budget vid card, need advice

[beeber]

I need a new vid card for my system. My old card was a chaintech 256mb geforce fx5700le. worked great until it fried and took two mobos and cpus with it!! (ouch) now I'm looking at either a fx5500 or a 6200. my budget is $70-80...90 absolute max

oh, slot is AGP 8x

here are some questions...

which is more important, chipset, installed memory, or memory interface? (and am I overlooking anything important)

basicly, I'd like 256MB, 128-bit, 6200
However, I've got to downgrade one of them cause of $$.

should I go:

128MB, 128-bit, 6200
or
256MB, 64-bit, 6200
or
256MB, 128-bit, fx5500

also, advice on brand? chaintech, xfx, rosewill are looking like good options for my price range, but my last chaintech fried, so I don't know.....

will be used for video encoding and gaming (dark age of camelot, doom3, thief...) would really like dark age not to lag (at least no more than with my old fx5700le). Any advice or other "teachin's" will be very appreciated.

--------------------
other stats:
mobo: asus p4p800e-deluxe
cpu: intel p4 478 pin 3ghz, 1mb l2cache, 800fsb
ram: 2x corsair value select 512MB pc3200 ddr
psu: xcase eb-600
other various hdd and optical 440G hdd space total
--------------------

 

[PZEROFGH]

mem doesnt really matter, i would say how many pipelines and the clock speeds.

 

[Adam123]

Hmm. I dont know what 90$ could get you. If you WOULD be playing stuff like bf2 and doom 3, you would probably be sticking settings to medium or so. Correct me if i'm wrong though..

 

[beeber]

i'm sure medium settings are fine.

here's my old card

http://www.chaintech.com.tw/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=14&PISNo=269

clock speeds about the same as the cards I'm looking at, and the specs say:
"4 pixels per clock rendering engine
16 texels per pixel with 8 textures applied per clock "

I'm assuming that's the same as 4 pixel pipelines, which the cards I'm looking at all have. 8's a little over budget.

The old card (FX5700LE) ran all the games I played just fine for me. But I can't really find many cards with the same chipset, so I'm wondering basicly if I should get one chipset lower, the FX5500, and retain the 128-bit memory interface, or if I should go up to the next series of chipsets, get the 6200, and sacrifice that 128-bit interface.

arg..so many numbers!

 

[Trotter]

Sub-$90 6200 cards on NewEgg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133151
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814135190
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814145118
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122222
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133149
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130233

 

[Zanjo]

128MB, 128-bit, 6200

Sounds Good.

 

[FghtinIrshNvrDi]

Asus 9600Pro

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121528
$80 shipped

Ryan

 

[Trotter]

If you can find the cash, nVidia is bringing out the 6800GS on AGP next week (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28094). The article says it expects the card to go fo around $249.

 

[FghtinIrshNvrDi]

ooh, that's LOW. maybe they're not expecting to sell as many... but really, the same card in a different format costing 50 bucks more seems a little... eh... you know?

Ryan

 

[beeber]

i need some edjumacatin'

Wow. I've gotten a lot of answers, but i'm still confused. One person said to sacrifice memory size and keep the 128-bit interface. A person on another forum said that any 6200 would outperform any fx5500, regardless of memory interface. Some reviews say that the 64-bit interface is a real hamper to performance (moreso than memory size I wonder?), and another says memory size doesn't really matter?!?! Not that I don't believe these statements, but nobody has really offered any explanation as to "why".

All clock speeds and pipelines assumed equal, is memory size or memory interface more important, and why? Just basics as related to performance; no electronics lesson necessary (i think). Unless, of course, if you're feeling "electronic-y", anything I can learn will be of value.

I've got a few days to come to a decision, and I just want it to be the right one, so I'm not kicking myself later.

-beeber

oh. that 6800gs sounds lovely, but way out of price range. that's over a weeks pay!! So my budget is pretty strict.

thanks again to everyone who has responded and helped out a nerd-in-need.