Optimal card for Athlon 3200?

[Space_Coyote]

WhatÂ’s the best 'bang for the buck' card that I could buy, that my rig will be able to take full advantage of? What I mean is, obviously something like an 8800 would bottleneck. So, in that same regard, what is the best card that wonÂ’t be slowed-down by my PC?

Athlon 3200 64-bit, socket 754
Jetway nForce4 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813153051
1GB RAM

 

[Deathawk]

7600gt or 7900gs ;\

 

[turtile]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150210

 

[Deathawk]

oh, agp... oops...

then in that case, 7600gt or 7800gs.


Wait... your motherboard has PCIe too...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130062 then get that...

 

[Space_Coyote]

Yeah, the dual-card type support is a nice feature of the board. That, and the fact it's one of the few nForce4 boards for the socket 754.

So you think I wouldn't get much more benefit from a 7900GS due to my CPU?

 

[Sora]

no....thats not how it works. You will see a lot more performance from a 7900GS over a 7600GT.

I don't care if your running a sempron, you will notice a performance increase alright.


I don't know how this whole "Your CPU will bottleneck that card to death" rumor started but for the most part video cards aren't bottlenecked, and when they are its only by a bit.

 

[Space_Coyote]

I got my new board and CPU installed last night and now I’m ****ed! The Jetway Mobo description of “AGP compatible” without specifying 4x/8x made me suspicious before I purchased, so I called Jetway tech support then. He assured me 3 times over the phone that it would do up to AGP 8x. So now I come to find out that it is just basically a PCI slot! There are no AGP settings in the BIOS, just PCI and PCI-E (3DMark also shows it as PCI).

My 3DMark03 benchmark for the 6800GS went from 7100 with my old Athlon 1800 and Abit AT7, to a mere 6350 with the new Athlon 3200 and nForce4 board @$#%!$^!!!!. I was planning to go PCI-E in the next few months anyway, but I guess I have to go ahead with that now. I plan to squeeze a few more GHz out of the CPU with moderate overclocking if that will allow me the benefit of a slightly faster card.

Do you think something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130056 would be done justice by my rig then?

 

[Sora]

thats exactly the card I have and yea its quite a good card, i havent had lag with it yet.

 

[Deathawk]

Very good choice.

 

[Space_Coyote]

After it took XFX over 5 weeks to replace my last defective card, I swore I'd never buy another one of their products. However, this one has faster clocks and is $10 cheaper after rebate. It's tempting, but I'm still liking eVGA.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150202