Best Gaming Video Cards For The Money: AGP Interface
Best AGP Card For Under £60 / €80
| Radeon X1550 | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | RV515 |
| Process: | 90nm |
| Pixel Shaders: | 4 |
| Vertex Shaders: | 2 |
| Texture Units: | 4 |
| ROPs: | 4 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 550 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 400 (800 effective) |
With the 6600 GT not easily available any more, and the prices of other AGP cards dropping, the X1550 is starting to look more attractive. This card - which is essentially an overclocked X1300 PRO - does a decent job at low-budget gaming in the AGP realm.
Best AGP Card For ~£75 / €100: Tie
| Radeon X1650 PRO (GDDR3) | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | R530 |
| Process: | 80 and 90nm |
| Pixel Shaders: | 12 |
| Vertex Shaders: | 5 |
| Texture Units: | 4 |
| ROPs: | 4 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 600 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 700 (1400 effective) |
The X1650 PRO is a re-dressed X1600 XT with slightly higher clock speeds. The very high-speed memory for this class and efficient shaders help the X1650 PRO compare well to the 12-pipeline 7600 GS, beating it by a small margin in most benchmarks.
Just make sure you find the GDDR3 version! The DDR2 version of the card has much slower memory, and consequently does not perform as well.
| GeForce 7600 GS | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | G73 |
| Process: | 90nm |
| Pixel Shaders: | 12 |
| Vertex Shaders: | 5 |
| Texture Units: | 12 |
| ROPs: | 8 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 400 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 400 (800 effective) |
With features identical to those of its faster 7600 GT brethren, the 7600 GS lacks only the core and memory clock speeds - the GT's clock speeds are so high, however, that the GS pales in comparison. Nevertheless, the 7600 GS is a good performer in this AGP segment.
