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Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money: AGP Interface

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Best AGP Card for Under $100:

Radeon HD 2600 XT
Codename: RV630
Process: 65 nm
Universal Shaders: 128
Texture Units: 8
ROPs: 4
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core Speed MHz: 800
Memory Speed MHz: 700 (1,400 effective)
DirectX / Shader Model DX 10 / SM 4.0

The 2600 XT can be found at a much cheaper price of $65 lately. This is a decently-fast DirectX 10 card available for AGP, and it surprisingly offers a great deal of performance for an older machine. Previously reported driver issues seem to have been worked out, so the 2600 XT can be recommended for older AGP machines without reservation.

Best AGP Card For over $100

Radeon HD 3850 512 MB
Codename: RV670
Process: 55 nm
Universal Shaders: 320
Texture Units: 16
ROPs: 16
Memory Bus: 256-bit
Core Speed MHz: 670
Memory Speed MHz: 833 (1,666 effective)
DirectX / Shader Model DX 10.1 / SM 4.0

The Radeon HD 3850 is, frankly, a curiously powerful card for the aging AGP bus. It’s a bit too powerful, in fact, to be properly utilized on the single-core CPUs that are typically paired with this platform.

Regardless, this is the most powerful AGP card you can get. Perhaps you have an AGP gaming system you just can’t bear to part with or an older system with both a dual-core CPU and AGP slot. Whatever the reason, you can’t get better than an AGP 3850, and if anyone ever releases a more-powerful card in the future for the dying bus, then we’d be incredibly surprised.

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LePhuronn 04/12/2008 11:35
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Although it's beyond Tom's control, wouldn't it have been easier to simply post here "no new cards, so read last month's" however I appreciate the rewording to actually focus on single cards, not multi-card setups.

Anonymous 05/12/2008 12:29
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Dollars?!

honkytonk 05/12/2008 15:40
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No sign of the Catalyst 8.12 driver on the AMD/ATi site?...
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
Latest is still 8.11.
Mark.

Anonymous 05/12/2008 17:52
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Yeah it's dollars, apparently there is no UK content on this site - so I'm not sure why the .co.uk is different from the .com!

teamlosigp 06/12/2008 06:13
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well here we go again... lets say that the 4850x2 is better than the gtx 280, when we have to deal with buggy(not to mention shitty) crossfire support in some titles, expecially when they first comeout

GaryRW_42 09/12/2008 14:48
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Anonymous :
Yeah it's dollars, apparently there is no UK content on this site - so I'm not sure why the .co.uk is different from the .com!


I registered a few months ago just to make this point. Kind of stopped coming to Tom's and the uk site in particular. I come back to check and they're still touting a UK site, but no UK content at all. Why not just be honest and have the US site as the english language site?

Anonymous 21/12/2008 13:45
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What's the second resource to help you understand where your card fits (page7)? I assume it's supposed to be the big graphics chart comparison tool? Which is great... but way too hard to find. A link in here would sure help ;)

Anonymous 30/12/2008 12:25
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nnn

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