what is the best AGP graphics card ?

correction: "What is the best piece of crap?"

and, yes, the make them, but decent ones are hard to find.

The AGP bus isn't even being fully utilized, and it's still a very viable alternative.

ATI's HD 3850 is coming in an AGP version, the 3870 will also probably be AGP. It'll retail for a little over $200. If you have an Athlon XP, or a Pentium 4 CPU, you may want to rethink buying an agp card. It will be severely bottlenecked and the only solution would be to upgrade the mobo, CPU, and the memory. That can cost in the upper $300s, lower $400s, plus the card, which can be $600 or $700. While it can run the latest games very well, in the end the investment towards a PCI-express based system would be a better one.

If you're not ready for your PCI-express system for whatever reason and would like a temporary upgrade (mobo, cpu, memory to run the ATI HD 3850/3870) to hold you over for a while longer, I'd reconsider. The dollar-investment is just not cost-effective for a technology that's, while viable, is being phased out.

correction: "What is the best piece of crap?elitegeek13

[QUOTE="elitegeek13"]

correction: "What is the best piece of crap?RedDanDoc

I can install a motherboard just fine. If you're so tech savvy then this thread wouldn't exist to begin with.

Honestly though, most older boards that have AGP slots only have support for CPUs that would bottleneck the best AGP cards.General_X

Nah, there's AGP motherboards that support the latest CPUs, such as the MSI K9MM-V (AMD-based), or the vastly superior ASROCK AM2NF3-VSTA (also AMD based). I couldn't find a better Intel-based AGP board that supports DDR2 800 memory (intel AGP mobos exist, but I couldn't find one to my liking), if anyone knows of one, I'd definitely like to know. Same goes for an AMD-based AGP board better than the one mentioned.

[QUOTE="General_X"]Honestly though, most older boards that have AGP slots only have support for CPUs that would bottleneck the best AGP cards.HavocEbonlore

Nah, there's AGP motherboards that support the latest CPUs, such as the MSI K9MM-V (AMD-based). I couldn't find a better Intel-based AGP board that supports DDR2 800 memory (intel AGP mobos exist, but I couldn't find one to my liking), if anyone knows of one, I'd definitely like to know. Same goes for an AMD-based AGP board better than the one mentioned.

[QUOTE="HavocEbonlore"]

[QUOTE="General_X"]Honestly though, most older boards that have AGP slots only have support for CPUs that would bottleneck the best AGP cards.General_X

Nah, there's AGP motherboards that support the latest CPUs, such as the MSI K9MM-V (AMD-based). I couldn't find a better Intel-based AGP board that supports DDR2 800 memory (intel AGP mobos exist, but I couldn't find one to my liking), if anyone knows of one, I'd definitely like to know. Same goes for an AMD-based AGP board better than the one mentioned.

True, but if those people still have viable AGP video cards, they can get alot more life out of them though a cheap upgrade. I'd say that the ATI HD 3850 should be the last go-around for AGP users, but chances are Nvidia will fire back with something. Regardless, AGP is still a viable solution and games can run very well on it

Even though PCI-E is becoming the standard, I'd hardly consider AGP to be legacy hardware, if that was your implication.

This flexible mobo (ASROCK ALiveDual-eSATA2) has both AGP and PCI-E, so an upgrade path is always there.

not to mention that PCI E 2.0 is already being rushed by nvidia...elitegeek13

Nvidia? Not really. ATI was first to the market with PCi-e 2.0 cards, and ATI also currently has a more varied lineup of PCI-e 2.0 cards on the market. Nvidia has three PCI-e 2.0 8800 cards (8800GT, 8800GS, and 8800 GTS 512MB) compared to the HD3850, HD3870, HD3870X2, HD3450, HD3470, and the HD3650.

[QUOTE="elitegeek13"]not to mention that PCI E 2.0 is already being rushed by nvidia...RayvinAzn

Nvidia? Not really. ATI was first to the market with PCi-e 2.0 cards, and ATI also currently has a more varied lineup of PCI-e 2.0 cards on the market. Nvidia has three PCI-e 2.0 8800 cards (8800GT, 8800GS, and 8800 GTS 512MB) compared to the HD3850, HD3870, HD3870X2, HD3450, HD3470, and the HD3650.

oh my mistake entirely. I hadn't realized that those cards supported PCI-E 2.0, but then again i don't keep up on ATI as much.

IT is really beter to change your motherboard !

AGP grafic card are more expensive than PCI E ! and than money that you pay for AGP card can give u a good motherboard