Best AGP Card for ~£95 (inc VAT):
Radeon X1950 PRO
| Radeon X1950 PRO | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | RV570 |
| Process: | 90nm |
| Pixel Shaders: | 36 |
| Vertex Shaders: | 8 |
| Texture Units: | 12 |
| ROPs: | 12 |
| Memory Bus: | 256-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 575 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 690 (1380 effective) |
| DirectX / Shader Model | DX 9.0c / SM 3.0 |
The X1950 PRO is similar to the X1900 GT, the main difference being that it is not based on the X1900 XT, but a whole new and less power-hungry core. The card’s main competition is the 7900 GS, which it beats in almost every benchmark.
The X1950 PRO is a powerful card that will make AGP gaming viable for at least a year or two more, and these cards are becoming easier to find online. This is a great last stand for the AGP’er.
Best AGP Card For £140 (inc VAT):
Radeon X1950 XT (by Gecube)
| Radeon X1950 XT (by Gecube) | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | R580 |
| Process: | 90nm |
| Pixel Shaders: | 48 |
| Vertex Shaders: | 8 |
| Texture Units: | 16 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 256-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 628 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 700 (1400 effective) |
| DirectX / Shader Model | DX 9.0c / SM 3.0 |
The X1950 XT – manufactured exclusively by Gecube – is, put simply, the most powerful card ever to grace the AGP bus. This card’s closest competition is the XFX 7950 GT, which costs slightly more but is a bit less powerful.
At £140, it is a bit of a tough pill to swallow for a dying interface. I would only recommend the X1950 XT AGP to someone with a very fast AGP system who already has a power supply with enough juice to handle the X1950 XT.
It must be noted however that if you have £140 to spend on an AGP card – you should look into how much it would cost to upgrade your whole system into a PCI express motherboard .
PCI express video cards are cheaper than their AGP cousins. If you upgrade your system to PCI-E and sell your old components, you may actually spend a similar amount of money compared to buying an expensive AGP card alone.
X1950 pro can be had for less than £100 OCUK has a x1950 for only £70.49.
I took this from the article
Here are two resources to help you judge if a card is a good buy. The first is the video card hierarchy chart, which groups video cards with similar overall performance into "tiers.” The top tier contains the highest performing cards available, and performance decreases as you go down the tiers from there.
Now it clearly says similar overall performance but that is clearly not the case with this section taken from the chart in the article
X800 XT (& PE), X850 XT (& PE), X1650 XT, X1800 GTO, Mobility X1900, HD 2600 XT
Come on guys to say that the X800XT performs similar to the X1650XT is bordering on criminally misleading similar FPS ok but overall performance?no way!
I have owned both and can say from experience that the X1650XT is a lot better visually and technically can play games the X800s cant so how you can say they are anything like similar is beyond me.
When i first started upgrading cards i wouldnt have known the diff and if i had come and seen the chart and bought a card that cant play up to date games based on it i would have been well upset.
So how about a little disclaimer about different technology's just to give the noobs a heads up
"Best PCI-E Card for £100 (inc VAT):
Radeon X1950 XT"
I can't find a x1950 XT for around £100 anywhere, then the description for it in the article is for the x1950 pro, this is very confusing. Does this mean the recommended £100 card is the XT (which I can't for £100) or the Pro?
So you Tom boys and girls gonna cover the "minor" update to directX10 (10.1) that obsoletes all the DirectX10 cards instead of discussing minor performance differences that wont affect anyone. The question i have is did microsoft lie to the graphics cards builders or did the graphics card builders lie to us ? Surely and upgrade that requires new hardware is a major release not a minor one ? And since vista could never be regarded as "released" until service pack 1 surely any card claiming full Vista compatibility should support DX 10.1.
Instead of just supporting the vendor marketing efforts how about a real news story for once ?
This is what I found at www.ebuyer.com maybe it'll help you in your search.
Gecube X1950XT 256MB GDDR3 AGP Graphics Card
£124.99 Inc. VAT
Gecube X1950Pro 256MB VIVO DVI AGP Graphics Card
£94.99 Inc. VAT
That was with free deliver for anything over £70 or something like that. That is the cheapest I've seem to find at this stage. Anyone else find it for cheaper?