs and RAM but that 7300 GT doesn't look like one of them.

<rant about low-end video cards which you can skip>
Unfortunately, lots of manufacturers try to sucker buyers with video cards that sound faster by having 512 MB of slower video RAM when users would be better off with 256 MB of faster RAM. On 7300 GT's and 7600 GS's, 256 MB of 800 MHz RAM is way better than 512 MB of 533 MHz RAM. 512 MB of 533 MHz RAM is barely any better than 256 MB of 533 MHz RAM. Non-technical folks think 512 MB is a big feature when in fact cards in this speed range rarely have any use for it.

None of the cards you've linked have the problem but somewhat lower-end video cards also have different video RAM widths of 64 bits and 128 bits. The 64 bit cards are horribly crippled but are only a little bit cheaper. I've even seen low-end cards with horribly crippled 64 bit video RAM which come with 512 MB of largely useless RAM. People are impressed by 512 MB and don't realize that the 64 bit video RAM is too slow to use. You have to be careful when shopping for low-end video cards. It's a minefield.
</rant about low-end video cards which you can skip>

You have to watch out for the same thing with the AGP 7600 GS cards but it seems that a lot more of them have the faster 700 or 800 MHz memory. The price difference is usually less than $10 so it's worth chasing down the ones with RAM closer to 800 MHz than 533 MHz. It definitely makes a difference in these kinds of cards. The 7600 GS I linked earlier is an 800 MHz model.

And like zaknafein72 said, the DVI outputs on these cards are DVI-I outputs. That means they can output both digital signals and analog signals like VGA. All you do is plug a little adapter into the DVI-I output and it converts it into a plain VGA output. Most of these AGP cards have one VGA and one DVI-I output anyway so you can just use the VGA output. If they have two DVI-I outputs then they either come with the adapter or you get one for a few bucks.

Wolfus

I read through the whole thing even though you said I could skip it, ha ha ha.

I have to admit, until today I would have easily been suckered into buying a card with more video RAM despite the fact it was a low-end card. With the info I have now, I might even be able to help other people.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate the help.