Cutting edge GPU on a ropey old motherboard?

If someone wanted a cutting edge graphics card, they'd want a cutting edge system and would have replaced the old AGP'd mootherboard a loooong time ago. Odd, huh?

AGP is great

While every motherboard now-a-days comes with PCI-X there's still millions of users with AGP motherboards out there. This is a good upgrade for them.

For instance I just picked up a person's computer yesterday because the graphics card died. I was going to look at what was available for a decent AGP card as she still wants the computer for her kids to game with. Sure it's not cutting edge, but for most people a P4/3.2G Dual Core isn't much of a slouch either. This will undoubtedly breathe some life back into the unit.

UVD

I realy like to see how good UVD decoding H.264 on Pentium III :D. I also want to see Pure Video HD. Please some reviewer who read this post a result? Thx :)

Yes..but wheres the driver support?

Check any Radeon thread recently and youll see the headaches of people running newer generation AGP cards. I just bought my girlfriends little brother an HD2600 AGP for his old sony, and lo and behold the 7.12 cats refuse to detect the card. In fact, it sounds like DAMMIT's catalyst team is practically refusing to add AGP compatibility to their subsequent drivers. I had to use the Diamond drivers included on the CD to get the card to work at all *gasp*

AGP + Socket 939 = Performance

There are still some very good socket 939 AGP motherboards out there. If you think about it, the jump from AGP to pci-e isn't all that cheap. Replace mobo, cpu, video card, ram and most likely re-install OS too.

In all honesty, even a 939 AGP system w/an opteron 185 (2.6 GHz) cpu will probably start to feel some cpu or memory bus limitation with a 3850, but it should buy those last hold outs some extra time for DDR3 systems to mature and come down in price.

little progress in the last few years

I used to follow PCs quite a bit, and with every new chip and chipset there was something in there for the user.

Then, things started to saturate. Just how many programs are using multi-threading these days anyway? Who cares about all those CPU bars in the "task manager", if they are not getting used ?

As far as a specific setup goes, a P4 at 2.5-3.2 Ghz on an AGP motherboard with 1 Gb of RAM is still is a screamer. There are very few applications that one won't be able to run on such a system in comfort, compared to the latest and greatest ...

"Good enough" is a terrible thing for hardware companies ;-)

HD-HTPC?

Would be great for turning older boxes into very functional HD capable HTPC's with decent gaming as well. What I'd like to see is a AGP 3850 with native HDMI.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071230-measuring-cpu-usage-during-hd-playback-ati-vs-nvidia.html

AGP is still great

As one of the AGP hold-outs, I think this is great - my trusty ASUS SK8V, running an Opteron 275HE (55W, @2.2GHz) is still plenty fast for me, and I would definitely like one of these cards. AGP may not rock, but it still lives on. . .

$200 to extend my PC another 2 years? SOLD

Hmmm. ~$200 to extend the life of my current machine by another couple years? (Gaming wise)

Compared to shelling out 1,000+ for a new rig this is a no-brainer.

Makes all the sense in the world...

...current and near-term future games simply don't really benefit from multi-core CPUs...which is to say, someone with a 2.6Ghz Athlon 64 on socket 754 with AGP is not at a disadvantage to someone with a dual-core on socket AM2. To that end, plopping an AGP 3850 on the socket 754 mobo will essentially make that machine every bit as good a gamer as the PCI-E version on an AM2 board. For all the pomp, other than SLI/Crossfire, there really is no compelling reason for an AGP-mobo owner to swap out for a PCI-E mobo...

Great idea

AMD is doing well targeting the mid range and you know what - a single 3870 is more than qualified to run current games (GoW, Crysis, Prostreet, Bioshock) at 1680x1050 with all settings on high.

If I could have received a 3870 AGP version, I wouldn't have upgraded my old system.

AGP systems with high clocking P4s or AMD 64s can still hold their own, especially with decent cards like the 3850

RE: AGP is great

PCI-X?

Get your terms straight, it's PCI-e or PCI-Express. PCI-X was an enhancement to the original PCI that ran at a higher bus (100-133MHz instead of 33MHz or 66MHz, primarily used in servers).

I only nVidia followed

This is a great upgrade for AGP gamers, up intil now there wasnt a single AGP card which would run games like STALKER with HDR enabled, X1950 and G7900 strugle at 5 frames per second. Also my 2.2Ghz Athlon XP runs every single game I give it be it STALKER or Bioshock I'm sure it will run Crysis too. Also 3850 brings proper HD decoding.
Thumbs up for ATI.

AGP rocks

I thought AGP was a dead issue for me...I was running an old Socket A chipset with an athlon 3200+ and DDR440 RAM.

My card? ATI X1950pro 512mb. When I upgrade (cheaply! was £220) to a socket AM2 X2 6400 with 2gb DDR800 my frame rates in Bioshock went from 20 on low settings to 40 on max settings.

Stalker with HDR? I THINK SO! the problem is that the X1950pro is LIMITED by a CPU like an Athlon XP 3200+.

With my ccurent rig, no such limits.

Need for speed pro with all the goodies and max detail? YEAH BABY.

Oblivion max details on outdoors? MMM GOOD.

So yeah, I forsee more mother boards like the Asrock hybrid ALiveDual-eSATA2.

Not all of us

If someone wanted a cutting edge graphics card, they'd want a cutting edge system and would have replaced the old AGP'd mootherboard a loooong time ago. Odd, huh?

Not all of us are in the mood to crank out a bunch of money to have the latest when our agp systems suffice, except to put a bit of a boost to the graphics system.

I don't buy into the hype of "must have" every couple of months,

changing the system out every 5-7 years is good enough with the odd upgrade here and there.

so in five years time i spend 200 bucks while you spent 2000 and i can still play the same games you can? who do you think is the smarter of the two here.

RAM, Not CPU

The limiting factor here for me, ironically, is that DDR1 memory is triple the price of DDR2, and they don't even bother to make 2gb DDR1 DIMMs in non-ECC formfactors.

RAM has been a greater limitation for pure gamers than CPU since about the Battlefield 2 era, and an old AGP box with 1gb is going to be utterly crippled when coupled with a modern vidcard and asked to play modern games.

Should be nice for h.264 though.

AGP

I have a P4 3.06 and just had my 6800 GS video card go down, reinstalled my operating system on a new hard disk in preparation of getting a new computer. I thought I should keep the old system running well. Now, I might just opt to get this video card instead of a new build.

dx10

god-forbid I ever need it, but if I actually have to upgrade to a dx10 compatible os on this system, its nice to know that there is a card out there for me. BTW last time the inq ran a comparison the the x1950 series agp vs the pci express, the numbers really were not that different...

Best of both Worlds

When i upgraded 3 years ago from my old XP2000+ i read about a great board from Asrock called 939Dual-SATA2 and it has AGP 8X and PCI-X and AM2 upgrade slot, so i didn't have to upgrade my video card back then. So now im good for another 2 more years and with the 8800GT in such a good bang for buck that be my next option. Just need to find one of those AM2 upgrade boards and im good for another 4 years. So all up 6-7 years out of a old motherboard with isn't bad LOL. Ohh AGP is still a good port. :D

sick of everyone insulting AGP.

ok first off, hats off to all those people insulting agp systems. while it is true that agp is a dying breed, i beg to incur that while most people have as someone has pointed out in this forum, a pentium 3 agp and so on that there are enthuisasts like me who also have decent agp systems.

for instance, i have a barton cherry picked 2600+ running @ 2.6GHz actual clockspeed.

The latencies are 2-2-2-2 and i have a hefty 750mb hard drive (blazing fast 750gb barracuda 7200.10 es series) with a minimal 512mb swapfile on the fast sata connection. if thats not enough i also have the classic old school bh-5's that i can tweak with my voltage booster thats on another computer to 3.4volts and give me nearly 600mhz effective ddr with latencies at 2-2-2-5.

First and foremost, I don't think this card will eat up the full bandith of my agp 8x on my abit nf7-s and if it did, i doubt my cpu would be a bottleneck.

for people like myself, which i am not the only one, agp cards like this one would be a perfect match, and true my system is outdated, but i find it's more than quite effective.

so do yourself a favour, and shut yourself up, because while although i do agree that most systems should be upgraded, i also agree that there are decent aghp systems that also exist like my own.

thank you and have a happy new year....from CANADA.

AGP Good or Bad?

Well here goes.

I normally spend about $2500 to upgrade my system. I am currently running:

MOBO: MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
CPU: AMD FX-60 2.61GHz dual core running at 233FSB (not supposed to run on this mobo, but does)
HD: WD Raptor 150GB SATA 10000rpm
RAM: 4GB Kingston Hyper-x (os sees 3.5GB)
OS: Windows XP x64 SP2
CASE: Antec P-190 Case w/ 1200W psu
VIDEO: ATI FireGL X3-256
MONITOR: HP2335 LCD @ 1920x1200
INPUT: Microsoft Ergonomic & Wacom Intuos3 tablet

So not a great system, but not bad. I do not see the advantage in a new system that warrants what I normally spend.

Right now I am running into restrictions on my video only. This card, reading the Tom's Hardware review, would provide a decent boost to my system and would be a nice upgrade for $145. This will probably buy me another year of two out of this system. I am also like others where I do not like to have to rebuild my system. I find to get everything the way I like it takes a week or two of tweaking. In addition, if I can do this upgrade, I will probably be able to bypass the Windows Vista debacle and move right into Windows 7.

So in my analysis of the decision to buy this card, am I right or wrong? I feel confident that I am right; I'm also sure you'll be the judge of that.