What is the absolute fastest OGL AGP card available?

[dZeus]

yup, a new revision of the bridge chip nVidia uses is going to enable that. They probably didn't like seeing AMD/ATI get the majority of the AGP sales that still have a reasonable level to make a good profit of.

In fact, A GF8 AGP will be part of the 'final upgrade' my current P4 2.8C is going to get. When Vista SP1 is out, the upgrade will be this GF8 AGP, a vista-compatible soundcard (not from creative, thank you), and hopefully a solid-state 2.5" SATA drive, around 32GB. If they'll manage to get the write access times down and the write/read speeds up to par with the fastest mechanical SATA drives.

[ZokesPro]

@rylan & Mehen: Yes yes, that's what I meant. My excuse, lack of sleep.

[Nowhere]

...
In fact, A GF8 AGP will be part of the 'final upgrade' my current P4 2.8C is going to get. When Vista SP1 is out, the upgrade will be this GF8 AGP...

Crap, when reading something like this I'm beginning to think that still holding on to my Athlon Xp 1700+ and upgrading it with something like GF 7300GT/7600GS isn't such a bad idea

[dZeus]

Crap, when reading something like this I'm beginning to think that still holding on to my Athlon Xp 1700+ and upgrading it with something like GF 7300GT/7600GS isn't such a bad idea

It's not! for browsing/chatting/MS Office, you definitely don't need a dual or quad-speed monster they sell nowadays. Just make sure that you have got enough RAM to prevent disk-swapping, and vista-compatible stuff if you plan to run that in future (I would like to upgrade just for Aero Glass, but am waiting for SP1). Further more, I feel that the thing that slows down my PC the most is the disk access speed, not the CPU/RAM/etc. So a SSD with nice read/write access time and a good price will be a good upgrade.

[Mehen]

Right now computers are the cheapest I can ever remember them. CPU-wise, Intel kicking butt has forced AMD to sell cpu's very cheap, well under $100. AM2 mobos are cheap, RAM is dirt cheap (under $100 for 2gb). Video cards are priced just OK.

It can be tempting to upgrade, but just because things are cheap doesn't mean it's not gonna hurt the wallet. Cuz you gotta factor in things like, new PSU, maybe aftermarket cooling, it all adds up.

Getting just a 7300/7600 is not a bad a idea at all

(btw, I won't be upgrading until Crysis & UT3 )

[Pace]

Not needed, but was curious, and found this:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/3dsmax5-quadrofx3000.html

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 and 2000, ATI FireGL X1 and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

ATI have since released X2 and X3

http://www.elsa.com/EN/Products/detail.asp?newsid=315

[Nowhere]

Allright, I think I agree its still sensible to upgrade...though now it seems more complicated than just a short time ago

Not sure if to go with Nvidia 7300GT/7600GS or Radeon X1650. Roughly the same price, performance won't be limited by GFX card anyway, but...

Nvidia - good drivers for Windows, good drivers for Linux

ATI - sometimes messy drivers for Windows (I heard they're a bit worse now...due to DX10 driver development I guess; and I can't stand sometimes drivers for Radeon 8500) but OTOH...AMD just released specifications for their cards, so great Linux drivers to follow.

And of course ATI "traditionally" will probably have better analog display quality... (I'm still on Eizo CRT)

Or just wait for current gen low/mid GFX cards to become available here in AGP form...though I'm not sure if the statement "they're newer, so will be better supported by current/future driver updates" holds in this case...I'll be using DX9 on XP, not enough RAM for Vista (even after small upgrade I'm doing in coming days when DDR prices are still comparable to DDR2: 768 MB -> 1320; I agree, dZeus, that RAM amount and HDD are more important in day-to-day permormance).

BTW |Mehen|, "unfortunatelly" my PSU/case/cooling is perfectly capable of accomodating larger upgrade (and damn...few fun things start to require features in those new CPUs...)

[Mehen]

A note on Crysis and UT3 - Bioshock is UT3 based and runs decent on a X1950pro. There will be a Crysis demo out soon so it won't be long before I see how that runs. This computer might be able to hang on another year (although who knows whether or not I'll upgrade anyways - would be nice to play Supreme Commander).